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Heading into Sunday’s match up against the Cincinnati Bengals, the Texans had posted two wins this season against teams with a combined record of 1-9. Beating a red-hot Bengals team, who were riding a four game winning streak, would certainly be a needed shot in the arm, and a great way to silence critics who claim that this is indeed another Texans team going nowhere soon. Heart wrenching losses and erratic decision making over the past few weeks have certainly heightened that uncertainty, and falling to 2-4 would have placed the team in a very precarious position, but Matt Schaub...

Inches short and a half too late would be the best way to sum up the Texans’ latest loss. Down by a touchdown and three tries from just outside the Cardinals' 1-yard line, the Texans were in what appeared to be a perfect situation to tie up the game and take their chances in overtime.

Reliant Stadium --- Stocked with a lineage of Hall-of Fame players, three Super Bowl championships and a reputation of intimidating its opponents like no other team in history, the Oakland Raiders were once a revered NFL franchise. Since their Super Bowl appearance after the 2001 season, the Raiders have won fewer games than any other team and are now the laughingstock of the league.

It was supposed to be the beginning of something special here in Houston. After slaying the mighty Titans on the road last week, most Texans fans felt as though their franchise had finally turned the corner. The organization even tagged Sunday’s homecoming as “Battle Red Day.” With a history of routinely dispatching the suddenly-struggling Jacksonville Jaguars, and the inept Raiders heading into town next week, a 3-1 start to the season appeared to be all but a done deal. But as the venerable Lee Corso of ESPN frequently quips: not so fast my friend!

oft and uninspired, were a couple of the terms used to describe the play of the Texans after the loss to the Jets last week during the season opener. Some fans were even calling for a coaching change after the debacle, hoping the Texans brass would keep the telephone numbers of Bill Cower and Tony Dungy on speed dial. Things can really change fast in one week. Despite being down by 14 points in the second quarter and unable to establish any sort of running game, the Houston Texans earned perhaps its most monumental win in team history with a...

It was all set up so perfectly. The NFL schedule gods gift-wrapped a home game featuring a rookie quarterback--- who by the way had only started 16 college games--- to feast upon for the much-anticipated season opener in front of the Texans faithful. After all, this is supposed to be the season where the franchise had finally turned the corner; a season that on paper, is considered to be the best team ever fielded by the Texans organization, after a solid draft and a myriad of off-season moves. There is no way a team slated to challenge for supremacy in...

Pathetic. Atrocious. Embarrassing. Disgusting. Feel free at any time to add your own negative adjective to describe the Houston Texans performance on Sunday in the season opener against the New York Jets at Reliant Stadium. The 70,718 fans in attendance, mostly wearing white at the Texans request, should get a refund. Now we all understand that this was just one game, but enough is enough. Every year we get so excited and believe this is our year, just to have to sit there and watch a terrible product on the field. Under head coach Gary Kubiak, the Texans are beginning...

Are there any more frightening words in all of football than “Rex Grossman is your starting quarterback”? I can’t think of any, except maybe, “Hi, I’m Michael Vick. Mind if I walk your dog?” Yes, the Texans are down to this, Rex Grossman, starting at QB. Matt “I’ve got a boo-boo” Schaub sat out the final preseason game, which in and of itself is not a big deal, but given Schaub’s history of missed games due to injury it leaves the mind to ponder the horror of watching Rex Grossman start four or five or six games for the Texans....

Reliant Stadium - It took Adrian Peterson just under eight seconds to scamper 75 yards on the game’s first play to put Minnesota up 7-0. It also took just under eight seconds for the NFL’s best running back to leave the Texan’s coaching staff with a pounding headache as they frantically search for answers as to how best shore up their porous defensive. The only good thing about Monday’s 17-10 lost to the Vikings is the fact that it is still only the preseason. Granted, the hysteria surrounding the Brett Favre circus provided the ambiance of a playoff-type atmosphere at...

ANO, Texas - A police officer was put on desk duty after pulling over an NFL player rushing to see his dying mother-in-law in the hospital and holding him in the hospital parking lot as she died. Dallas police officer Robert Powell stopped Houston Texans running back Ryan Moats' SUV outside Baylor Regional Medical Center during the early hours of March 18 after Moats rolled through a red light. Moats and his family had gotten a call saying his mother-in-law was dying. Video from a dashboard camera inside the officer's vehicle, obtained by Dallas-Fort Worth station WFAA-TV, revealed an intense...

NEW YORK (AP) _ Unless the courts intervene, the Minnesota Vikings will have to make their stretch run at the NFC North title without their two stalwart defensive tackles. Kevin and Pat Williams, who have anchored a Minnesota defense ranked second in the NFL against the run, were among six players suspended by the league on Tuesday for violating the league's anti-doping policy. New Orleans Saints Deuce McAllister, Charles Grant and Will Smith also were suspended along with Bryan Pittman, the Houston Texans' long snapper.

NACOGDOCHES — The rows of extra chairs brought into the The Fredonia's biggest meeting room Thursday night were not enough to accommodate more than 750 people who attended an open house and public hearing on the proposed TTC-69 highway. Texas Department of Transportation officials heard hours of public testimony that continued late into the night overwhelmingly opposed to the construction of new roadways through East Texas. Applause throughout the hours-long meeting never swelled as loudly as it did when the first speaker of the night, state Rep. Wayne Christian, told TxDOT representatives emphatically that "our answer is 'no' on the...

Some Texans are afraid of losing their land to the Trans-Texas Corridor while others loathe the thought of a quarter-mile-wide swath of toll roads and railway lines transforming the countryside into a superhighway. People continue to turn out in droves at public meetings concerning the controversial Trans-Texas Corridor proposal, specifically the portion known as the TTC-69 proposed from Brownsville to Texarkana. A meeting Monday, Jan. 28, at the fairgrounds in Austin County was no exception, drawing more than 1,000 people. Opposition to the proposed corridor has come from people in all walks of life, said Chris Steinbach, chief of staff...

HOUSTON (AP) - The Houston Texans agreed to terms with free agent running back Ahman Green on Sunday. The 30-year-old former Green Bay Packer will likely become the starter for a team that struggled at the position last season after Domanick Williams - formerly Davis - missed the year with knee problems. Green will be introduced at a 1 p.m. news conference in Houston on Monday, said Texans vice president of communications Tony Wyllie. Terms of the contract were not immediately available.

Macquarie to buy newspaper chain; critics fear it's to silence Trans-Texas Corridor opponents. One of the foreign firms leasing the Indiana Toll Road is drawing suspicion from some Texans after announcing plans to acquire a chain of small newspapers there. Australia-based Macquarie Media Group last week said it will pay $80 million for American Consolidated Media, which publishes 40 community newspapers and shopping publications serving nine communities in Texas and Oklahoma. Macquarie's sister company, Macquarie Infrastructure Group, last year joined with the Spanish conglomerate Cintra to lease the Indiana Toll Road for the next 75 years. Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels...

PIEDRAS NEGRAS, Mexico - U.S. and Mexican authorities are searching for three Americans and two Mexicans kidnapped by dozens of armed men who swarmed a Mexican hunting ranch near the U.S. border. Witnesses told police that 30 to 40 armed men entered the La Barranca ranch late Sunday and took the five men. The ranch, used for deer hunting, is located near the Mexican town of Hidalgo, about 40 miles northwest of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. Erik Vasys, an FBI spokesman in San Antonio, Texas, late Tuesday identified the Americans as Librado Pina Jr., 49, who owned the ranch, and his...

11,000-year-old Texans are stars of the Bosque Museum 01:31 PM CST on Friday, November 17, 2006 By MARY G. RAMOS / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News A special new exhibit at the Bosque Museum in Clifton, Texas, features the lives of some extremely early Texans. Prehistoric people (called Paleo-Americans by archaeologists) lived in a cave shelter on the western bank of the Brazos River a bit downstream from the Lake Whitney Dam in Bosque County about 11,000 years ago. Paleo-Americans were using the 150-foot by 30-foot shelter before ancient Egyptian civilization began. A Texas archaeologist discovered the shelter,...

GREEN BAY, Wis. -- The Green Bay Packers traded running back Samkon Gado to the Houston Texans on Wednesday for another young running back, Vernand Morency. The trade is pending both players passing physicals with their new team. The Texans have been looking for reinforcements at running back since Domanick Davis, the franchise's leading rusher, was placed on the injured reserve two weeks ago. Houston claimed 1999 Heisman Trophy Winner Ron Dayne off waivers after he was released by Denver last week. Coach Gary Kubiak said he made the trade for Gado because he wanted to add a big, power...

Texans put on border watch By Catherine Elsworth in Los Angeles (Filed: 03/06/2006) An American state is installing security cameras linked to the internet along its 1,000-mile Mexican border to enable citizens to monitor illegal immigration and drug smuggling from their homes. The armchair border patrol will be given a free telephone number to alert authorities to any criminal activity they see. Texas is investing $5 million (£2.65 million) in the "virtual border watch". Rick Perry, the state governor, said it would deploy surveillance cameras with night vision at "criminal hot spots and common routes used to enter this country"....

WASHINGTON, May 31, 2006 – This July, two military men plan to become the 16th and 17th Americans to swim the Strait of Gibraltar, raising funds in the process for troops disabled in recent action overseas. David Broyles and Rush Vann of Austin, Texas, expect to swim the 12.5 miles of Mediterranean waters from the southern coast of Spain to Morocco to help draw public support for America's wounded heroes, according to a press release. "As a pararescueman in Iraq, my job was to save lives," Broyles said in an open letter. "I'm no longer in Iraq and I'm no...