The Texans lost their second consecutive game, falling 41-13 to the Baltimore Ravens. Houston was behind by six at the half, but offensive turnovers and penalties caused the team to lose control of the game in the third and fourth quarters.
Rosenfels takes the blame: Quarterback Sage Rosenfels had been looking forward to his start against the Ravens all week. After the game, he was looking forward to moving on to next Sunday.
"I blame myself for the mistakes I made," Rosenfels said. "But I can't do it all and I'm probably trying to be too aggressive and make too many things happen. But I'm doing the best I can."
Rosenfels was 23-of-35 for a career-high 294 yards and threw one touchdown. But his four interceptions caused the offense to lose control of the game as the Ravens scored 14 points off of the Texans' turnovers.
Baltimore also got a safety because of rookie Duane Brown's end zone holding penalty that came while trying to keep Rosenfels from being sacked.
"When bad things start to happen, a team like that just keeps attacking and keeps attacking because they don't sit back when they're in the lead and play soft coverages and let you find completions and slowly move the ball down the field like most teams do," Rosenfels said. "That team keeps bringing it, keeps blitzing, keeps being aggressive. That's why it's so hard, even at the end of the games when you might be down by four touchdowns, to even find completions."
Rosenfels did make a spectacular throw on a 60-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Kevin Walter. It was the longest catch of Walter's career and his sixth touchdown catch of the season.
"We knew we had to make a big play; we called two deep routes," Walter said. "Right when I turned my head, the ball was right there. I don't think I caught a ball in my career as in stride as that one. It was a great ball, so we just had to do something with it afterwards."
So far this season, Rosenfels has four touchdowns and eight turnovers in 10 quarters.
"This is a game I'm going to have to learn from," he said. "We have a big game next week at Indianapolis. That's a game we all know that we think we can win because we played them so well the first time. We'll have to play even better next week."
Kubiak shares the blame: Coach Gary Kubiak also accepted blame for the loss, saying he did not make effective halftime adjustments. The Texans trailed by six points after two quarters.
"We are in a tough football game against a good team and then midway or late in the third quarter, we just kind of self-destructed," Kubiak said. "But give them credit. They did a hell of a job. I obviously did a poor job of having my guys ready for the second half."
{QUOTE}Kubiak also said he put Rosenfels in bad positions, contributing to the turnover problem. It's a problem the coach will have to find a way to fix.
"I've got to figure out something to do different," Kubiak said. "I have to figure out a way to get us to play four quarters of clean football. We have some tough road games coming up, and that spurt right there was ugly. So I've got to figure out something."
Most of the players, however, said that Kubiak was not the person at fault for the Texans' struggles.
"This is not Gary Kubiak, this is the players," guard Chester Pitts said. "I didn't see him with a helmet on today. I didn't see him with pads on. This is our job, our responsibility. We're professionals. At this level of the game if you need a coach to get you ready to go play, you're in the wrong business. If this is what you need to be doing, you need to do something else. It's our job to get ready to go and this is on us, this is on the players."
Bentley steps in: The Texans lost their leading tackler when linebacker Zac Diles broke his leg on Wednesday and was placed on injured reserve. Playing in place of Diles at the strongside position was Kevin Bentley, who answered the call in his first start of the season.
Bentley finished the game with seven total tackles and a sack for a 15-yard loss, all of which he downplayed after the game.
"If we would have won, it probably would have been something good," he said. "But right now, we didn't make enough big plays to win that game."
Sacks all around: Bentley wasn't the only Texan to notch a sack. Defensive ends Tim Bulman and Earl Cochran also took down quarterback Joe Flacco.
Bulman has recorded three sacks this season, and Cochran has two. Both players also recorded sacks last week at Minnesota.
Linebacker DeMeco Ryans led the team in tackles with 11.
On the rebound: There is no time for head-hanging at Reliant Stadium with a road game at Indy on deck.
"You have to rebound, regardless," defensive end Mario Williams said. "It's football. You have to go out and play ball and make it happen. You have to rebound."
The players will be back at work on Monday, reviewing game film and meeting with their position coaches.
"To me, once you've lost a game, you grieve about it, you get upset about, you come back and watch the film," safety Nick Ferguson said. "Then after you do that, you prepare for that next week that's on us. So you can't linger on this loss. We have to get ourselves prepared for Indy, and that starts tomorrow."
