Packers at Texans – All Packers All Weekend Long

Unless you’ve been completely out of touch you probably know that the Packers came to Houston on Sunday night and made mincemeat of the vaunted Texans.  In every facet of the game, except garbage-time blocked punts and mocking of the opposing team’s star players via meaningless celebration of individual accomplishment, the Packers dominated this contest.  It was a great weekend to be a Packers fan in Houston!

On Saturday evening, packerseverywhere.com hosted a rally held at the Brick House Tavern & Tap on HWY 290 in Houston.  The event was attended by roughly 300 Packer backers.

Team President Mark Murphy, Packer Radio Network play-by-play man Wayne Larrivee, former Packer players Greg Koch and Robert Ferguson, and several members of the Packers office and media staffs attended the event.

Many of the fans at the event were from Texas, but there might have been just as many from Green Bay or even further away in attendance.  I spoke to folks from Colorado, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, California, and Tennesse, and many other locations – but they were all Packers fans and all were excited to be in Houston for the game.

I haven’t been around that many passionate Packers fans in a long time, and it was awesome to see them displaying their support for the Pack!  Packers fans honked and waved when they saw the wife’s CheeseMobile.  Texans fans…well, let’s just say we didn’t have to read between the lines!

It’s no secret that many harbored serious doubts about the ability of the Packers to come into Reliant and hand the Texans their first loss of this season. The Packers needed to win this game more than the Texans did, and it was immediately obvious who wanted it more.

Rodgers was especially sharp, although even he missed a couple of open throws he probably wishes he had to do over.  What seemed different about this game was that when a play wasn’t executed the offense or defense didn’t seem to dwell on it.

Rather, they rebounded and continued to work harder than the Texans did for the win. WRs Nelson and Jones had three and two TDs, respectively, and they weren’t easy catches either.  All I’ll say about the officials is that they still need to gain and maintain consistency in how they call OPI and DPI.

I wrote on Saturday how I thought things might go down in H Town. I was right about several things and wrong about a few.

Here are a few of them re-examined:

Three takeaways – right on. Casey Hayward has potential. Points off turnovers- only 7, but it was enough.

The Packers did score first. In the first quarter. A touchdown indeed!

Rodgers did have his best game of the season. At exactly the right time.

Alex Green did lead the Packers in rushing…not Rodgers. But Rodgers had a better average.

Not a blowout…well, you can’t guess ’em all right. I’ve never been happier to be wrong than here.

The Texans did indeed miss Cushing. Their defense has to reset without him. Now they know it.

Pack O and D consistent for the whole game? Pretty much correct.

Packers fans did take over Reliant Stadium in the 4th quarter, but the Packers owned it for most of the game.

I don’t think NBC mentioned the similar appearance of Clay Matthews and Brooks Reed, but I could have missed it.  I was tweeting like a madman during the game.

34-27 score prediction? What can I say? I saw a victory, but not the shellacking the Packers performed on Sunday night. I’ll take 42-24 Packers any time!

If the Packers, and especially Aaron Rodgers, actually laid the “Shhhhhhhh” on the critics last night – if only for a few days, then that’s great, but not important. They needed this win. They’ll need the next one, too.

As fun to watch as this game was, it was one game. Aaron Rodgers has his “edge” back – the chip on his shoulder is there again. I see no downside to that. It looks as if Alex Green can carry the load at RB for a while, but the Packers better hit the wire because Brandon Saine went down last night and James Starks looked, at least to me, slow to hit the holes and tentative overall. One cut and go James.

Other injuries to Nick Perry, DJ Smith, and Sam Shields will have us wondering who the next man up will be and what kind of dropoff might result. We’ve seen this before. Not to diminish the importance of the injured players, but the defense didn’t seem like it missed a beat.

We’ll see.

The Texans made some really silly mistakes too, and some of them undoubtedly kept Packers drives alive. Would the Packers still have won the game had the Texans not made these mistakes? I say probably, maybe even certainly. But leaping? Really? And lining up offsides? The local media here today tried to sell the idea that Texans rookie DeVier Posey hasn’t played on the punt team before.

No soap.

They teach players not to line up in the neutral zone when they start playing football – not when they get to the NFL. He wasn’t a little bit in the neutral zone – his whole helmet and part of his shoulders were lined up in there.  Rock ’em sock ’em at the bottom of the pile – hitting a player with a helmet on in the head? Come on man!

For the Texans this was one game, too. They’re still a talented team that might end up in the Super Bowl this year, but there or not it won’t be because they won or lost their game against the Packers. The same is true for the Packers. Should they get back to the promised land this season, this win might have helped get them back on the right track, but there will be more important games and wins than this one to come.

Bring on the Rams!

GO PACK GO!