The Texans made a couple of additions to their 53-man roster on Wednesday.
The team announced that they have signed cornerback Ameer Speed and defensive end Solomon Byrd. Both players were on their practice squad prior to Wednesday’s move.
Speed signed to the practice squad in late November and he was elevated to play in last Sunday’s win over the Colts. Speed had one tackle against the team he played eight games for during the 2023 season. He has also played for the Bears and Patriots.
Byrd appeared in one game for the Texans last season. He had two tackles and a quarterback hit in that contest.
The NFL has many officiating issues, even if it chooses to ignore most of them.
Here’s one that could be easily fixed.
It happens when an extra point or a field goal involves the ball going over the uprights. Instant replay, by rule, is not available. The officials have to decide whether, when the ball passed over the top of the structure, it was within the inside edge of the yellow pole.
On Sunday, a fourth-quarter extra point attempt by the Texans kicker Ka’imi Fairbairn appeared to not pass within the imaginary line extending above the uprights. The one-point difference became critical, making the score 20-13 when it arguably should have been 19-13. The Colts, who lost 20-16, could have tied the game with a late field goal, if that point had not been awarded to the Texans.
It doesn’t have to be that way. Although making the uprights even higher than they are poses engineering and aesthetic challenges, there are other solutions.
One, put a wireless camera with a wide-angle lens at the top or each upright. With the proliferation of affordable camera technology, it would be cheap and easy to have a way to see where the ball was when it passed over the camera.
Two, install a thin beam atop each upright that would be activated before every kick. It would create a simulated extension of the apparatus, allowing replay review to decide whether the ball passes inside, outside, or through the yellow ray of light.
Third, use the existing array of Hawkeye cameras in the same way it’s currently employed (albeit surprisingly rarely) for virtual measurements. Multiple readers from other side of the Atlantic Ocean have pointed out that hurling has developed a system for doing exactly what the NFL needs — a way to triangulate the location of the ball in order to determine whether the kick was, or wasn’t, successful.
There’s a way to fix the problem that reared its head on Sunday. With so much technology available, the old-school, no-tech approach needs to be abandoned, whenever and wherever possible.
Laken Tomlinson opened the season as the starting left guard for the Texans, but he lost that job and he’s now lost his spot on the roster.
The Texans announced that they have waived Tomlinson on Tuesday. They did not make a corresponding addition to their 53-man roster.
Tomlinson signed a one-year deal with the Texans as a free agent this offseason. He started seven of the first eight games of the season, but was replaced by Jarrett Patterson in Week 10 and he has been inactive for the team’s last two games.
Juice Scruggs and Jarrett Kingston remain on the depth chart as reserves on the interior of the line.
It’s been a long time since Andy Reid and the Chiefs have found themselves with such long odds of making the playoffs as the ones they have right now, but there aren’t any signs of white flags being flown by the head coach in Kansas City.
Reid said on Monday that he feels the team has been a few plays away from turning most of their losses into victories and that the focus will be on tightening up their execution in those situations because they are still “in position where if we can figure out those two, three plays, you flip this around.”
“If you’re coming to me, we’re going to go after you every game, and that’s how we roll,” Reid said, via Dave Skretta of the Associated Press. “We’re going to tickle your tonsils on every play, every game. But that’s the attitude we’re coming in with, and then you let the chips fall where they may.”
At 6-6, the Chiefs are in a deep enough hole that simply winning their next five games won’t be enough to guarantee them a spot in the postseason tournament. It would be a pretty good place to start any push, however, and next Sunday night’s game against the Texans is the first must-win game for the defending AFC champions.
The pool report from Sunday’s Texans-Colts game addressed three controversial calls. It overlooked one of them.
With three minutes to play the third quarter, the Colts faced third and 19 from the Houston 44. Quarterback Daniel Jones threw deep to receiver Alec Pierce. The officials called pass interference on safety Calen Bullock. The Colts picked up 32 yards in field position, and a first down.
There was only one problem. And it was a big one. The pass was clearly uncatchable.
The ball landed well out of bounds, close to the dotted yellow line painted nine feet from the outer edge of the thick white stripe that borders the sideline. Pierce would have needed a ladder, or a pogo stick, to have a chance at catching the throw.
There was no discussion of catchability during the broadcast. None of the Texans defenders made the gesture (palm over top of head) that indicates uncatchability. The official who threw the flag didn’t even look to see where the ball had landed.
It was a clear miss, one that resulted in a Colts touchdown on the very next play, tying the game (with the extra point) at 13.
Again, it wasn’t addressed in the pool report. The league otherwise hasn’t said anything about it. During Football Night in America, Simms decried the lack of common sense exhibited by the call. (As Simms quipped, the hot dog vendor had a better chance at catching the ball than Pierce.)
Unfortunately, common sense ain’t. And that quality was on display in Indy. If the Colts had won the game, it presumably would have been a much bigger deal. Instead, because the Texans won, three calls that favored Houston became the subject of the post-game postmortem.
