JETS 29, TEXANS 7

Before I even get into the football part of the game, let me just tell you that this was the worst officiated game I've ever seen in my life, and I've seen a good amount of football. The referee was Tom White...don't expect to see his crew doing any important games down the stretch here. Actually, what you should expect is to hear something about this crew apologizing to both the Jets and the Texans this week, and if they don't, it's a shame. They were absolutely horrible. I wouldn't be surprised if Tom White actually retires at the end of this year - a lot of the errors looked like a senile old man trying to figure out what was going on...the NFL should gently nudge him out the door.

Here's what I mean: Third quarter, the Jets stop the Texans on their own 2, so Houston punts out of their own end zone. The ball is snapped, it goes out of the end zone for a safety, and then the ref comes out and says, "There was no snap, the players weren't ready." WHAT? Are you kidding me? If the players weren't ready, how come the ball was snapped?!!? Then, there were two more penalties on the next two punt attempts as the Texans tried to punt out of the end zone. So a safety was taken away from the Jets. Then, just to show I'm not only pointing out how the Jets got screwed, Houston also got screwed. David Carr takes 3 steps back to pass, then throws a pass to the sideline. The receiver, obviously running the wrong route, continues towards the end zone, so there's no one around to catch the ball, it drops harmlessly. After about 15 seconds, White throws a flag, and calls intentional grounding. Intentional grounding?!?!? It was a miscommunication - you can't call intentional grounding on that!! Then, to make matters worse, the crew couldn't remember the down, so the loss of down confused the hell out of them. And one more thing - they walked off ten yards on a 15-yard penalty, and only remembered to walk off the extra five yards right before the ball was snapped.

OK. There was also a football game. Chad Pennington looked great - he made one bad pass, an interception (that turned out to not be costly), right before halftime. He threw two touchdowns, only had about 155 yards passing, but he was good ol' Chad Pennington, leading the Jets to a 22-point win. Curtis Martin was also great, one touchdown caught and another rushing, another 100+ yard game on the ground. The defense also played another great game. Everyone keeps pushing this stat - the Jets have six second-half shutouts this year. That's all well and good, but it's a second-half collapse that's killing the Jets right now (the Baltimore game), so I'm not too crazy about the fact that they've had six of the second-half shutouts. I'll be impressed if they keep doing it, I guess. But still, the defense is playing very well - they really kept the Texans' long passing game in check.

The Jets also got plenty of help on Sunday. The Jets are 9-3, and they now have a 2-game lead on the Ravens and the Broncos in the wild card race, as those two teams both lost. The only help the Jets didn't get was from the Browns, and the division still looks like a long shot at this point. More on that later in the week.

I gotta go....your e-mails tomorrow, if you care to send along something.