The Wildest Football Game That You Did Not Watch

All-time records were set on November 18, 2012, in a game between the Houston Texans and Jacksonville Jaguars, but you did not watch it.

Every team has that one game that their fans remember, and nobody else in the whole world does. Oftentimes it’s a playoff game that could’ve been won, maybe even a crucial regular season moment that fans of other teams would never remember (Trent Green’s magic act in Dallas I discussed last week comes to mind), but for Jacksonville Jaguar fans, this is a little different.

This is a fanbase that throughout the 2010s had very little to cheer for, and none of the magical 2017 run fits the requirements. Everybody remembers how elite our defence was. Everybody remembers us blowing out the Steelers in one of the bigger playoff upsets in recent memory, and everybody remembers the really patchy pass interference call that allowed the Patriots into the Super Bowl instead of us.

None of these things are under the radar in any way, so if you want to show some real cred as a Jaguars fan, you have to dig deeper than that, and I am. I want to take you all the way back to November 18, 2012, where something took place that was unprecedented. Not just unprecedented in the history of the teams involved, but unprecedented in the history of the NFL.

Take the ride with me.

2012 is where the bottom really fell out for the Jacksonville Jaguars. We remember them (exempting 2017) as likely the worst NFL team for the whole of the 2010s. Even worse than Cleveland, and the 2012 season is where that really starts.

The Jaguars had drafted QB Blaine Gabbert in the first round of the 2011 draft, despite there being nothing at all wrong with 0.077 EPA/Play (18th), 4.5 CPOE (6th) David Garrard, in a decision that nearly ended my Jaguars fandom, because it made clear that this team was more preoccupied with impressing incoming new owner Shahid Khan than with winning football games.

It’s not Blaine Gabbert’s fault he ruined the Jaguars.

They (meaning GM Gene Smith and Head Coach Jack Del Rio) infamously had to come out in the press to loudly claim releasing David was a ‘purely football decision,’ but let me teach you a very simple lesson. If you have to come out and say that something is a football decision, it is absolutely not a football decision, especially when you’re releasing a man with a higher career CPOE than Tom Brady (which David Garrard does, even to date in 2024) in favour of one of the bigger draft busts in NFL history.

Instead of having one of the better QBs in the NFL, the Jaguars elected to waste a draft pick on Blaine Gabbert, instead of investing in desperately needed help for a defence that’d allowed 0.092 EPA/Play in 2009 (46 EPA Allowed+, which normalises defensive performance to league average, meaning the 2009 Jaguars were 54% worse than a league average defence), and 0.121 EPA/Play in 2010 (54 EPAA+). Somehow failing to realise that having merely a top 15 QB was not the problem when the team’s defence is this bad is the kind of decision that sets a historically successful franchise (which the Jaguars were before this decision) back so far that as of 2024 they still have not recovered.

By 2012 everything has bottomed out. Blaine Gabbert is already gone, as one season was enough of that experiment. The David Garrard bridge is burned. The defence is still operating at 0.097 EPA/Play Allowed (57 EPAA+), and this is an extremely bad football team. In most years (every year in the new millennium except two), this would be the worst team in football, but thankfully we’ve at least got the unbelievably bad 2012 KC Chiefs holding down that spot for us.

By the time November 18 rolls around, the Jaguars have lost eight of their first nine games. We were able to take advantage of a rookie Andrew Luck still getting his feet under him to steal an early season win in Indianapolis, but that was a total fluke, as we’ve lost each and every one of our other eight games, six of those by multiple possessions.

It is that bad for the Jaguars. Maurice Jones-Drew is not here anymore. David Garrard is not here anymore. The skill positions are seriously lacking, with Cecil Shorts being the only person worthy of mention. Our starting QB is Chad Henne, who I think could’ve been good, and deserved more NFL chances than he got, but is undoubtedly not the correct man to try to operate this sunk ship, as I don’t think even 2012 Peyton Manning could’ve put up a winning record with this cast. This is a number one overall pick calibre roster, and it’s at the poor end of even that sample.

It’s not Chad Henne’s fault either.

Week 11 is unlikely to see any of this get any better, as we’re going on the road to Houston, and this gives me a chance to talk about one of the more underrated teams in NFL history.

For most of their limited time as a franchise, the Houston Texans had been stuck in the purgatory of having a real contender for the best offensive skill position group in the NFL, with one of the NFL’s most intimidating pairs in QB Matt Schaub and WR Andre Johnson, supplemented by fantastic #2 option Kevin Walter, TE Owen Daniels, and choose your RB (either Steve Slaton or Arian Foster), but having nothing to show for it.

This fantastic group of players, under offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan, meant that offence was never the problem in Houston. However, poor defensive performance kept playoff calibre offences out of the playoffs in 2008 and 2009, and left the NFL’s second best offence (behind only the Patriots that year) with a six win season in 2010. However, in 2011 the Houston Texans use their first round selection on a young man named JJ Watt, and all of this changes.

The Texans at last make the playoffs for their very first time in 2011, and win a game once they get there. They even manage to play a one possession game on the road against the Baltimore Ravens in the second round without starting QB Matt Schaub. This injury taking their chances is heartbreaking, but it’s a very encouraging performance all around, which leads us into 2012.

When people think of the 2010s Houston Texans, they tend to think of two things. Either the high flying Matt Schaub offence that is the first third of the decade, or the suffocating defence (with no offensive backup) that is the second third. People tend not to remember that these two versions of the Texans overlapped with each other, because they did it only once.

That is the 2012 Houston Texans.

Do not underrate the 2012 Houston Texans. I said the same thing in my Tom Brady playoff article when he played them, and I’ll say it again now. This is an elite team, with that same Matt Schaub offence as it’d had for all those years, only now equipped with the league’s fourth best defence to back it up.

As of week 11 of the 2012 NFL season, this is by far the NFL’s best team. Houston has won eight of their first nine games, including an extremely impressive one on the road in Denver over Peyton Manning’s Broncos, and a 43-13 humiliation of the eventual Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens. If they can do that to the champions, they can do it to anybody, which brings us to this week 11 game, at home against the Jacksonville Jaguars.

The Texans are 16 point home favourites, and it’s not hard to understand why. Name a position, and the Texans are better at it. Matt Schaub over Chad Henne at QB. Check. Andre Johnson over Cecil Shorts at WR. Check. Duane Brown over Eugene Monroe at LT. JJ Watt over Jeremy Mincey at DE. Johnathan Joseph over no CB started more than 12 games for the 2012 Jacksonville Jaguars. Name any position you want, the Texans are better there.

There’s almost no chance for the Jaguars to be able to win, and Houston proves this easily on the first drive by just going back and back again to Andre Johnson. First seven, then 22, then 45 yards, all to Andre, and just to flex on the poor old Jaguars, and show that Houston can do whatever they want, this drive ends with the first and only touchdown catch in the 2012 season for rookie WR Keshawn Martin.

That was not competitive.

If the Jaguars are not going to be able to stop Andre Johnson from just running past their corners and getting behind the defence, this is going to be a very long day. NFLFastR’s estimated Win Probability model has already seen enough. It sees the Texans as having a 96 percent chance to win from this position, and we’re not even three minutes into the game.

I see where it’s coming from. It’s going to be almost impossibly difficult for an offence that will finish the season generating -0.118 EPA/Play (30th) to play from behind against the NFL’s best team, but by such low standards, the Jags’ first offensive touch goes pretty well, and is indicative of what’s to come. It takes only two plays to get into Houston territory, and we’re looking poised to drive deeper than that, when there is a very odd turnover.

There’s a sack, and it’s ruled a fumble recovered by Houston, but to my eyes, the ball is clearly in the hand moving forward before it’s knocked out. We’ve all seen the fumbles where the ball gets knocked out of the QB’s hand, and he punches it on the way forward, but the Texans recover this ball ten yards down the field. You cannot punch a ball that far.

Before 2004, this type of call is fairly typical. If it was iffy on forward pass, it would generally be ruled a fumble, but this is not the ancient era of the NFL where the rules were less pro-offence. This is 2012. It’s mostly the same rule set we play under today. Nevertheless, it goes to automatic replay review, and is (somehow) confirmed as a turnover. I do not know what the replay people were looking at, but the ruling is final. Our promising drive has been snuffed out, and we have to stop one of the best offences in the NFL, or risk going down 14 points, something which will not be recoverable. Not with our offence.

It’s ugly, but in the end, ball don’t lie. With the benefit of a dropped pass that would’ve easily been a first down, and a deep shot to Andre Johnson that missed by just inches, the Texans are held to a three and out, and the debatable replay review turns out to be of no consequence.

Regretfully, these are still the Jacksonville Jaguars. This offensive series is just as ugly as the defensive one that precipitated it. There are bobbled snaps, failed screens, and near interceptions. It’s so bad that just being able to punt the football away after three failed offensive plays feels like a mild success. We’ll give it another try next time.

It’s time right now that we discuss the things the Jaguars are good at, and that there are not many. One thing they like to hang their hat on is stopping the run. They are not good at this. The rush defence is ranked 27th, but in relative terms, this is the only one of the six major categories (pass, rush, total offence, pass, rush, total defence) in which the Jaguars do not rank 29th or worse. It would be beneficial for Jacksonville to keep this game on the ground if at all possible.

Of course, this does rely on Houston playing into their hands in some ways, but on this offensive series there is only one attempted pass, and the Jaguars are once again able to get off the field allowing just one first down. This will be a continuing theme of the game. Jacksonville does not stop the rush very well, as the Texans will rush at a 46 percent success rate in this game, but they do it just well enough to prevent Houston from being able to do whatever they want on offence, something that will be crucial down the road.

Of course this doesn’t fix the problem that we’ve got football’s 30th best offence, and we’re a touchdown behind against the fourth best defence in football. At some point, we’re going to have to score, but at times like these, your own poor reputation can begin to work in your favour. The Texans do not think Chad Henne can do too much damage, especially under intense pressure, so on the first play of the new series, they play naked cover 0, not disguising the fact that they are sending six rushers.

Bad mistake.

Chad steps up into a collapsing pocket, and throws a dart to an open Justin Blackmon, who because of the cover zero is able to run 63 yards before anybody can catch him, taking Jacksonville from pretty much dead all the way into the Houston red zone with a chance to tie the game, although this is almost immediately proven to be nothing more than luck, as this inept Jacksonville offence cannot even get a play called, and have to burn a timeout on first and ten from the 18, and after a first down completion, they do the same thing again, and have to burn a second timeout.

Respect to the Houston fans for being so loud immediately after the opponent notched a 63 yard gain, and forcing this to happen, but come on now. This is a total clown show, and should not happen at the NFL level. NFL offences need to be able to get plays called and get the checks made, even in the midst of a very loud crowd.

It’s things like this that show that even though the Jaguars do score a touchdown on this drive to tie the game at seven, this is still a very bad offence.

From the Houston Texans’ perspective, the WP model still gives them an 86 percent chance to win. This is nowhere near panic time, but as they hold the ball and the first quarter ends, it’s going on a whole quarter without scoring any points. Houston has not scored since 12:22 of the first, and after this drive is also scuttled by another deep shot to Andre Johnson that misses by the skin of the teeth, this is beginning to get a bit aggravating. The Texans punt for the third time already.

Many thought they wouldn’t punt this many times in the entire game.

Funnily enough, the commentators are talking about exactly this as the Jaguars run out onto the field to once again try to play offence. The words ‘many thought this game would be over by the end of the national anthem’ had scarcely escaped Bill Macatee’s mouth when the Texans fall victim to the exact same folly as last time.

They again rush six, making little effort to disguise the cover zero, and again the Jaguars check to a simple man beater, and it’s a 67 yard touchdown pass to Cecil Shorts, on a ball that traveled about five in the air.

This is too easy.

It’s happened twice now that very simple pitch and catches for Chad Henne have turned into 60+ yard gains. The first to Justin Blackmon, and the second to Cecil Shorts are two of only five successful pass plays Chad has had all game, and the Texans find themselves behind 14-7.

I’ll reiterate again that this does not make the Jaguars a good offence, and even a seven point second quarter lead does not impress the WP model, as it still gives Houston a 67 percent chance to win from this position, such is the quality of the Jags’ roster, but it wasn’t that long ago that it was 96. Something needs to change or this figure is going to dip below 50 percent very soon.

Somehow, as if somewhere there is a hidden light switch that flipped back on, it does change, as the Texans spend the next five minutes treating the Jaguars like the overmatched defence they are. For some reason, they still insist on doing a lot of the damage on the ground, but even though that’s what Jacksonville is the best at defending, they’re still only 27th in the NFL at defending it, so despite throwing just two passes, Houston scores easily to tie the score back up at 14, and take back a commanding 79 percent chance to win according to NFLFastR.

However, the model cannot account for the fact that the Jacksonville Jaguars have apparently turned into the most explosive offence in the world.

The word ‘explosive’ being used to describe an offence can sometimes be a compliment (when being used to describe a team’s big play ability), and sometimes can be an insult (when being used to accentuate that big plays are all an offence can do). In this case, it’s the latter, as the Jacksonville touch again gets most of its ground on one play, a 26 yard pass to an inexplicably wide open Marcedes Lewis. Aside from this one play, there is only one first down, and it’s a fairly effective defensive effort by the Texans, but the big plays are just killer, as one is all it takes to buy the Jags three more points and a 17-14 lead.

The Texans ragdoll the poor Jaguar defence in scoring three points of their own in the two minute drill to go into the half with a 17-17 score, but we’ve already made it much farther than anybody thought we would.

Remember that the Houston Texans came into this game as astoundingly large 16 point home favourites. A team should never be 16 point favourites in any divisional game, but that is the gulf in quality between these two teams. This is the best team in the NFL playing what in a normal season would be the worst. The first time these two teams played all the way back in week two, the Texans won by 20 points on the road in Jacksonville. It wasn’t supposed to be any different this time around, and by and large it isn’t.

I say often when engaging in football discourse that winning the game does not make you the better team, and this 2012 game between the Houston Texans and Jacksonville Jaguars is a perfect example of that. The tied score is what it is, but in terms of first downs, the Texans lead 13 to 6. In terms of successful offensive plays (defined as plays that make the offensive team more likely to score afterwards than they were beforehand), the Texans lead 23 to 11. The Jaguars have turned the ball over. The Texans have not, and Houston did not waste timeouts on two separate occasions being unable to get the play in like Jacksonville did.

If you’re looking at this game and trying to figure out who is the better team, there is no contest, but football games are not about trying to determine the better team. They’re about trying to determine a winner, and in that pursuit the Jacksonville Jaguars are just as good as the Houston Texans.

Yes, almost all of their offensive production has come on just three plays. No they did not stop the Houston Texans even a single time after the beginning of the second quarter. So what? They’ve accomplished the goal of making it to half without the game being completely lost, and from here they only need to win one half of football. They’ve already come perilously close to doing that in the first half.

It’s at this moment that I, Robbie Marriage, as a Jaguars fan watching live, actually start to believe we can win, and all of this is just an intro to the wildest second half in Jacksonville Jaguars history.

On our first play of the second half, lightning strikes for a fourth time, as Chad Henne finds an open Justin Blackmon, who has somehow gotten behind the defence again, for a 39 yard gain, which is good enough on its own to ensure that a drive that features just two additional successful offensive plays results in three more points and a 20-17 second half lead.

A mere second half lead may not seem that great, but I assure you it feels great. The Jacksonville Jaguars have not had a second half lead against anybody since we played the awful Oakland Raiders a month ago, and we haven’t had a second half lead against a team the calibre of the Houston Texans since we defeated the Baltimore Ravens on October 24, 2011, over a year ago.

While Jaguar fans are drowning in elation over being able to compete with a top level team for the first time in a year, the Houston Texans have to be absolutely livid.

How can this keep happening? The Jacksonville Jaguars are operating at a 33% success rate in this game. That is awful, and indicative of what a mismatch this game truly is, but there is so much value packed into the few successful Jaguar offensive plays that they’ve managed to score 20 points against a top flight defence, something that they haven’t done against anybody since that same Oakland Raiders game a month ago.

One would think the Texans would just sit in a two high shell and force Jacksonville to walk down the field one play at a time, something that they almost certainly lack the capability to do. Surely some offensive and defensive players had to be thinking that as well, but that is not what the Houston Texans do, and they’re not going to begin now, meaning the splash plays are going to continue to kill them all day long. These are splash plays out of a team whose best receiver is Cecil Shorts. It’s not like the Texans have to guard Calvin Johnson, but they just can’t keep a lid on this Jacksonville offence, and appear unwilling to make any adjustments to help do so.

The Win Probability model remains unconvinced. Despite a second half deficit it still thinks the Texans are winning 69 percent of the time. However, it is dangerous to continue to play with fire in this way, as this time it’s a defensive splash play (a sack of Matt Schaub) that forces Houston to third and 17. In this situation (rightfully, given the state of the Jaguar offence), the Texans elect to shut it down and just hand the ball off on third down in an effort to avoid a turnover. Even this idea fails, as Arian Foster fumbles the football, and in yet another unpredictable big play, Jacksonville gets the ball on the Houston 11.

It takes five agonizing plays to convert from this position, as despite failing to reach the end zone in their first three plays, Jacksonville is able to find a first down at the one yard line. A first and goal rush fails. A second and goal rush fails, but on the third try the Texans bite extremely hard on a play fake, leaving Marcedes Lewis uncovered for his second touchdown catch of the day, and an unbelievable 27-17 Jaguar lead.

I told you it was dangerous to play with this fire. The Texans have just been burned with a searing hot flame. The camera cuts to a no helmet JJ Watt, looking infuriated with this entire process, and I don’t blame him. None of the splash plays are his fault, but he’ll still have to be the one to face the embarrassment of the unit that he leads having given up 27 points already to the horrible Jacksonville Jaguars.

The WP model, who throughout this whole process has been a steadfast defender of the Houston Texans, has also finally turned its back on them, boosting Jacksonville up to a 60 percent chance of winning with a ten point second half lead. Not even three minutes ago that was still less than 30 percent. Everything seems to have gone belly up for the NFL’s best team, at the hands of the worst team in Jacksonville Jaguar history.

It’s not over yet though, especially when the gap between the talent level of the two teams is this wide. The next two series show that if nothing wild happens (which in this game appears to be an extremely big ask), Houston still easily has this covered, as they get inside the ten yard line easily, and are only held to three points and a 27-20 deficit by a commendable goal line stand. In response, Jacksonville responds with yet another drive featuring just one successful offensive play. The only difference is that this one only went for 12 yards instead of the 65 and 40 yarders that have been the story of this game.

When Houston gets the ball back again, it’s just the second play of the fourth quarter. There is plenty of time to pull back ahead, take a deep breath with a tighter than necessary win, and forget all this nonsense ever happened.

It looks like there’s going to be even more time than we thought, as punt returner Keshawn Martin gets through all the Jaguar punt defenders, and with only punter Brian Anger to beat, the result is academic.

Wait. You’re telling me Keshawn got tackled by Brian Anger?

When have you ever seen the punter actually make this one on one tackle? Normally they just flop to the ground like a bag of wet hammers. Somehow, the rookie punter Anger is able to pivot, make the turn, and force Keshawn Martin out of bounds.

Perhaps they should’ve tried Brian Anger on defence. It couldn’t have been any worse than what the Jaguars actually had.

Yet one more thing that goes against the Texans today, and the poor execution is still not over, as this still could’ve easily been a touchdown starting on the Jaguar 23 yard line, but on second down either Owen Daniels runs to the wrong depth, or Matt Schaub uncorks the worst throw of his entire NFL career. It doesn’t matter which. The result is the same. The ball lands in the waiting arms of Paul Posluszny, and it’s another chance squandered.

At least the defence has finally seemed to figure it out. Houston at last went a full series without allowing a big chunk play last time. This time they’re pushing the Jaguars backwards. First down sees JJ Watt finally get home, bringing Chad Henne down for a six yard loss. Before second down, rookie G Mike Brewster gets spooked, pushing it back to second and 21. The actual second down play sees Chad throw towards a plastered Justin Blackmon, and the ball should’ve been intercepted. It’s a chunk play that could’ve gone Houston’s way, but it didn’t, and it’s third and 21.

For the third time in this game, the Jaguars cannot get set properly, and waste yet another timeout prior to this third and 21 play, and this has got to go a long way towards convincing the Houston players and staff that Jacksonville is just going to shut it down on this third down. We’ve just seen one ball that should’ve been a turnover. There’s no reason to risk another one with a touchdown lead. Either hand the ball off, throw a screen, or run something else risk free.

Somebody forgot to tell Chad Henne.

On third and 21 in the fourth quarter of what is becoming one of the best games of his NFL career, Chad throws the best ball I’ve ever seen him throw, threading the ball between three defenders, all of whom fail to prevent this ball from getting to Justin Blackmon, and all of whom fail to tackle Justin Blackmon. It’s an 81 yard touchdown pass, and a 34-20 Jacksonville lead.

You have got to be kidding me.

Yet another splash play to bail out yet another failing Jaguar offensive possession. This one play drops the Texans’ chances of winning this game from 42 all the way down to 17 percent. That’s a 25 percent swing. One quarter of the football game determined on just one single play. In most football games, this would make this third down completion the most important play of the game. In this game though, it’s just the beginning.

At this point, the narrative flips. Up until this point, this game has been the story of one of the worst teams in the NFL defeating one of its best. Good story, but not one we’ve never seen before. The fact that the Texans still vastly outnumber the Jaguars in terms of successful offensive plays adds an interesting wrinkle, but still not a big enough twist to write a whole article about.

No. The reason this game gets its own piece is Texans’ QB Matt Schaub, who from this point forward puts on a performance the likes of which the NFL has never seen before.

It starts off slow enough, with 12 and a half minutes left on the clock down by just two possessions, there is enough time remaining for the Texans to use their run game here, and they do use it, with two of the first three touches of the next series going to Arian Foster. However, they quickly realise that the Jacksonville rush defence is just barely good enough to slow them down enough to make this strategy too slow to make up a 14 point deficit in 12 and a half minutes, so after the first three plays it’s Matt Schaub or bust.

In a reference my fans will understand, Matt Schaub is a lot like Trent Green. He’s been in a lot of these shootouts over the years. He’s lost a lot of these, but he’s also won a lot of them. The trouble is that the flak over the losses tends to overshadow the very impressive victories. For instance, in just this 2012 season, Matt has won a shootout with Peyton Manning, but has also lost one to Aaron Rodgers. Now that he’s in a shootout with Chad Henne, which one do you think fans key in on more? Which one do you think the broadcasters are talking about?

That’s right. Remember when this guy lost to Aaron Rodgers? Never mind the Denver game. This guy stinks. The Texans can’t win the big games.

This is a big game for the Texans. All the games are big for the 2012 Texans. They are the AFC’s top seed currently, but the Patriots, Broncos, and Ravens are all breathing down their necks. Conference losses are the worst possible thing for any possible tie break scenarios, so all AFC conference games are huge for Houston. If they want homefield advantage, they cannot afford to lose.

The Jaguar defence is doing the right thing. They are entirely taking away Andre Johnson with two and three people on him at all times. That means the targets on this drive go to Owen Daniels, Garrett Graham and James Casey, with just one throw in Andre’s direction. These three are all TEs, meaning there is no big play possibility at all, which causes this drive to take seven minutes, but it is able to end with a score as Matt works his team slowly down the field and into the end zone to narrow the deficit to 34-27.

This in itself does nothing for the Texans’ chances of winning. Their estimated WP was 17 percent before the drive started, and 17 percent after it ended, because this late in a game seconds are more valuable than points, and Houston has just used up a lot of seconds, but if we can get a stop, it puts us in position to be able to tie this game, and finally something goes our way as a dropped third down pass that could’ve easily been a first down gets our offence back onto the field, but we have to do it starting from our own ten yard line.

This time we have to go faster, and Gary Kubiak knows that, as we come out in empty personnel for every play on this drive except two. Spreading the field out in this way makes it much more difficult for the Jaguars to take a specific player away, so this time all of the targets go to our top three guys: Andre Johnson, Kevin Walter, and Owen Daniels.

We finally make the Jaguars look like the 31st ranked defence they are in scoring another easy touchdown to tie the game 34-34. I’d love to say more words about these two drives and this 14 point fourth quarter comeback, but it all looks so easy that it robs itself of the proper attention it deserves. It does end with the patented Matt Schaub no look touchdown pass, something people falsely think Patrick Mahomes invented, and that’s fun, but it all just looks so routine that it’s easy for even myself to forget that Houston had just a 17 percent chance to win only ten minutes ago.

Aside from the goal line on the first of the two touchdown drives, the Texans never even faced a third down in completing this comeback, such is the ease with which it was done. With just two minutes remaining, the Jacksonville Jaguars have the ball again, but once again fail quite badly, but upon the close of their possession, there is a long timeout because one of the clocks in one of the end zones quits functioning.

This clock is the one the TV clock synchs off of, and so there is a long and drawn out process to try to figure out what to do. In the end, the incorrect clock is simply turned off, and CBS is left to fend for themselves as far as the TV clock, but not before several minutes are wasted on all this, and the Houston momentum begins to dissipate.

Big ups to the Houston crowd for being unbelievably loud throughout this whole process, helping the players to remember that they’ve owned the entire fourth quarter, but it can’t be denied that this is a hinderance. Instead of stopping the Jags quick and sending the white hot offence right back onto the field again, we do stop the Jags quick, but we have to wait for several minutes on a process that could’ve taken 30 seconds to turn off a defective end zone clock.

That’s the pull of the TV partners, but the Houston Texans still have a game to win. By the time we get the ball back, the Jaguars ran off 17 seconds of game time, but their offence was probably out on the field for about ten minutes, all things considered.

This could’ve hurt the home team, but it didn’t.

It takes one play to complete a 35 yard pass to Andre Johnson to immediately get us into range for the game winning FG. It’s only to the Jacksonville 30 yard line, but the offensive play callers are confident that Shayne Graham can make it from here. With how we’ve been cutting Jacksonville to ribbons, and with a minute left on the clock, we could’ve got as far up the field as we wanted. We likely could’ve scored a touchdown if we wanted to, but instead we elect to sit down where we are and allow Shayne to attempt a 40+ yard FG.

He puts it right down the middle, and the comeback is completed, and the Texans have won, but there’s still time for one last thing to go the Jaguars’ way.

A pre-snap penalty calls the kick back, and on the retry, Shayne hooks the ball so far left that he misses the net. It’s one of the most brutal missed kicks you will ever see, and the Texans have squandered their 83 percent chance to win, and dragged themselves right down into a 50/50 overtime period.

It would be our luck with how this game has gone to lose the OT coin toss, but we do win it, and therefore we get the ball.

Keep in mind that since the Jaguars’ fourth quarter touchdown was an 81 yard touchdown pass, their defence was on the field for twelve and a half of the fourth quarter’s 15 minutes. They have to be extremely tired. There’s no way they can’t be, and we take advantage.

This drive features far too much Arian Foster for my tastes, and his plays are hit or miss, but the passes are almost universally successful. This continues until first and goal, where a potential touchdown pass is incomplete by centimetres off the fingertips of an outstretched Owen Daniels, and that’s the best chance the Texans get, in the end being forced to kick a field goal for a 37-34 lead.

Under the (at the time) brand new OT rules, this means the Jaguars get the ball back again, and it’s less ugly than it has been for most of the game, although it does feature a hopeless situation being saved by a superfluous roughing the passer penalty for Antonio Smith touching Chad Henne’s head, and all of its yards being concentrated into just three plays, but hey. Three successful offensive plays are better than one. The Jags end up with a FG themselves, and a 37-37 tie.

This leaves the Houston Texans with the ball with 4:21 left. In this situation, the WP model sees their chance of winning as a scant 29 percent. At this point, the probability of either team winning is beginning to be outweighed by the probability of a tie. With this little time left, it’s entirely possible the Texans are not going to see the ball again should they fail to score, especially with Jacksonville coming off what is likely their best sustained drive of the entire game. It’s imperative that we score now, or our chances of winning begin to spiral the drain even further.

It starts off well, with the first two plays being passes for 19 combined yards and a first down, but with 3:44 remaining in OT, the worst possible outcome happens.

Matt tries to air the ball out for Andre Johnson, who isn’t even really looking for the ball yet, and it’s a back breaking interception that gives the Jaguars the ball all the way at the Houston 47, needing only a FG to win. This only raises our chances of losing to 36 percent, because the WP model (and myself) still has no faith in the Jacksonville offence, but all but obliterates our chance at a win.

Albeit, these chances weren’t too high to begin with, but now our defence must stop the Jaguars to one first down or fewer, or we’re going to lose the game, and what happens next is one of the odder sequences of plays I’ve ever seen.

The first three plays of this drive are all incomplete passes, leaving 2:36 left on the game clock, and when faced with fourth and ten at the Houston 47, knowing that a punt would all but assure a tie, the Jaguars elect to go for it on this fourth down. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t disagree with this call. I actually quite like it, as what’s the difference between a loss and a tie to the 1-8 Jacksonville Jaguars, but it’s weird to see an NFL coach stray away from the conservative option, which would be punting and virtually ensuring a tie, into the realm of the aggressive in trying to win this football game.

This fourth down conversion try fails, meaning that after all, this sequence has actually not even decreased our chances of winning the football game. A 29 percent chance on the 20 with 4:21 to go has turned into a 29 percent chance on the 47 with 2:30 to go, but in reality, what are probabilities anyway?

A 48 yard touchdown pass to Andre Johnson ends this unbelievable football game as a 43-37 Texans victory. The Texans get to move to 9-1 and remain on track to win home field advantage throughout the 2012 playoffs. The Jaguars get to move to 1-9 and remain on pace for the first overall draft pick.

Everybody ended up in the right place after all was said and done, but not before the wildest football game I can ever remember watching live.

So many things happened in this game that don’t make any sense. The Jaguars scored 37 points on just 22 successful offensive plays. This is the only time in the play tracking era that a 33% offensive success rate (of 66 offensive plays, 22 made the Jaguars more likely to score) translated into a 0.21 team-wide EPA/Play. That’s 13.86 total EPA on only 22 successful plays, meaning that the Jaguars averaged 0.63 EPA per successful play.

Huh?

That is unfathomable. The Texans had a damn good offensive performance today themselves, and averaged only 0.292 EPA per successful play. This trickles down to the players too. Chad Henne generated 0.61 EPA/Play today, in what by top level results is the best game he will ever play, but looking past the surface level, he completed only 50 percent of his true passes, and operated at a 39 percent personal success rate. That’s terrible. That’s just 14 successful plays folks, compared to Matt Schaub’s 42.

Did Chad Henne play like an all-time great today? Or did he play terribly? It’s honestly difficult to pick between the two.

In addition, this is the first game in NFL history to see both teams have a player reach 200 yards receiving. Justin Blackmon played so well today that it had the CBS commentators wondering aloud if he was a draft bust after all. He definitely still was, but not today, as he caught seven balls for 236 yards. Definitive non-bust Andre Johnson on the other side caught 14 balls for 273 yards, and what’s even crazier is that neither of these teams were one man shows on offence, despite the elite performance of these two receivers.

Houston had Garrett Graham having the game of his life, with 82 yards and two touchdowns. Jacksonville had their best receiver Cecil Shorts having a bit of an off day, but 81 yards and a touchdown won’t make anybody call for your head.

In all, this game featured 160 plays, and 1111 total yards of offence, but none of this is what I truly wanted to tell you today. What I wanted to tell you is two things. Both pertain to Matt Schaub’s performance today. One is what everybody knows, and the other is extremely niche.

Nobody thinks of Matt as an all-time great. I’m the biggest Matt Schaub booster in the world, and I have him 74th on my all-time QBs list. Better than Matt Hasselbeck, but not as good as Ken O’Brien. Neither these names nor that number is impressing anybody, but maybe this will.

The non-niche thing Matt did today is tie the post-merger NFL record for most passing yards in a single game, with 527. Everybody knew that already. I have nothing more to add to it, but even that is not the full extent of how great Matt’s performance was.

There’s a very niche statistic in football called WPA, or Win Probability Added. Much like WPA in baseball, it is extremely circumstantial and not truly indicative of anything except for the fact that you came up big in a few big circumstances. However, even in an extremely niche and borderline meaningless statistic, the all-time leader is still the all-time leader.

When you add up every play in this game, you will find that Matt Schaub’s personal WPA for this game is…

Wait for it.

2.12.

212 percent.

One would think a probability higher than 100 percent to be impossible by definition, but in this case that’s not correct. The QB holds so much of the game in his hands on the offensive side, but nothing on the defensive side. Therefore, he can continuously raise his team’s probability of victory, meanwhile other (often defensive) players keep knocking it back down again, sometimes allowing occurrence of WPA values greater than 100%.

Values over 100% do happen, but this is the only time in NFL history any player ever had to win the same game twice. I have combed through every game in the history of the NFL since every play began being tracked in 1999, and no other player in any game ever was able to put up a WPA greater than 200%. It’s only Matt Schaub, and it’s only today.

Just think about it. Matt Schaub was truly the forgotten man in all this. He wasn’t the one allowing all the chunk plays. He wasn’t the one missing the field goals. He had to bring his team back from the brink of Armageddon, facing just a 17 percent chance to win in the fourth quarter. From here, he raised the Texans’ chances of winning all the way to 83 percent, mostly singlehandedly, before somebody not named Matt Schaub sent the Texans’ chances back down to 50/50 again by missing a field goal.

In the OT, Matt Schaub took this 50/50 chance and raised it all the way to 75% with a FG drive that was almost entirely his to take a 37-34 lead, before players not named Matt Schaub lost that lead again, and at the very end, the Texans were facing just a 29 percent chance to win, and a much larger chance at a tie, before Matt obliterated that, raising his team’s chances to 100% with a 48 yard touchdown throw to Andre Johnson.

These three instances alone are worth over a game and a half. Add in some other little things along the way he did to help his team win, and you get that Matt Schaub gave his team 212% in this game, and they needed every bit of it too.

You know why?

Chad Henne’s performance today is also one of the top ten all time in terms of WPA, with 164%. How heartbreaking must it be to give your team 22.1 total EPA and 1.64 wins’ worth of production in one game, and end up with zero wins in the record book to show for it? Needless to say, by WPA, this is by far the best performance by any player to ever result in a loss, as by definition scoring anything over 100% in this metric and still losing is borderline impossible, but Chad found a way to do not only that. He lost a game despite capturing 100% WPA, and then found almost another two thirds of a win, and still lost.

The Texans do not get credit for 2.12 wins today. Only one. The Jaguars do not get any of Chad’s 1.64 theoretical wins that he brought his team, but in terms of the combined contributions of two QBs towards helping their teams win, no game in NFL history can top this week 11 matchup in 2012 between the Houston Texans and Jacksonville Jaguars.

I used to have a saying: people who think the QB position is all about winning are doomed to spend their eternity with 2006 Rex Grossman (and his 13-3 record) as their starter. However, perhaps I ought to amend that saying to people who think the QB position is all about winning are doomed to spend eternity watching this Texans vs Jaguars game over and over and over again.

This is what winning QB play looks like. If you believe winning is the only thing that matters, I don’t think you really have any other choice than to recognize this Matt Schaub performance as the best game any QB has ever played. Those are big words, but if we strictly care about winning, the 212% speaks for itself. Matt Schaub stands alone in the annals of winning at the QB position.

Who thought they were going to read that today?

In the end, this game meant very little to Jacksonville. It was just another loss in a season of losses for them, but the Houston Texans were never the same after this. After improving to 9-1 in the wake of this victory, the Texans would lose three of their final six games, each in humiliating blowout fashion, fall out of the AFC’s (and NFL’s) number one seed, lose a second round playoff game by a big margin on the road in New England, and blow up after that, winning just two games in 2013.

As of the writing of this article, there has never been another Houston Texan team of the same quality as the 2012 version. They’ve had a few okay teams since then, but never again have they been a true top of the line contender like they were in the first half of 2012.

All of that seemed to evaporate overnight, as if the Texans gave everything they had to get past the Jacksonville Jaguars, and had nothing left to give. Sometimes, that’s the price you have to pay to win a game like this. Tom Brady having one last great performance in his win-and-in playoff game against Sam Darnold in 2022 before having nothing left to give in either of his final two games comes to mind as another example of this same phenomenon.

Sometimes it takes just one day, even in a win, to take it all away from you. Boxers, MX riders, MMA fighters, pro wrestlers, etc. all know this far too well. Matt Schaub and his Houston Texans did everything they could to get this win today, more than anybody else had ever done before or since, but they had used up all their winning magic. They spent it all in one place. They would not win multiple playoff games. They would not win the Super Bowl, and all they get in return is Matt Schaub’s name atop some dopey statistical leaderboard that I bet nobody else but me has even looked at, and an article on a Substack publication that 100 people subscribe to.

Not exactly a fair trade, but in a cutthroat world where you have to do everything to win, even against the Jacksonville Jaguars, them’s the breaks.

Thanks so much for reading.