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Houston Texans

The Houston Chronicle's John McClain evaluates how the Texans' coaching staff did this season.

Wade Phillips was named Pro Football Weekly/PFWA Assistant Coach of the Year.

Ravens safety Ed Reed said his quarterback, Joe Flacco, was "kind of rattled a little bit by (Houston’s) defense.”

Indianapolis Colts

The Colts are suffering under the Super Bowl losers' curse, writes USA Today's Mike Lopresti.

The team asked permission to interview Titans defensive coordinator Jerry Gray and New Orleans offensive coordinator Pete Carmichael, reports the Indianapolis Star's Mike Chappell.

Defensive backs coach Alan Williams will reportedly soon be hired as the Vikings' defensive coordinator.

Linebacker Jerrell Freeman, who spent three seasons with the CFL's Saskatchewan Roughriders, signed with the Colts Wednesday.

Jacksonville Jaguars

Which Jaguars free agents should the team try to re-sign? The Florida Times-Union's Vito Stellino breaks it down.

The team interviewed former Gators and Illini coach Ron Zook for special-teams coordinator.

Tennessee Titans

Music City Miracles graded the performance of the wide receiver corps this past season.

The Titans have 17 potential unrestricted free agents and should be about $30 million under the 2012 salary cap, so new GM Ruston Webster will be preoccupied with the team's free-agency strategy, writes The Tennessean's John Glennon.

The Tennessean's Jim Wyatt looks at the Titans' front office shake-up.

Bill Polian recently joined 1070 the Fan in Indianapolis. Here are some highlights of the conversation.

Are you stepping away from being involved in the normal day-to-day operations due to the fact you’re passing on responsibilities to your son Chris?


“Oh yeah I’m going to be involved as I always have been, but my focus is going to turn toward labor much more in depth in terms of developing a strategy for the way forward with an extensively new labor agreement whenever that comes. In terms of football as strongly as ever [in] personnel and maybe even expanding that a little bit [and] getting away from day-to-day administration, which Chris [Polian] is going to take over salary cap management, which will give me more time into strategy and football."

Looking back as a career NFL front office executive how tough was this season with all the injuries in bringing a new player “every Tuesday” it seemed like this year?

“Well it’s toughest on A.) Jim Caldwell and B.) the coaches. Jim had to spend virtually all day Monday and most of Tuesday interacting with us in terms of trying to get the roster balanced up and decide who could play and who couldn’t play and making decision on putting guys on injured reserve, how we could construct a squad to even practice. That’s tremendously draining and it takes him away from helping the other coaches get focused on what we have to do to win the game. That’s the hidden part of all that. Secondly, the coaches themselves week-after-week had to get guys ready to play who had not been in mini-camp, not been in OTAs, not been in training camp, knew nothing of our system. Alan Williams is probably the poster boy for that coaching the safeties. Every week he had a different guy. They were coming from all over. It wasn’t until we had Aaron Francisco come back that we had anybody with any familiarity at all with our system. That’s really, really, a tough job. It drains you over the course of 16-games. It zaps your energy. It causes extra work in a profession where an 18-hour day is the norm and do that as successfully as we did speaks volumes about both the dedication and the professionalism of this coaching staff.”

How optimistic and hopeful are you for business as usual in the NFL for the 2011-12 next season?

“Well I don’t know. The answer is I don’t know. I think there’s enough unknowns out there to make you pause as to whether or not there will be some sort of interruption of the normal routine. Will that extend to the preseason? Will that extend to the regular season? Might it endanger the Super Bowl? The odds of endangering the Super Bowl are almost non-existent. The odds of something existing into the preseason and on into the regular season I can’t calculate because I don’t know what the union’s position is and it would be foolish of me to do so. One thing I know I told this to the players at some point in time the history of labor discussion in professional sports is that they end. At some point and you come back to work. You have an agreement and you have a new way of doing business. Both sides may not be completely happy, but business resumes as it always does. I know that’s what Commissioner Goodell wants and I know it’s what the owners want. I suspect very strongly that’s what the union wants as well. In that sense I’m optimistic, but I’m not a soothsayer and can’t predict the future. I don’t try to. I’ve always remained optimistic because I know and I’ve been involved in three of these things throughout my career. I know that sooner or later they do get settled and that’s going to happen here. The only question is when.”

Read some more of the transcript from SportsRadioInterviews.com and listen to the whole interview here.

INDIANAPOLIS -- T.J. Rushing was all set. The Colts don’t boast much of a return team and he had fair caught three of the balls off Chris Hanson’s foot, allowing the other to be downed. Now, he’d get one more chance.

With a fourth-and-2 from the Patriots' 28-yard line, he was ready to line up and hoping he wouldn’t have to wave before catching punt No. 5.

“I think I was going to line up at the 25-yard line, about 45 yards away from him, because he was hitting them pretty good today, so I was hoping he out-kicked his coverage,” Rushing said. “Third-down stop, I got excited because I thought I was going to get a chance to make a play.

“I ran out on the field, I saw [Tom] Brady still out on the field, and I was like, ‘What is happening?’ They’re on their own end of the field, there is no way they are going to go for it.”

What was happening was Patriots coach Bill Belichick was deciding on an all-or-nothing gamble. He sent his offense back on the field to get the first down, to end the game with a gain of six feet with 2:08 left on the clock.

“That was like a video-game play,” Rushing said. “You’re playing your buddy and you’re like, ‘I’m just going to go for it.’ I guess they figured no matter what, if the offense got the ball back, we were going to win. That’s the only thing I can think of.”

Strong safety Melvin Bullitt lined up on running back Kevin Faulk with a mentality much like Rushing’s. He was going to make the game-swinging play. Defensive backs coach Alan Williams had told his guys all week in a fourth-down situation like this one, the Patriots would go to Wes Welker or Faulk.

Brady took a shotgun snap and threw to Faulk on the right. Bullitt was right there, wrapping up Faulk and taking him down for a 1-yard gain. Colts’ ball, and, four plays later, Colts’ game, 35-34, after a Peyton Manning-to-Reggie Wayne touchdown.

In showing confidence in his offense, Belichick set off an inadvertent side effect.

The Colts' defense was offended by the boldness.

“I was thinking, ‘Man, they’re going to try us like that? They’re going to disrespect us like that?' ” linebacker Philip Wheeler said. “We’ve got to stop them. We’ve got to man up. And we did that. Maybe it wasn’t disrespectful, maybe it was the smartest thing they could think of to do. I think we handled our business when they did it.”

“We just felt as though, that was a slap in the face,” free safety Antoine Bethea said. “Fourth down, in their territory? That was just a smack in the face. But the defense, we stood up and made a big play.”

Former Colts coach Tony Dungy, on NBC’s postgame show, questioned the logic.

“You have to punt the ball in that situation,” Dungy said. “As much as you might respect Peyton Manning, you have to play the percentages and punt the ball.”

The Colts (9-0) needed Belichick’s bailout plan because they’d played a game lacking their typical crispness and efficiency.

The fierce pass rush was stonewalled, the secondary toasted for 179 yards and a pair of touchdowns by Randy Moss. The offense stumbled, with rhythm issues and drops.

Pierre Garcon was targeted 11 times, and while all those throws from Manning were hardly perfect, he pulled in only three of them. He didn’t think his 29-yard touchdown catch offset the errors. Rookie Austin Collie booted at least one pass too. Manning even threw a wobbly duck for one of his two picks.

“There were a lot of things,” Colts coach Jim Caldwell said. “One of the things we certainly can’t do is give up big plays and early on there Moss was kind of having his way with us I think. … You get him where he’s even with you and Brady’s not going to miss him. He puts that ball right on the money.

“Then we had penalties that set us back a little bit and dropped passes. So there are a lot of things for us to work on. It’s great to get a victory when maybe you didn’t play as well as you’re capable of.”

The Colts’ best work may have come on the play that produced the decisive points.

Earlier, Manning had looked unsuccessfully for Wayne on a fade in the left side of the end zone. From the 1-yard line with 16 seconds left, Manning was looking to try it again.

“I gave him my C.C. Sabathia shake off,” Wayne said. “I felt like I wanted to show fade and just come with the slant and it worked. [It was] at the line of scrimmage. You’ve got to be quick with it. You’ve got to shake him off and go on to the next call. I shook him off and I gave him the signal. I think after nine years he can trust me.”

The tired Colts shrugged after it was all over as they considered just how it unfolded.

“That’s the craziest win I’ve ever been involved in,” Bullitt said. “They’re bold. We never expected anything less.”