Texans 21, Dolphins 20!

Amazing!  What a great road win over a team expected to be a Super Bowl contender! 

The Texans showed remarkable poise in coming from behind, and the stats indicate that the win was no fluke:   more total offence, rushing, passing, first downs, and time of possession; fewer penalties; and no turnovers.  The defense held last season's NFL rushing champion, Ricky Williams, to 67 yards on 17 carries and forced three Miami turnovers.

Most incredibly (given last season), the Texans gave up no QB sacks!

Update (Sun Sep 7 @ 9pm):   I hate to be tetchy, but isn't this a backhanded insult? 

"The way we were playing today, it wouldn't have mattered who we played," [Dolphin head] coach Dave Wannstedt said. "We would have lost the game."

This definitely lowers my opinion of Coach Wannstedt.  And there's still more billboard material for the Texans:

Cornerback Sam Madison blamed himself and his teammates, instead of crediting the Texans.

"A lot of people put us on a pedestal and we didn't go out there and live up to that," Madison said. "We gave them one.... We could have played a peewee team and we still would have lost."

And from a story entitled "Miami talks trash, Texans laugh last":

A humble second-year franchise playing at highly touted Miami, the Houston Texans were the biggest underdogs of the NFL's opening weekend.

That made them mad. So did the Dolphins' trash-talking during pregame warmups.

"One of their players said, 'I'll see you after today's practice,"' Houston's Jabar Gaffney said. "That was their thinking — they were looking at us like this was just a little practice."

Trash talk before the game is one thing.  After you've been beaten fair and square, NFL protocol demands that you at least pretend to respect the victors, even if in your heart you think you lost because you stunk.

I expect the Dolphins will do better as the season progresses.  But yes, today, they did stink — and I'm not talking about their play on the field, but rather, their sportsmanship from the head coach down.