Kubiak must improve his challenge process

Gary Kubiak won his first replay challenge of 2008 in the final game of the season

The Texans had their problems with turnovers and poor defense last season but there's another thing that made Texans fans see red.

It was that little red flag.

I was reminded of this a couple of nights ago when NFL Network was showing the Texans - Titans matchup from Week 3 of the 2008 season on "RePlay."

Here's the scenario:

The Texans had just completed a beautiful 12 play, 75 yard drive for a touchdown, the first of Steve Slaton's career, and were down 14-12 late in the first half.

Even though they'd been through a brutal season opener at Pittsburgh and a devastating hurricane named Ike, the Texans were hanging tough with the Titans and they seemed to have regained momentum,

On the ensuing drive the Titans have the ball at the Texans 40. Kerry Collins lobs a long sideline pass to Justin McCareins who makes the catch but is out of bounds at the Texans 3 yard line.

The sideline official rules it a catch. The announcers immediately say he was out of bounds. Anyone watching the replay can see his left leg was clearly out of bounds. Collins and the Titans are rushing up to the line of scrimmage so they can get a play off before the red flag comes out.

But much to the surprise of the announcers, and to the chair throwing chagrin of Texans fans watching the game, the red flag never came. There was no challenge and three plays later the Titans are up 21-12.

Kubiak said in post-game comments that they never got the replay upstairs. I thought there were monitors all over the place up there - and it was on the network feed.

What made this one even more maddening - the root of this rant if you will - is that just a few minutes earlier in the same game, Kubiak challenged a play that he had no business challenging.

Michael Griffin intercepted Matt Schaub near the sideline mid-way through the first quarter. Replays showed that Griffin was clearly in-bounds. Kubiak threw the flag anyway - and lost.

Kubiak said later that he thought the 'kid's' head hit out of bounds. Well it did, but that doesn't matter when his knee or elbow hits in-bounds.

Whether it was that lost challenge that affected his decision to not throw the flag on the McCareins catch, we'll never know. But in a nutshell, this serves as a good example of what's broken in the Texans coaches challenge process.

So if I was helping the Texans set goals for '09, "Improve replay challenge success rate" is pretty high on the list.

Sometimes you're at the mercy of technology in these things but I would run simulations and tests in the preseason and in scrimmages until they got the communication down pat. It's not something to take lightly.

One reversal can turn around a game, and one game can turn around a season.

Unbelieveably, Kubiak's first successful challenge of a ruling on the field last season came in Week 17 vs. Chicago. I don't know how many he failed but it was a bunch so his success rate was extremely low.

According to John Clayton of ESPN, heading into Week 17 last season, there were 285 challenges and 108 calls were reversed. Of those reversed, 30 were booth challenges by the officials and 78 were challenged by coaches.

Meaning that out of the 78 successful challenges made by coaches last season heading into Week 17, Kubiak had none of them.

At least he got that one against the Bears. Getting shutout would have been embarrassing.

No, what's embarrassing is their broken challenge process - and it needs to be fixed.

I don't know who is on the other end of the headset advising Kubiak on these matters, but that person (or the new person) and Kubiak need to get on the same page this season and do a better job - or it could cost them their jobs.

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