The announcer in the game mistakenly said his long was 49...which was Gano's long after one game.

Still, most of Rackers makes from 50+ occurred 5 years ago. He is 5 of 18 in the last 5 years.

Go for it on 4th down there. We gained 16 yards by punting. I am sure we have a 50% chance of converting a 4th and 4. Especially on a day we had over 500 yards of offense.

I trust Kubiak to know what he can reasonably expect from Rackers and if he didn't think he could get it through the uprights, he made the right call.

If I were to second guess anything, it would be the 3rd down playcall. Presumably, Kubiak already knew on 3rd down that they would not try a field goal on 4th. Knowing this, you have to consider this potential 4 down territory, so I think you have to run the ball on 3rd and 4. Either Foster picks up the 1st or maybe only picks up 2 or 3 yards but that makes 4th down that much easier.

Like I said. Don't kick or punt. Go for it. When your offense has gained 500+ yards and your D has given up almost 500, I don't understand thinking you have a better chance of stopping the other guy than you do of picking up 4 yards. A gutless call that only worked out when their kicker blew the FG.

This is exactly what I was thinking. If your sense is you won't attempt a 50+ yard try then treat third down like you have two downs to pick up the first down yardage. You should be able to spread the field and run the ball and pick up the first without too much drama. I'm willing to gamble 15 yards on it.

My bad. However, it does show the following stats for 50+ for 2006-2009:

2006: one made out of seven attempts (14%)
2007: three made out of nine attempts (33%)
2008: one made out of two attempts (50%)
2009: no attempts.

Clearly, he's not a good bet outside 50 yards away.

And he's not getting any younger either. I swear, when he runs/hobbles up to kick the ball, it looks like he's wearing Forrest Gump leg irons.

WRONG - 36 yarder, and Racker made it easily! Whew!! Hey I'll take it.

Looks like my suspicion was correct, Kubiak referenced the wind as a reason why he chose to punt:

http://www.houstontexans.com/news/ar...2-1922978a8574

Edit:
I'm listening to the Gary Kubiak show right now on SR610 and Kubes and when asked why he didn't attempt the FG, he noted the wind, saying that the 2nd half kickoffs were short.

the distance issue is not surprise. when the "competition" was going on it was no secret that the big difference between rackers and brown was brown's range. having someone who can hit from 50+ yards over 50% of the time would be fantastic, but that isn't rackers, so they will have to play the game accordingly.

Unless I'm mistaken, I thought the talk was that even though Brown had more accuracy on longer range FGs, Rackers had greater distance on KOs ? Confusing ?

Historically, Rackers is not as long on kickoffs. Apparently either he was doing a little better this year in camp or Brown was doing worse.

I think Brown's fascitis was an issue last year. I think the fascitis this year in the other foot was a part of why they let him go. But mainly, Brown just missed too many very easy kicks last year and the Texans felt that if Rackers looked as good or almost as good in camp, then the plan was to go with Rackers. There were times last year when Brown was horrible.

can see a replay of the game with Washington on NFL network at 8:15 PM CST tonight in case you missed it, wanna see it again, watch without all the breaks.