Earlier this season, there were fantasy football reports across the major sites that included a rather depressing update about Houston Texans receiver Andre Johnson. I don’t remember which NFL reporter was involved, but these reports basically read something like, “Andre Johnson’s knees are done and he’s a shell of his former self” and yadda yadda. And it doesn’t matter who the reporter was, because Johnson has been a maniac for Houston of late, with 670 receiving yards over his last 5 games, and that includes a stupi-ridicu-tastical-donkulous 288-yard performance on Thanksgiving against the Detroit Lions.

But this isn’t about AJ’s on-field performances, at least not until he presumably torches the New England Patriots on Monday Night Football this week. This is about how Johnson took 12 “at-risk” kids to a Houston Toys-R-Us yesterday and let them run wild, grabbing as many toys as they could in 80 seconds. The result? Johnson shelled out more than $19,000 for their efforts.

Hold on a sec, my eyes just started leaking happy juice.

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If I’m a sucker for just one thing in this world, it’s videos of American soldiers returning home to surprise their families. Combine them with sporting events and you’re just making me one giant sandwich of “Good God, I’m gonna lose it.” Sadly, we know that some families will never see their heroes again, which really brings out the waterworks when those families are honored at sporting events. That’s why I’m giving the Houston Texans and the Bay Area Builders Association Support Our Troops program “Operation Finally Home” the biggest thumbs up in the history of the world.

During the Texans’ loss to the Carolina Panthers on Sunday, Sara Wood and her son, Landon, were treated to some special gifts by the team because her husband, Staff Sgt. Scott Wood, died from combat-related injuries on Nov. 20, and he was a huge Texans fan. So much so that he was even buried with his Andre Johnson jersey under his Marine uniform. And then the extra special surprise:

“They pulled us out a few minutes before half time because they said they have a gift basket and some gifts for Landon,” Wood said.

That was all true. But in addition, they got a brand new house that day.

(Via Your Houston News)

That’s right, BABASOT is building a house for Wood and her son, completely free of mortgage. You know that scene in Ocean’s 13 when Rusty walks into Danny’s room and he’s watching Oprah, and they both start crying because Oprah gives a brand new house to a homeless family? That was me this morning, just a little more handsome.

Yeah, that’s more or less my reaction, too.

New York City policeman turned NFL reporter for the Houston Chronicle John McClain reports that the injury that caused Houston Texans linebacker Mario Williams to leave Sunday’s game against the Oakland Raiders is a torn pectoral muscle that will require surgery and keep him out of action for the remainder of the 2011 season. The torn muscle happened while Williams was sacking Oakland QB Jason Campbell, and almost every report says Williams walked to the locker room under his own power like the pectoral muscle is in his leg.

The Texans are suffering an almost San Francisco Giants-like string of injuries to star players like Andre Johnson and Arian Foster this season, one Sports Illustrated attempts to put into context:

Big picture, the significant injury to Williams could change the landscape of an already-reeling AFC South. The Colts (0-5) and the Jaguars (1-4) have fallen off the pace to start the season, with Houston and Tennessee tied at 3-2. However, with Peyton Manning on the shelf, this looked like by far the Texans’ best opportunity to claim a division title and their first-ever playoff berth.

That’s a depressing blurb, isn’t it? “This looked like …” The silver lining here, depending on how you look at it, is that the Texans drafted University of Arizona Wildcat Brooks Reed and get to remove his training wheels and ride him around the NFL. McClaine chimes in, via Twitter:

Like Mario, Reed is learning a new position: 3-4 OLB who drops down in passing situations. Texans look smart drafting Reed.

Hopefully next Monday’s day of posting won’t include a big “BROOKS REED INJURED BY RAVENS, OUT FOREVER WITH SEVERED LOWER BODY”.

Now that we’ve all calmed down from last week’s controversial running back rankings, I figured it was time to start the week off on the wrong foot with an equally controversial and debatable fantasy football wide receivers ranking. However, I don’t think that it will be the receivers and where I have them ranked that will fire everyone up, as much as it will be the means in which I group them – 80s TV sitcom daughters. I know, we’re like Harvard and MIT had a big, stupid baby after a drunken weekend in Cancun.

After all, let’s look at what happened since I posted that RB feature:

- The Kansas City Chiefs signed LeRon McClain, which means that Jamaal Charles might get one touchdown this season. Meanwhile, Ray Rice is all by himself. I’ve never said that our readers aren’t smarter than me.
- Mikel Leshoure tore his ACL and will miss the entire season for the Detroit Lions.
- Ashley Tisdale showed up at a gym looking like this. It’s just baffling.

As for the football meat of this ranking, I always have a lot of fun picking my wide receivers, because this is where you can really find some hidden gems, especially if you’re in a standard format league and you start 3 WRs or 2 WRs and 1 RB/WR flex spot. But of course there are also always the standard studs, definitive duds, and those guys who are just good enough to keep that one guy in your league sending trade offers for your top RBs all season long.

Oh, and if you couldn’t already tell by that banner pic, it’s pretty obvious who the No. 1 choice is.

Some people are making a big deal about the NBA beating out the NFL last night in terms of nominal ratings last night, and by that measure, they’d be correct. The return of LeBron James to his old stomping grounds in Cleveland on TNT’s NBA coverage saw the network earn a 5.0 overnight rating last night. One ratings point represents roughly one million viewing households.

The NFL’s game, featuring the born-again Michael Vick and the newest pro sports pugilist Andre Johnson, reportedly pulled a 4.1 rating.

But consider that NFL Network reaches just a little more than half of the households that TNT reaches. NFL Network reaches about 56.3 million households, while TNT reaches 99.6 million. I did the math for you: TNT captured 5 percent of available households, while NFL Network managed 7.2 percent of same. So how big a ratings win was it for the NBA? I wouldn’t even say that it was a win at all.

When I saw that there was a video of Andre Johnson with a mic on him from Sunday’s game against the Tennessee Titans, I thought, “Damn I’m handsome, and this should be one hell of an entertaining video.” Then I watched it and I thought, “This is great because I didn’t sleep very well last night and this was boring enough to do the trick.” Unfortunately, Johnson either didn’t say much leading up to his remarkable pounding of Cortland Finnegan or the people at Sound FX took some liberties with the editing.

Either way, the video at least confirms what we already knew – Finnegan was getting tired of Matt Schaub and Johnson dinking and dunking the Titans’ secondary into submission and he figured he could get under Johnson’s skin. And he did, and we all thank him for it, because watching Finnegan get his ass kicked was certainly one of the highlights of my 2010 NFL season. As for the highlights of Johnson’s lip service, I guess the best of his chatter was telling Finnegan, “Don’t get frustrated now” after he grabbed Johnson’s face mask for the first time.

But Houston QB Matt Schaub has the line of the day, as he told his teammates in the huddle: “Keep your poise now, let’s try to get them to do some dumb sh*t.” I’d say that getting Andre Johnson to punch you three times while pushing your face into the ground is some pretty stupid sh*t, so job well done, Texans!

Video of Johnson mic’d up after the jump as well as the fight that keeps on giving…

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