‘Vacation’ comes at bad time

HOUSTON – Never mind that they’ve already clinched the AFC South and a first-round playoff bye, the Tennessee Titans are miffed about their 13-12 loss to the Houston Texans on Sunday.

A letdown could be expected after securing their playoff spot last week, but a win against Houston and a Pittsburgh loss later Sunday would have secured home-field advantage throughout the playoffs.

Now, next week’s game against the Steelers will have much more meaning.

“Hopefully we’ll be up for the challenge and guys will come back from vacation,” linebacker Keith Bulluck said. “I think we were on vacation this week, knowing we got a bye and whatever other good stuff happened for us last week. But I know as a team we need to get our heads out of our (expletive) and come out and play football. Pittsburgh is playing for way more than us next week.”

Andre Johnson had a career-high 207 yards receiving and a touchdown, and Kris Brown added a pair of field goals to lead the Texans to their fourth straight win.

Already eliminated from playoff contention, the Texans (7-7) are shooting for the first winning season in franchise history. Sunday marked the first time they’ve won four games in a row, and the victory snapped a seven-game losing streak to the Titans.

“They weren’t doing that well, but it was their Super Bowl and credit them for being the good team today,” Titans cornerback Cortland Finnegan said.

Johnson has a career-high 1,408 yards receiving this season.

“Andre was special today,” coach Gary Kubiak said. “The reason he’s special is because I can move him all over the place and it doesn’t bother him.”

Johnson had more than a little help from his defense. The Texans held Tennessee to 100 yards rushing after the Titans had gained 527 in the previous two games. It was the first time they didn’t score a touchdown since a 17-6 loss to the Chargers in last year’s AFC wild card playoff game.

With two minutes left, the Titans went for it on fourth-and-3 from the Houston 32, but Kerry Collins’ deep pass to Justin McCareins flew just out of his reach.

“That field goal may have won us the game, but I think we did a lot of things to lose the game before that,” Bulluck said. “I think coach (Jeff Fisher) made the decision he needed to make.”

Fisher said he thought the kick wasn’t in Rob Bironas’ range.

“It was not a good coaching decision,” Fisher said.