Lamarr Houston Named AFC Defensive Player of the Week
The Oakland Raiders have their first Defensive Player of the Week since week 17 of the 2010 season. That’s a long time for any defense to go without an outstanding performance for a single player. In case you were wondering, the last Raiders’ player to do it was also a defensive end, Kam Wimbley.
Lamarr Houston did everything you can expect on the field from a defensive lineman…and then some. He should be commended for his 8 tackles and his sack alone. But it’s the final line of the stat sheet that put him over the top in terms of winning the weekly award. 1 forced fumble.
As Houston has shown throughout the season, he has some hustle in him. He showed that in the Denver game where he chased a play 74 yards to recover a fumble, making a play that a 300lb. lineman has absolutely no business making, but he did. After such a spectacular play you would think that he would take a cue from another former Raiders lineman, Warren Sapp (with whom Houston had a Twitter spat a year ago), and rant and rave about it. But he didn’t. His response? “I was just doing what I was coached to do, come out of the stack and keep running until the play is down and the whistle is blown. So it wasn’t nothing special.”
The Raiders’ second round pick (44th overall) of the 2010 NFL draft decided to give an encore presentation vs. the Jacksonville Jaguars on Sunday. In overtime, it was 3rd and 20 from the Jacksonville 9-yard line, Chad Henne found Cecil Shorts III on a dumpoff. Shorts tried making something out of nothing, and Houston came from his blind side and stripped the ball. Joselio Hanson recovered, Sebastian Janikowski hit a 40-yard field goal to end the game, and the rest is history. His response to his latest big play? “The wide receiver wasn’t paying attention to me, and I was just running (to the ball) like I was coached, and I ended up making a great play.”
This will be Houston’s first Defensive Player of the Week award since making his debut in the NFL as a Raider in 2010.
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