National Football League

Foster wins rushing title to lift Texans past Jags

Published Jan. 3, 2011 2:22 p.m. ET

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Houston Texans coach Gary Kubiak will learn his fate on Monday.

If he remains coach of the Texans, he'll enter next season with reigning NFL rushing leader Arian Foster.

Foster ran for 180 yards and two touchdowns to secure the NFL rushing title and lead the Texans to a 34-17 victory over the Jacksonville Jaguars on Sunday.

Speculation that Kubiak's job is in jeopardy has been swirling as the Texans (6-10) lost eight of their last 10 games. Texans owner Bob McNair was not made available to the media on Sunday, but Kubiak said he hasn't been told of any decision about the future and that he'll meet with McNair on Monday morning.

''I had a couple of talks with him this week but the bottom line, I asked him the last time I talked to him was to let me enjoy the week. Let me coach. Let me coach this game,'' Kubiak said. ''We'll sit down tomorrow and decide what's going on. So he's been fair to me and we'll make that decision tomorrow.''

Jacksonville (8-8) needed a victory and a Colts loss to Tennessee to make the playoffs, but couldn't overcome the absence of its top two offensive players.

Trent Edwards started at quarterback for David Garrard, who underwent finger surgery Thursday, and Rashad Jennings rushed for 108 yards in place of Pro Bowler Maurice Jones-Drew, who sat out with a right knee injury that will require surgery this week.

Indianapolis won on a last-second field goal minutes after the Jaguars' game ended.

Foster got going early, gaining 56 yards on his first carry, and he put Houston up 7-0 early in the first quarter when he scored on a 2-yard run.

''They were the better team today,'' Jacksonville coach Jack Del Rio said. ''They started early when they were third-and-1, Foster popped through for a big gain and that really set the tone for the type of day it was.''

Matt Schaub completed 18 of 22 passes for 253 yards and a touchdown. He's thrown for 9,170 yards over the past two seasons, becoming the sixth quarterback to reach 9,000 yards passing in a two-year span.

But the finale belonged to Foster, an undrafted free agent who spent most of last season on Houston's practice squad. He burst onto the scene when he ran for 231 yards in the opener against Indianapolis and had eight 100-yard games this season.

Foster finished with 1,616 yards rushing, the highest single-season total for an undrafted player. He also had 604 yards receiving to become the sixth player in league history to reach 1,500 yards rushing and 600 yards receiving in the same year.

When he wasn't drafted he wondered if he'd ever get a chance in the NFL. After earning the rushing title, he talked about his struggles.

''In this lifetime sometimes things don't go your way and you can take two roads,'' he said. ''You can fold and quit or you can follow your heart and do what you know how to do and that's what I did.''

Foster entered Sunday's game trailing Kansas City's Jamaal Charles by 32 yards and leading Tennessee's Chris Johnson by 111.

He overtook Charles on his first carry and pulled farther away from Johnson with each run. He scored his second TD on a 35-yard run with about 11 minutes remaining that made it 34-17.

The Texans' tough finish after a 4-2 start has not only Kubiak's job status in question, but also the future of many of his defensive assistants.

''It's pretty obvious that we've had some problems on defense,'' Kubiak said. ''We've got some serious problems and that filters to our special teams also.''

Houston's season was ruined by the defense's pattern of fourth-quarter breakdowns, but the unit held up fine in the finale.

Defensive tackle Amobi Okoye sacked Edwards and Josh Scobee missed a 46-yard field-goal try with 8:13 left. Cornerback Glover Quin forced a fumble and Houston recovered later in the quarter. It was a bit of atonement for Quin, who gave up a last-second desperation heave for the winning touchdown in the teams' earlier meeting in Jacksonville.

The Texans used a 10-play, 97-yard drive that chewed up more than five minutes off the clock and was capped by a 5-yard touchdown catch by Owen Daniels to stretch their lead to 27-17 with about four minutes remaining in the third quarter.

Houston took a 20-17 lead into halftime after Neil Rackers hit a 33-yard field goal as time expired in the second quarter. He also had one in the first quarter that made it 10-0.

The Jaguars tied it at 17-17 when Marcedes Lewis grabbed a short pass from Edwards and waltzed into the end zone untouched for the 7-yard touchdown with about two minutes before halftime.

Jacksonville had cut Houston's lead to three points before Derrick Ward dashed 35 yards down the sideline for a touchdown to make it 17-7 about 13 minutes before halftime.

The Jaguars settled for a 39-yard field goal that left the score at 17-10 with about nine minutes left in the first quarter after their drive stalled following two consecutive incomplete passes by Edwards.

Jennings pulled Jacksonville to 10-7 with a 3-yard scoring run early in the second quarter.

''We felt we were in a position to be a better football team this year and put ourselves in a position to still be in it by executing well and kind of hanging together and squeezing out some games,'' Del Rio said. ''In the end it just wasn't good enough.''