NFL ROUNDUP Monday’s news

Texans: Houston had a chance for its first single-season, four-game winning streak on Sunday against the Colts. Instead, the Texans committed a season-high 103 yards of penalties and three turnovers before Kris Brown missed a potential game-tying field goal as time expired in the 20-17 loss. “This week we were very sloppy,” coach Gary Kubiak said. “I’m very concerned about how we started (Sunday). I thought we lacked some focus early in the game. We lacked some focus from some very important players.” The Texans have their open week and 15 days to regroup before a Monday night meeting with Tennessee followed by a rematch with the Colts. The 5-4 Texans are looking for a strong finish to keep up hopes of their first playoff berth. Kubiak said turnovers have been his team’s biggest problem through its first nine games. “Turnovers. I don’t have the words to describe how frustrated I am,” Kubiak said. “It’s just hurting our football team. It’s not one guy, it’s not two guys, it’s a little bit of everybody. Fixing that problem and being better in that phase over the next seven weeks will have a lot to do with what we’re talking about come January.”

Lions: Coach Jim Schwartz says there’s no feud between Calvin Johnson and Matt Stafford. During Sunday’s game against Seattle, television cameras caught what appeared to be uncomfortable exchanges between the receiver and quarterback. Stafford threw five interceptions in the 32-20 loss. Johnson had two catches for 27 yards after missing the previous two games because of a knee injury. “There’s no issue there,” he said. “You always want to be winning games and happy and cheerful, but goodness gracious, if you had a camera on every person on every play, you could try to read between the lines on a million things. There are times you need to talk things out, but there’s no issue here with the players, and I don’t understand why people are trying to create one.”

Packers: Despite two losses to Brett Favre and the division rival Minnesota Vikings in the first half of the season, at least the Green Bay Packers were beating the teams they’re supposed to. Until now. Green Bay is reeling after blowing a fourth-quarter lead to a previously winless Tampa Bay team starting a rookie quarterback. Now 4-4 at the season’s halfway mark, a team expected to make a serious playoff push now finds itself on the verge of a free fall going into Sunday’s home game against Dallas. The problems are the same: Too many sacks allowed, not enough pass rush and costly special teams lapses. But as fans holler for change on barstools and sports radio call-in shows across Wisconsin, they probably won’t be happy to hear that Packers coach Mike McCarthy is calmly staying the course. McCarthy maintains that the mistakes are correctable and insists the season isn’t a lost cause.

Seahawks: Just when the Seahawks were feeling good about one of their few positive Sundays this shaky season, Monday arrived. Seattle (3-5) rallied from 17-0 down at home, then needed Matt Hasselbeck’s record-setting passing day to beat the lowly Lions. While that saved their season — for now — their first win in four weeks will mean nothing unless the Seahawks can now do things they haven’t come close to pulling off lately: win on the road, and beat first-place Arizona. “Right now, we know that our backs are against the wall,” said Hasselbeck, after his team-record 39 completions in 51 attempts for 329 yards kept alive Seattle’s flickering playoff hopes.

Associated Press