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Mike Sando of ESPN recently wrote about a survey of the league's dirtiest players and analyzed which teams received the most personal fouls. The Patriots' Rodney Harrison got the most votes for dirty play, and the Raiders received the most personal fouls.

The Houston Texans received the least personal fouls, but Sando got it completely wrong as it related to Texans defensive tackle Travis Johnson:

Former Patriots receiver Deion Branch drew a line between Harrison's hard-nosed play and the approach Houston Texans defensive lineman Travis Johnson took after knocking out then-Miami Dolphins quarterback Trent Green with a legal hit last season. Johnson stood over the fallen Green and taunted him.

"[Harrison] is not that type of dude, I promise you," Branch said. "He's not going to go into a game and try to hurt someone.

Uh, I'm guessing that Sando didn't actually see that play or maybe he just got his actives and passive mixed up writing about it. It was Trent Green who knocked himself out after Green intentionally blocked Johnson with a low but legal hit. If anyone was dirty in that play, it was Green who admitted he dove low, smashing Johnson's knee with his helmet, causing Johnson to somersault into the air and land on his head.

I'd put up some real speed video of this, but it no longer exists because the NFL pulled it. This slo-mo YouTube version above is all that exists.

Lately, journalists have criticized bloggers for being overly emotional and non-factual (Bill Conlin) and for "wrecklessness" (Steven A. Smith's spelling, not mine). Ultimately, I believe that neither bloggers or journalists have a monopoly on truth and responsibility. We are all just humans, with our own biases and blindspots and emotions and often deadlines, and that you judge the quality of writing not based on what someone's profession is, but rather on the content of what they are saying.

On a recent PTI, Tony Kornheiser and Mike Wilbon asked the question who deserves a bigger apology: Chargers head coach Norv Turner or Texans defensive end Mario Williams? And they came down on the side of Williams, noting that people called him a bust before he even had put on an NFL jersey:

The controversial story line after NFL week 5 is that Texans defensive tackle Travis Johnson is a bad guy for getting profanity angry at Dolphins quarterback Trent Green blocking into his legs. I'm going to talk about that some quite a bit, but first I would like to share a story about Travis Johnson doing something good that few people know about.

In October of 2005, my sister Deb was diagnosed with a rare, usually deadly form of leukemia. She woke up one morning with bad headache, went to the emergency room, and later that day found out that she had leukemia and needed to start treatment immediately or she would die. And that the treatment itself might kill her. Thinking about that makes it hard to breathe.

A while after her diagnosis, I went to a Houston Texans event that I had signed up for long in advance. I brought a red Texans baseball cap with me to get autographed as a gift to my sister to wear for when she would soon lose her hair from the chemo. Her immune system was so compromised, she couldn't even have plants or flowers in her hospital room.

The first player I met at the event was Travis Johnson. I told him what was happening and asked for his autograph on the hat. He was really moved by Deb's situation and wrote some encouraging words on it. Then he did something he really didn't have to do.Sorry, No Photos