If you didn't appreciate Gary Kubiak — the most unconventional coach in the NFL — before, you should now. For the Houston Texans coach stuck it to the fantasy football losers, while sticking up for his team.

Kubiak made one of the boldest moves of his career when he benched a perfectly healthy Arian Foster, the NFL's leading rusher, for the first quarter and a half of Sunday afternoon's critical 31-24 win over the Oakland Raiders. With the Texans' best player (wide receiver Andre Johnson) already out with a right ankle injury, it would have been easy for Kubiak to rationalize away punishing Foster for missing one team meeting entirely and being late to several others over an eight to nine-day stretch.

Most coaches would have simply handed out some meaningless penalty — extra sprints after practice, an early arrival time at the facility. Kubiak hit Foster with the only sanction that really hurts an NFL player. He took away some of his playing time.

So Foster stood on the sidelines in full pads and helmet, watching as third-stringer Derrick Ward ripped off a 33-yard run to open the scoring and stared some more while Steve Slaton escaped for a 23-yard scamper. By the time, Kubiak finally put Foster into the game, only 6:39 remained in the first half.

Whether he felt in danger of being Wally Pipped or not, Foster certainly responded to Kubiak's tough love — turning his first carry of the second half into a 74-yard touchdown run for a 21-14 Texans lead, scoring another second-half touchdown on a pass, finishing with 131 yards rushing on only 16 carries. That's running from trouble.

Foster — a player whose career has been held back by bouts of unprofessionalism — needs a coach who refuses to back down. If Foster thought his 231 yards in that exorcism-worthy opening win over the Indianapolis Colts suddenly gave him a free pass to go selfish idiot again, Kubiak quickly dispelled those notions.

The coach put his team's standards above the need to win a road game that will go a long way toward determining if Houston finally makes the playoffs (the difference between 3-1 and 2-2 could only be covered in lightyears). If the Texans had lost in Northern California, Kubiak still would have made the right move.

The fact that he stuck it to the fantasy football devotees who put their own pretend teams over any NFL allegiance while doing it is more than a happy sidenote.

It makes Kubiak a hero for anyone who loves real football over imaginary games tracked on computers. Anyone who doesn't play fantasy football couldn't help but smile at the idea of Foster "owners" screaming at their TVs as the minutes ticked on and their man didn't come off the sideline. Yes, these same owners will still get plenty of points from Foster's 74-yard touchdown run, but at least they had to sweat it.

All because of the crazy calm coach.

Kubiak's never fit into the often absurd myth-making world of NFL coaches (if you really think that Jon Gruden only slept four hours a night every night when he coached, you probably think that Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag really planned to divorce too). The Texans head man isn't interested in building a legend.

But he unwittingly started by leaving Foster stranded on the sideline.