SPORTS

Texans: A Season On Life Support

Four games in and Houston has more games postponed due to hurricanes than games won. Obviously, that’s not exactly what anyone—fans and players alike—expected. More troubling than the losses, however, is the way the losses have come. Each week has brought new and seemingly more painful ways to fail and defenestrate the entire season.

In Pittsburgh, it was because no one other than Mario Williams showed up to play and the Steelers were demonstrably better than the Texans in every facet of the game. In Tennessee, the defense improved (though the secondary still had issues), but the team still lost because Matt Schaub looked like a more-scared version of David Carr, and the offensive play-calling was atrocious. In Jacksonville, Schaub played one of his best games as a Texan and play-calling was vastly better, but the defense developed an allergy to tackling David Garrard, and an unfortunate coin flip gave Jacksonville the ball first in overtime. Finally, against Indy, the entire team played fantastic football for 56 minutes against a team they’ve beaten only once in their history, only to watch in horror as Sage Rosenfels single-handedly gave away a game the Texans should have won by 20 points.

An optimist could look at this and say that the team was this close to being 2-2 right now and that there is no one glaring problem that will continue to cost the Texans victories. The realist sees a team with lots of talents and tons of little problems, any one of which can blow up in a given week. (The pessimist, of course, sees an 0-4 team and thinks it is just another year of shattered hopes and unrealistic expectations.) Regardless of which group a person is in, there is one thing that all should be able to agree on: they might be barely hanging on, but the Texans are not dead yet.

If they are going to stay alive, the most important need is to get that first win against Miami on October 12. This is a young team, and like all young teams, it is prone to getting into a slump when things start going badly. Had the team not played so well overall against the Jaguars and Colts, one might worry that the slump was already imminent. But, on the strength of those games alone, the Texans showed themselves as well as the rest of the league that this team can play with just about anyone when they are clicking. Now, they just need to start winning before they lose whatever confidence they might have gained.

Thankfully, the schedule lines up well for the Texans to do just that and resuscitate the season. Due to the rescheduling that took place in the wake of Ike, the Texans have three more home games before they leave Reliant again. Better yet, those games are against Miami, Detroit, and Cincinnati, who are a combined 2-11 as of this writing. If the Texans can beat all three of those teams, and they certainly should be favored to do so, they would be right back in the hunt for an AFC Wild Card spot.

Sure, it’s still a longshot that this team makes the playoffs, but it is not out of the question. They definitely have the player talent to do so. If that talent gels with a little help from a so-far-underwhelming coaching staff, the Texans will surprise some people over the next twelve games and should be alive in the playoff hunt until the very end. If not? Well, let’s not dwell on that just yet.

Matt Campbell is a freelance journalist and the creator of atexansblog.com. His work has been featured on NBCSports.com, Deadspin, and Football Outsiders. He can be reached at matt@atexansblog.com

(The Banner, October 8, 2008)