• SOLOMON: TEXANS REMAIN POSITIVE.
Players echo O’Brien’s positive outlook about things not being as bad as 0-2 seems.
The Texans are winless in two games, yet the panic around town is at DEFCON 2. It is not that serious, people. Seriously. While it is true that optimism was eliminated from Texans’ fandom vocabulary many years ago, remember the NFL season has only just begun. My goodness, the Texans still have two games remaining in the month of September, and they have yet to even play a home game.
Sunday is Liberty White Day at NRG Stadium. That doesn’t mean the Texans will show up waving white flags. (Imagine former Onalaska ISD superintendent Lynn Redden’s surprise that White Day doesn’t mean what he thought it meant.)
It is supposed to be a celebration, and certainly should be with the Giants, who are also 0-2 and have lost 16 of their last 19 games, coming to town.
Let’s not overstate the Texans’ 0-2 situation by deeming this a must-win game, because it is too early in the season for all to be lost. But an 0-3 start would not bode well for playoff hopes.
Under the current playoff system, which began in 1990, only three teams have ever begun a season with three straight losses and finished it in the playoffs. A loss to the lowly Giants would be a clear indicator that the Texans aren’t good enough to do be the first team in 20 years to do that.
Under O’Brien, the Texans have generally responded well to clichéd backs-against-thewall scenarios.
Say what you want about O’Brien’s coaching — and based on the last couple of weeks, some of y’all need to wash your mouths out with soap — his teams pull together.
One of O’Brien’s strengths as a head coach is his ability to get his players to buy into the company line. They talk like him. That act like him. They follow his directives.
As he likes to say, he needs to do better.
“Give credit to both teams that have beat us,” O’Brien said. “They’ve done a good job. We realize we have to do a lot better. We have to play more consistently, we have to practice better, we’ve got to coach better, we understand that, but we also know there’s a lot ball left to be played.”
Bill Belichick getting the best of O’Brien was expected. Mike Vrabel, a first-year head coach who spent the previous four seasons as an O’Brien assistant, doing a better job preparing his team was embarrassing. The embarrassment should end this week against the Giants, who finished next-to-last in scoring in 2017 and come to town having scored 15 and 13 points, respectively, in losses to the Jaguars and Cowboys. While the Texans have scored only four touchdowns this season, that is twice as many as New York has.
O’Brien said he saw an urgency on the practice field this week from a group of players who remain confident, despite the sluggish start to the year.
“They’ve done a good job of coming in this week and really focusing on the Giants and what the game plan is and going out there on the practice field and really attacking it with energy, which is good,” O’Brien said. “It’s good to see.”
Of course, one could say it would have been good to see that urgency in the first two weeks.
“If you dwell on these last two losses, then your season is going to go in the tank,” quarterback Deshaun Watson said. “You just got to continue to move on. Yeah, the record says 0-2, but this upcoming week we are 0-0 trying to be 1-0.”
In an effort to calm the panic, the Texans are taking inspirational quotes off refrigerator doors and bathroom walls.
DeAndre Hopkins says he is “built for tough times.” Tyrann Mathieu says he “loves adversity.”
Positive affirmations abound among the Texans. That enthusiasm isn’t matched among their fanbase, but fans don’t play.
Sometime late Sunday afternoon, after the Texans pummel the Giants, all will be right in the Texans’ world. Until they lose again, that is.
If they can’t even beat the Giants, measurement of a panic level for the remainder of the season will not be necessary, because few will care.
That considered, maybe this is a must-win game after all.