GLASS MOSTLY FULL
WHILE THE TEXANS TAKE THEIR LUMPS THERE ARE SOME REASONS TO BE OPTIMISTIC
Despite the Texans’ record, there’s more good than bad to be found.
It’s a perplexing time to be a sports fan in Houston. We’re caught betwixt and between Astros euphoria and Texans ennui. The Rockets’ blazing start — it was the third best in franchise history through 20 games — should be enough to sustain us through these Savage-asin-Tom times, but can they really be trusted? Remember their betrayal last spring.
Still, to be sure, I’m not complaining. After a World Series victory, the good vibes are going to linger for a long awhile. You can’t turn around these days without seeing a smiling somebody proudly wearing an orange T-shirt that reminds us we’re No. 1 in baseball. But. This is the problem: The Astros plowing through the Red Sox, the Yankees and the Dodgers in succession created lasting chemical changes to our over-stimulated brains. Yet now here we sit, aghast, having to confront a Texans season that’s already over, except that it isn’t. What remains is more like a preseason but much worse because almost nothing meaningful — that’s
positive anyway — is likely occur over the next five weeks.
Each is certain to be filled with sound and fury but, ultimately, they signify nothing. Fortunately, the season ends on New Year’s Eve, well before the stroke of midnight. There needs to be a neat, tidy calendar-year break between our current state of Weltschmerz and some wondrous stuff (hopefully) ahead.
In what’s left of 2017, we could be staring at five more losses, although surely the hapless 49ers won’t add insult to the Texans’ litany of injuries by slipping away from NRG Stadium with a victory a week from Sunday (of course, we didn’t think the hapless Colts could, either). And speaking of injuries, Bill O’Brien can hardly rest his starters going forward, meaning more guys are liable to wind up lame. The NFL’s by-laws don’t permit forfeits, so that’s not an option, either. Hence, we’re trapped in a sort of suspended state.
Get well soon
The Texans’ not flat-out quitting with their playoff aspirations officially in J. J. Watt-land — 99 percent gone — might earn our admiration, yet it would be only marginally meaningful in terms of carryover effect for 2018. Each season, as O’Brien reminds us every season, is a whole new deal and that will be especially true in 2018, when two of the team’s best defensive players, Watt and Whitney Mercilus, and two of its best offensive players, Deshaun Watson and D’Onta Foreman, return to put their currently broken body parts to the test.
Until we know they’re all OK, nothing is OK.
If O’Brien can fix Tom Savage and he stops gifting football away at his current Santa Claus-worthy pace, that will be great for Savage. However, it figures to mean little for the Texans because it’s hard to imagine him still being
on the roster a year from now. Whatever resiliency Savage shows in the weeks ahead, it’s obvious he’s the wrong guy to be Watson’s backup.
And please promise us Kendall Lamm also won’t be Watson’s left tackle, even though it appears that, by necessity, he will Savage’s left tackle Sunday against the Titans with Chris Clark and Julién Davenport hurt. It was Lamm, of course, who nearly got Savage killed on the play when Terrell Suggs forced his NFL-leading seventh fumble on a strip sack Monday night.
Linebacker Brian Cushing’s return after 10 weeks of a PED suspension adds a modicum of intrigue, but, again, how much he plays and/or how well he plays seems irrelevant vis-àvis the future. Given Cushing’s missteps and the rotten luck of a twice blown-out knee that left him a diminished player who pushed the ethical envelope to reclaim his lost edge, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where the Texans bring him back for a 10th season despite O’Brien’s affection for him.
“(Cushing) has meant a lot to me in my four years here,” he said. “You know how I feel about the guy.”
We do. But time marches on.
The Deshaun dynamic
On a happier note, the magnitude of the shadow or, rather, the ray of sunshine Watson will cast upon the Texans until OTAs begin next spring can’t be overstated. The lingering mystery is why O’Brien was so stubbornly determined to begin the year with Savage and not Watson. Moot point now, to be sure. What matters is that we have seen the Texans’ future and it’s spelled Deshaun with a capital D. The tantalizing sneak preview he provided before being cruelly snatched away is what separates this peculiar situation from any I recall.
While the Texans have had worse records through 11 games only three times in their history (two of them led to 2-14 finishes and got head coaches fired), their being 4-7 doesn’t feel catastrophic. It’s even easy to forget they were under .500 when Watson was lost to a torn ACL in practice Nov. 2, because it’s not hard to remember the 19 touchdown passes he flung in a mere 6½ games.
He’s been gone for a full month, yet only six quarterbacks — five of them named Brady, Roethlisberger, Rivers, Stafford and Wilson — have managed more. And the other one, Carson Wentz, is a second-year starter, the same as Watson will be next season.
Familiar feeling
Loose parallels might be the Astros of 2013, losers of 111 games but already possessing the brilliant young core talent that delivered their heavensent championship, and a largely forgotten Rockets team of 30 years ago, when Hakeem Olajuwon was in his third season.
A year after losing the 1986 NBA Finals to a great Boston Celtics team, the Rockets tailed off to 42-40, dropping 14 of their last 24 games and barely making the playoffs. None of the glue guys and role players on the back-to-back championship teams of 1994 and 1995 had yet arrived to complement Olajuwon. But, already an emergent colossus, Hakeem carried them as far as a double-overtime sixth-game loss in the Western Conference semifinals.
Which too was, eerily, played in Seattle, where Watson’s final spectacular hurrah this season occurred. The Texans succumbed there 41-38 on a late Russell Wilson touchdown pass that negated the Texans rookie’s 402 yards and four touchdowns. The last of them went DeAndre Hopkins on a play covering 72 yards and should have provided the winning margin in a stunning upset.
Three decades earlier and barely a couple miles from where Century-Link Field sits today, Olajuwon’s monster 49-point, 25-rebound effort wasn’t enough to save the Rockets from elimination. But the magnificence he displayed served notice of what lay ahead. If Watson’s efforts prove similarly prophetic, grand times are ahead for Houston and its football team.
In the interim, let’s try to be patient and keep our perspective. If dark thoughts intrude the next time Savage drops a football or zips one to somebody in the wrong-colored jersey, take a deep breath, shut your eyes and blissfully recall what went down on the evening of Nov. 1 in Dodger Stadium. For the first time in a very long time, we’re playing with house money.