Team that played Sunday would be a playoff contender

The roof, the roof, the roof is … open?

OK, we’re so used to the NRG Stadium roof being figuratively on fire that its being literally open threw everything off.

That’s 2020 for you. It took a global pandemic for the Texans to let the sunshine in. In such a dark season, a bright day was welcome.

No, this was not the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Just a darn good day for the Texans.

Houston played its best game of the year Sunday in topping the Patriots 27-20.

A solid game, a complete game. A good win.

Where has this team been all year?

Just a couple wins more, and the Texans would be in the playoff chase. A couple games out of first place in

the AFC South, with two games against the Colts and a home game against the Titans left on the schedule.

Mind you, they wouldn’t be much better and would still have the same issues that must be addressed by the incoming regime, but the holiday season would be far more interesting.

It is impressive that with so little to play for — the Texans (3-7) need to win five of their last six games just to reach the .500 mark — they showed up to beat a team other than the Jacksonville Jaguars.

That it was the Patriots, even in a down year, makes this performance even more of an outlier in a horrid season.

Bill Belichick tends to show up and outcoach his counterparts. He didn’t do that Sunday against Texans interim head coach Romeo Crennel, a longtime friend and former Patriots assistant.

Crennel had his squad ready to play, something Bill O’Brien didn’t manage to do in four games to start the season, a monthlong run of poor play that put the Texans in their current hole.

After a sluggish start in the first couple games, quarterback Deshaun Watson has been superb despite the team’s struggles.

That continued Sunday, as he was flawless, completing 28 of 37 passes for 344 yards with two touchdowns and no turnovers.

But unlike in so many other games this season, Watson got some help on this day.

Justin Reid and Lonnie Johnson, defensive backs who recently have pushed back at individual criticism on social media, were particularly noticeable Sunday.

The two met at Cam Newton’s legs on a fourth-and-4 with just over a minute remaining, forcing a weak throw for an incompletion that virtually closed out the Texans’ victory.

Yes, the Texans’ defense made a play. Several plays.

First-year defensive coordinator Anthony Weaver, peeved at criticism that his defense was regularly making inexcusable mental mistakes, unleashed a unit that was unrecognizable.

One of the weakest units in football, Texans defenders on Sunday put up the kind of fight we haven’t seen all season.

They were good against the run and, despite a steady flow of blitzes, had few breakdowns in the secondary.

(Let’s not talk about the catch on the Hail Mary at the end of the game. The 50-yard pass from Newton to Ryan Izzo was way too easy, but at least it was 12 yards shy of the end zone.)

Imagine what this season would be like if these Texans showed up every week.

If only they came into the season prepared to play. Aggressive. Ready to hit.

Instead, this was just one day of sunshine in a cloudy season. A day when the roof wasn’t on fire.

They used to say that an old stadium in North Texas had a hole in the roof so God could watch his team play.

Conversely, the roof here needed to remain closed as often as it has — Sunday marked the first time in six years the Texans played at home under natural light — because no higher power wanted to watch that mess.

Talk about a perfect time to shine light on a situation.

If that is what it takes, they should leave the roof open for the rest of the season.