BRIAN T. SMITH ON TEAM TRYING TO REACH NEW HEIGHTS.
I will acknowledge at the start that it is a little funny discussing the best team in Texans history.
I also won’t bore you with a detailed dissection of the Texans’ “history.”
A concise summation of 17 seasons on Kirby Drive: Expansion era and David Carr; Gary Kubiak’s arrival and a 12-4 peak; Bill O’Brien’s reign and an annual battle to raise the bar.
We should always learn from and remember the past. But with the Texans, it is sometimes better to remain firmly in the present.
Case in point: Nine consecutive victories for the NFL’s hottest team.
Will this end up as the best team in Texans history?
I found myself asking that question last week, after O’Brien’s crew improved to 9-3 and the national media zeroed in on a squad that refuses to lose and hasn’t dropped a game since Sept. 23.
For the Texans to answer the above question with a resounding affirmative, they must win more than a wild-card game and unearth the signature victory that lingering nonbelievers are still waiting to see.
A different vibe this time
More importantly, the 2018 Texans must do what the franchise’s previous best teams (2011 and ’12) failed to accomplish. Finish strong. “This is different,” J.J. Watt said, comparing the old with the new and sounding like O’Brien. “I don’t know why it’s different, but it’s different. I can only speak to inside the locker room. I think that inside this locker room we have a bunch of guys who go to work every single day, take it one day at a time and are just really focused on the task at hand each day.
“I think that it’s a great mentality. I think it’s what’s led us to winning nine in a row, and I think that we have a bunch of really good guys who do a lot of good work to get to Sunday and find a way to win.”
The 2011 squad went 10-6, while Bob McNair’s creation won the AFC South for the first time. They reached 10-3 — the 2018 Texans must beat the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday at NRG Stadium to reach that mark — and finished the regular season with one of the premier defenses in the NFL under new defensive coordinator Wade Phillips.
“We won our first playoff game, obviously, and the first division, so people were extremely excited about that,” Watt said. “There’s a certain buzz and excitement and energy that came with that.”
But the 2011 team also captured the Texans’ pre-2018 history in many ways.
Bad luck and poor timing. Good but not great.
An injured Matt Schaub gave way to Matt Leinart, then T.J. Yates. And while the franchise won its first playoff game and kept a good story going, an offense led by a third-string quarterback had no shot at knocking off the 13-3 New England Patriots (whose offensive coordinator is now the fiery guy coaching the Texans).
The 2012 Texans were even better. They started 11-1, took over the city like never before or after, and began to create a national buzz.
Then they foolishly wore letterman jackets to Tom Brady and Bill Belichick University. Two humbling road defeats to New England by a combined 83-42 followed, Kubiak’s Texans dropped three of their final four regular-season contests and blew a shot at a first-round bye, and Football America still wasn’t convinced the Texans were ready for prime time.
When it all suddenly fell apart a season later — 14 consecutive losses, Kubiak’s firing, the worst overall year in team history — key pieces from the wreckage formed a theme.
The Texans weren’t tough or disciplined enough. Even with some of the franchise’s biggest names (Andre Johnson, Arian Foster, Brian Cushing, Duane Brown) sharing the same colors, it always felt like the franchise was a couple critical steps away from being a Super Bowl contender.
Leaving the ‘cheese’
Can this 2018 team be different?
Will these Texans turn a franchise-record nine-game winning streak into something more meaningful and substantial?
O’Brien has been pushing the team toward those goals for weeks, employing his humble “Don’t take the cheese” routine while reminding players, fans and media that wins last much longer when they arrive in January and February.
Thanks to an 0-3 start and their beat-up franchise quarterback being forced to take a bus to Jacksonville, this team already feels more workmanlike. There’s clear star power (Deshaun Watson, DeAndre Hopkins, Jadeveon Clowney, Watt) to rival the biggest names from 2011 and ’12. There’s also a growing feeling these Texans “get it” and might be building toward something even bigger.
“It’s always the next game and being locked in on that one game. We don’t ever look past our opponent,” said Clowney, also sounding just like his coach. “Every team in this league is good, has great players. Everybody was drafted. … Andrew Luck and them are a good team. We’ve got to prepare well. They’re in our division, so it’s going to be a dogfight.”
Keep fighting and keep winning, and the Texans could write a new history in 2018.