TAKING A SEAT
Season, fans’ excitement come to crashing halt as Luck, Indy deliver knockout
It was the start of the second quarter of the Texans’ playoff game against the Indianapolis Colts, and already things were looking bad. The visiting team had scored two touchdowns. The home team had scored none.
But Gisele and Matt Crouchet weren’t giving up just yet. The season-ticket holders in section 510 had seen this team come from behind before. It could happen again, they thought. If the Texans scored a touchdown before the third quarter, there would definitely be a chance.
The announcer’s voice
boomed across the speakers: We need our homefield advantage. Get
up and make some noise! Gisele stood and cheered and waved her playoff rally towel.
Everyone else in the section stayed seated.
The Texans struggled through a 21-7 loss Saturday afternoon, testing the endurance of fans who arrived elated and excited for the game they believed the team had a real chance of winning. But they began to leave en masse before it ended, buoyed only slightly by a single fourth-quarter touchdown.
With the team down 14 points after one quarter, fans such as the Crouchets, who live in Montgom-
ery, had willed themselves to believe that anything could happen. After all, with a string of three losses to start the season, some didn’t think they would even be here watching a playoff game. But Matt, 50, acknowledged, “It’s not going very well at all.”
Matt, an IT worker for Chevron, felt nervous as he watched — almost sick to his stomach, and tried not to scream so he didn’t lose his voice. Gisele, who works at the federal reserve bank, took the opposite approach: “Get him!” she yelled as a player from the Colts threw the ball. “He dropped it!” she yelled as a pass to the end zone was incomplete.
And then the Colts scored a third touchdown.
“Wow,” she said, putting a hand to her chest, “That hurts.”
And so it went.
Optimistic beginning
The day had started off so well, with fan Jay Justilian poised outside at the tailgate, raising a wrench above a small horse piñata. The sun shone. The atmosphere buzzed with music and laughter.
“Screw the Colts!” shouted Justilian, 52, and he bashed the wrench down. Miniature liquor bottles and candy bars spilled from inside.
It was early afternoon, not long before kickoff, and the tailgate was raging. The scene there, spread across six parking lots, was always loud and crazy, observed Cliff Osborne, who picks the best tailgate at each home game. And Saturday — the first playoff game of the season — was especially energized.
Here, longtime fans cherished another chance to see the Texans take a first step toward the Super Bowl win that so far had eluded them over the team’s 16-year history. They weren’t just optimistic. Decked out in Texans socks, necklaces and aprons, they were confident the team would win the difficult matchup with the streaking Colts.
“This is a corner that we’re turning,” Justilian said, with the piñata smashed and a cigar now between his fingers. “I see us winning today.”
Pamela and Thomas Irby were so confident that they had already booked plane tickets and a hotel room in Boston next weekend. If the team had won on Saturday, the Texans would have been in Massachusetts next Sunday playing the New England Patriots.
The Irbys wore matching Texans-themed pants.
“A lot of people are nervous,” said Thomas, 48. “I’m not. I’m booked and ready to go to Boston.”
His wife, 49, agreed: “It’s going to happen today.”
Game day also happened to fall on Randy Marin’s 49th birthday. “Happy Birthday” balloons were mixed among Texans balloons where he tailgated. They had a strawberry tres leches birthday cake ready, and $5 and $20 bills were pinned to his shirt.
Marin held his drink in a koozie that read “BFR,” or “Big F—ing Randy,” his nickname also tattooed on his arm.
“Everyone get around Randy!” someone at the DJ booth shouted. They gathered and posed for a picture.
“We’re gonna get that W,” he said.
Inside NRG Stadium, as the minutes ticked on, optimism slowly drained.
Carletta Nichols, 38, who owns a shipping business in Pearland, took a break and smoked a cigarette at halftime with her cousin Anja Llorens, 53, a customs officer who lives in Crosby. A few fans could already be seen trickling out.
“They have time to come back,” Nichols said.
“It’s happened before,” Llorens agreed.
Draining hope
Halftime went on, and David Alvarado, 48, and Hugo Rios, 43, stood in line to buy beer, eating nachos and lamenting the failings of the coach with others who were growing irate.
Then came the fourth quarter, and Tammy Muehe, 46, walked out the door, ready to get back home to League City. “We’re not winning,” she said. “Honestly, I think they choked again.”
Brothers-in-law Raymond Joseph, 70, and Art Warren, 56, headed out too, stopping only briefly to watch a TV screen that hung above the bathroom doors. Joseph didn’t think there was enough time for a miraculous comeback. But he was curious to see if the team might score one more touchdown.
“Are you ready?” Warren asked. “Wait for them to come running out of there, man.”
The effort for seven more points failed, and Warren was right. With four minutes still on the clock, Texans fans began to stream away from the field.
Inside, cheerleaders futilely waved pompoms. Peanut shells were abandoned on the floor. Most seats were empty.
Rossalyn Jackson, 64, remained, cradling a small boy asleep on her chest. Why was she still there? Her son, Kareem, is a Texans’ defensive back.
She had hoped the game would end differently, of course. But she knew what she would say to Kareem:
Good season, and get some rest.