ANOTHER HEARTBREAKER
Aftermost Texans loss ever, team needs coach, GMas capable as its QB
Texans defensive end J.J. Watt (99) walks off the field after the defense failed to get a key stop late in the game, allowing the Tennessee Titans to win 41-38 with a field goal as time expired Sunday at NRG Stadium.
How much more can Deshaun Watson be asked to do? Watson can’t prevent a last-second field goal from bouncing off a post and barely making it safely through the uprights, instantly turning Tennessee into AFC South champion on the Texans’ field and pushing the home team to a horrible 4-12.
He can’t prevent the most Texans loss ever — 41-38 Titans on Sunday evening inside a stunned NRG Stadium — which ended a season that had already featured the firing of ex-King Bill O’Brien as head coach/general manager/offensive play-caller.
And Watson can’t singlehandedly fix the Texans’ oddly timed conservatism on offense or overhaul one of the worst defenses in the league.
Watson was supposed to change everything. The Texans always falling short. The era of 9-7 being enough on Kirby Drive. An expansion franchise constantly bouncing between good and bad, with great never being an option.
Watson still must improve. But the 25-year-old fran
chise face is the least of the Texans’ concerns as a pathetic 2020 season finally ends and 2021 begins. D4’s fourth pro campaign was easily his personal best.
In the Texans’ final game of the season, Watson inspired and united again, completing 28 of 39 passes for 365 yards, three touchdowns, an interception and a 115.9 rating. He again did more with less, brilliantly erasing a 16-point late-third-quarter deficit and giving his team a 38-38 tie after Tennessee took a 38-35 advantage with just 1 minutes and 42 seconds remaining.
Then the Titans (11-5) did what proven playoff teams do. They went for and hit the big play as Ryan Tannehill reared back and connected with A. J. Brown on a 52-yard game changer that never should have been allowed to happen.
A game- and season-ending field goal barely doinked through two yellow upright posts, and that was it.
Watson’s second 4-12 season since the Texans traded up to select him with the No. 12 overall pick in the 2017 draft.
Another heartbreaker during a season constantly defined by pain: bad snap, goal-line fumble, unbelievable last-second field goal.
Watson is obviously doing everything he is supposed to. He’s playing his big part.
But within the walls of NRG Stadium?
Inside a building that proudly sports six red-and-blue AFC South banners but only one player in the Ring of Honor and nothing resembling an AFC Championship Game appearance, let alone a Super Bowl berth?
The Texans haven’t changed. As magical as he can be with the ball in hand and a defense collapsing around him, Watson can’t do it by himself. The NFL is not the NBA.
It’s amazing that Watson played in all 16 games for a weak four-win team. It’s also some type of credit to the Texans that, instead of demanding a trade to a championship contender, Watson is under contract through 2025 after agreeing to a $160 million extension when O’Brien was still his head coach and GM.
Now the Texans need a vision. For Watson and, most importantly, a maddeningly directionless franchise.
The Texans need a roster builder and the best leader of men Kirby Drive has seen.
The Texans need an architect. And two saviors at once. General manager.
Head coach.
Two new names, two new faces, working together to surround Watson with the talent, chemistry and culture that have rarely blended together for the Texans with any consistency.
The final 12 games of the Texans’ 2020 season were even more pointless than Week 17 for the home team. All that ultimately mattered was the fast-forward button.
New GM. New HC. New ideas, plans and dreams.
The last time it felt like Kirby Drive had everyone on the same page was 2012, when Gary Kubiak was calmly commanding the podium for a deep 12-4 team and longtime GM Rick Smith was winning by hitting on first-round picks.
Almost a decade later — four division banners under O’Brien, mounting frustration and dysfunction within NRG Stadium — the Texans now might have their last, best shot to truly get it right with Watson.
With 19 seasons leading to a 135-169 franchise record and the team’s 2020 campaign so darn painful and insulting, you’ll believe it when you see it.
I’m right there with you. Heck, so is J. J. Watt, who spent his 10th season with the Texans publicly chastising his teammates and organization for weekly letdowns and failures.
Has anyone in pro sports been more visibly frustrated on Zoom interviews than Watt since last March?
No way.
Being around the Texans will do that to you.
They finally get the right quarterback, then cheaply trade away No. 1 wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins for peanuts just as the coronavirus pandemic is starting to change the world.
They spend years living off the strength of their defense, then lose their defense when their offense finally shows potential. Forward is backward. Communication ends with confusion.
CEO Cal McNair still hasn’t conducted a group media interview or held a news confer
ence, despite its being more than two years since franchise founder and initial team owner Bob McNair passed away.
Cal McNair never fully explained the reasons for firing O’Brien, just four games into the 2020 season, after the franchise spent years giving King O’B unprecedented power on Kirby.
One of the ideas floated in early October was that McNair wanted the Texans to win a few more games this year, building momentum toward 2021. Doink.
So much for that.
The simple theory completely backfired as turmoil engulfed the team, teased victories were handed away during surreal final minutes, and the 2020 Texans spent the entire season wavering in the middle of national crosshairs.
They couldn’t even lose games the right way.
The Texans were one of the worst teams in the NFL on the field and off the field. They entered Week 17 hosting a meaningless regular-season finale for the home team, losers of four consecutive games and at their lowest franchise point in more than a decade.
Sunday, they could have won, and overtime was seconds away. Then the Texans changed back into the Texans, clinging to 2020 for one more sad gut punch.
An architect with a real vision for 2021 and beyond can gradually fix all this.
A true leader of men can recognize the broken pieces, save what can be mended and quickly discard the rest of themess.
Watson has changed the one question that long plagued the Texans since 2012: When would they find a franchise QB?
All the other questions still remain, and the normal quick fix — the NFL’s annual draft — currently has no place for the Texans in the initial two rounds thanks to the errors of their past.
Serious change on Kirby has hovered since the end of Week 4 and the firing of O’Brien. Twelve games later, the new year is finally here.
McNair’s Texans have another chance to get it right with Watson.
They better not blow it again.