A little over an hour before the scheduled kickoff at Reliant Stadium I took the elevator down from the press box to the field. I was joined by a member of the Texans media relations staff, and Joyce, the elevator attendant. The 60-second conversation that took place wasn’t about the game that was about to take place; it was about the crowd that was already in the building, something that none of us were used to seeing.
Not unlike most teams in the NFL, the Texans have had small crowds at kickoff. This can be attributed to noon starts and tailgating, but its quite common to see a half-empty Reliant Stadium when the ball is tee’d up a minute or two after 12:00 on a given Sunday. so much so, that the Texans implored their fans to enter Reliant Stadium early. On Saturday they listened.
Sixty minutes before kickoff as the first position groups jogged onto the field you could feel the energy in the building more so than any game since the Cowboys opened this place in 2002, when with the roof closed it was considered one of the loudest buildings in the NFL. A near-decade of failures and disappointments has allowed us to forget that.
Before beating Cincinnati Saturday, I’m not sure how much belief there was in this team by the city. You can only tease and then disappoint a fan base for so long before they become numb to the whole process. For years, high-hopes and expectations have given way to failure and blame. 2005, the club’s fourth season, was supposed to be the big break through. “If the Browns can make the playoffs in four seasons why can’t we”, the fans asked. That fourth season that started with such hope ended in 2-14, which put the finishing touches on the Charley Casserly/Dom Capers regime.
In came Gary Kubiak and Rick Smith from Denver. Their first season made it clear that it was time to jettison David Carr, and in came Matt Schaub, who went 8-8 his first year as a starter, the team’s first .500 finish. That brought expectations in 2008, only to see that team start 0-4, but they managed to match the 2007 record, which led to more expectations in 2009.
At the halfway point of that season they were 5-3 headed to Indianapolis. They lost that game by a field and that started a 4-game losing streak by a combined 18 points. It looked like the Kubiak era was over until the closed the season with a 4-game win streak to get them to nine wins for the first time, the last was a win over New England. They narrowly missed the playoffs, but it didn’t stop people of thinking Super Bowl the next season, which turned out to be their biggest disappointment yet.
A 4-2 start turned into a 6-10 finish, so when a 3-1 start to this season quickly turned to 3-3 it felt like another normal Houston Texan season, but it wasn’t, this team has something the others didn’t. They managed to win 7-straight despite losing starter after starter, and even some backups to those starters.
Their division-clinching win December 10th illustrated just how different this team was. Trailing by 13 at halftime with a 3rd string rookie quarterback, they figured out a way to win. Yet, I think that when thousands of fans met them at the airport that night, they did so because they thought that would be the only accomplishment they would get to celebrate. Its one thing to win a weakened AFC South with your top two quarterbacks and best defensive player on injured, but its another to make noise in the postseason.
Finishing the regular season with three straight losses only enhanced that belief, and that was the best thing for them. The energy that filled the building sixty minutes before kickoff wasn’t a nervous energy, it was a “we’re pumped to be here energy”. If we win, great, if not, it was a hell of a ride, and we can’t wait for next season. That rubbed off on the home team, sure, there were jitters early, but as Arian Foster said they weren’t nervous jitters, it was excitement, being somewhere they had never been before.
When they play Baltimore next week, they’ll face a team that won’t be happy to be there, they’ll face a team with pressure, a team that has been there before. That means they won’t be walking into the hornets nest the Bengals walked into Saturday. The Ravens fans will be excited to host a playoff game for the first time in five years, but they are doing so against a team they don’t care about, have no history with, and who they think they are a lot better than. That’s how most of the country will view at least, and that’s the way this Texan team likes it.
Maybe a 31-10 Wild Card win over the Bengals will be the final highlight of a successful season. Maybe it will turn out that beating a 9-7 Cincinnati team that didn’t beat another playoff team in 2011 is no big deal. It doesn’t matter. On Saturday, 71 thousand people showed up on time to Reliant Stadium wanting and hoping to see something special. After a decade of failure and disappointment, those 71 thousand people finally exited truly believing that they had something special.
2 comments:
You are a great blogger and interviewer. I especially enjoyed you asking Andre Johnson the tough questions in the locker room about whether or not he will be talking trash with former Miami players such as Ed Reed and Ray Lewis.
I wish I was in the playoffs.
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