The Houston Texans entered the National Football League in 2002, but they were unable to secure a winning season until 2009. The Texans have made the postseason in the past two seasons, but they were unable to advance past the AFC Divisional Round each time. The Texans entered this season as bonafide favorites by most people to represent the AFC in the Super Bowl. The Texans started the season with two straight come from behind victories over the San Diego Chargers and Tennessee Titans respectively. In both games the Texans were heavily favored, but they had to scrap and claw to get to the winner’s circle in both games. Now after Sunday night’s loss to the Indianapolis Colts, the Texans have now lost six games in a row. The six straight losses by the Texans have come in a variety of ways.
In Week 4, Houston blew a 20-3 lead to the Seattle Seahawks. This past Sunday night the Texans were up on the Colts 24-6 in the second half before Indianapolis rallied to win 27-24. In the loss to the Colts, Texans place kicker Randy Bullock missed three field goals including a 55-yard attempt as time expired. On the season Bullock is 13-for-21 in his field goals and all of his misses on the season have been beyond 40 yards. The Texans have been done in by their quarterbacking this year as well as their signal callers had five consecutive games in which an interception was returned for a touchdown against them.
Matt Schaub entered the season as the Texans starting quarterback, but after a 2-4 start to the season Schuab suffered an injury in Houston’s Week 6 loss to the St. Louis Rams and since then Texans head coach Gary Kubiak has decided to go with second year quarterback Case Keenum as the team’s starting quarterback. Prior to his injury Schaub had been surprisingly ineffective. In his first five starts this season Schaub threw at least one interception in each game. For the season Schaub has thrown 9 interceptions to only 8 touchdowns. This is a far cry from a quarterback in Schaub that was selected to the Pro Bowl last season as he threw for 4,008 yards with 22 touchdown passes. The bottom officially fell out for Schaub last month when he was confronted at his home by two angry Texan fans following a loss.
Texans defensive end J.J. Watt is the reigning NFL Defensive Player of the Year as he recorded 20.5 sacks in 2012 and he was a one man wrecking crew. This season through 8 games Watt only has 5.5 sacks as he has been consistently double and triple teamed.
The pain of the Texans season was further magnified on Sunday night when Kubiak collapsed on his way to the locker room at halftime. Kubiak was rushed to a nearby hospital in Houston in what has since been diagnosed as a transient ischemic attack. Kubiak’s illness left Texans defensive coordinator Wade Phillips as the man calling the shots for the football team in the second half. No timetable has been set as to when Kubiak will be healthy enough to return to coaching.
Coming into their game on Sunday night there was optimism by the Texans as a victory over the Colts would have left them only two games behind the division leaders in the AFC South with eight games remaining and another meeting between the two teams later in the season. Now the Texans are 2-6, four games behind the Colts and theoretically five games behind Indianapolis after losing to them. Now the Texans are in 14th place in the AFC with only the top six teams qualifying for the playoffs. With the success that the Kansas City Chiefs and Denver Broncos are both having in the AFC West this season, that only leaves one wild card slot for the other teams in the AFC. With the surprising emergence of the New York Jets, San Diego Chargers, Cleveland Browns, and Tennessee Titans, the Texans have their work cut out for them in the second half of the season just to get back into contention. More than ever Houston must rely on their defense which is currently the top rated unit in the NFL and their power running game. But the Texans running game is currently ailing as running back Arian Foster is dealing with a back and hamstring injury while running back Ben Tate suffered cracked ribs in the loss to the Colts.
Now the Texans must face the Arizona Cardinals this Sunday who have the 9th overall defense in the NFL this season and they h\ave forced 18 turnovers.
At this point of the season we expected the Texans to be priming for a playoff run. Instead they are clinging for their playoff lives with no end in sight to this losing streak. In July when training camp began the Texans had aspirations of visiting New York City this February for the Super Bowl. Now the Texans next trip to New York will appear to be delayed as it more than likely will not come until next May and the NFL Draft.
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