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In 1997, Houston’s many football fans were suddenly left without a hometown team to cheer on for the first time since 1959. Their previous team, the Oilers, were taken by team owner Bud Adams to their new location in Tennessee (where they were renamed the Titans), and Houston fans faced the gloomy prospect of being without professional football for many years into the future. After all, the National Football League gave every indication clear that there were no expansion plans in the offing. Soon thereafter, however, the fateful decision was made to return pro football to the city of Cleveland, which would then be the thirty-first franchise in the NFL. The League’s preference for an even number of teams presented Houston with the opportunity to pursue a new franchise, which they subsequently won.

Difficult years

There were few fans or observers who would have expected the Texans to get off to anything but a rocky start in the NFL. Expansion teams generally take years to develop into legitimate contenders – Houston’s new team was no exception. The first five years of NFL play saw the Texans in the middle or bottom of their division each year. What’s worse, the team had made a serious mistake in using their 2002 first round pick in the draft to acquire David Carr. As quarterback of the team, he proved less than inspiring. However, the Texans didn’t wait long to bolster the position, and they decided in 2007 to trade with the Atlanta Falcons and bring in Mat Schaub. The newcomer Schaub was subsequently declared the starting quarterback for the team, while Carr was given free rein to sign with another franchise.

The 2007 and 2008 campaigns

The 2007 campaign got under way with the Texans winning their first two games of the season before the injury bug attacked the team with a vengeance. Schaub was out for a total of five complete games, and missed a good part of two more. Other team injuries mounted as well, and the Texans finished the season with a middle of the road record of eight wins and eight losses. Still, it was not a losing season, so fans had some reason to hope for improvement the following year.

The next season, Schaub’s team suffered two losses immediately, and then was forced out onto the road for its next three games to escape the hurricane damage the city experienced. A four-game stretch of wins in the middle of the year helped the team to avoid a losing season as they matched the previous year’s results. It was clear by this point that Schaub’s play had the team on a solid enough footing to compete every week – they now just needed to put together a winning record.

A winner at last

After the Houston team exploded in the early parts of the 2009 campaign to finish with five wins at the season’s halfway mark, playoff talk was in the air. The Texans then went on to lose four straight, though they could just as easily have won all four as well. Demonstrating that they were indeed a legitimate threat, they rebounded with victories in all four of the final contest to finish the 2009 season with a total record of 9 and 7. Though it looked briefly as though that might have been enough to qualify for the playoffs, in the end the team was one win short of climbing onto the path toward a possible Super Bowl. Nevertheless, there is no other way to view the 2009 campaign than as an unqualified success since it brought the franchise its first winning record and sets the stage for continued success into the future.

Freddie Brister is a huge fan of all sports and recommends checking out his Houston Texans Blanket and Houston Astros bedding at his shop.

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