After beginning the season with a pair of 20-point victories, the Texans are 2-0 for the fourth time in six seasons.
They’ve never been 3-0.
If the Texans want to be taken seriously — if they want to earn the kind of respect perennial Super Bowl contenders receive — they should defeat the Broncos in Denver.
When it comes to making the playoffs or winning the Super Bowl, the Texans don’t have to beat the Broncos.
For instance, since the current playoff format was implemented in 1990, 64 percent of 2-0 teams and 76 percent of 3-0 teams made the playoffs.
During that same 22-year span, eight teams that started 2-1 won the Super Bowl, including the Giants last year and the Packers the year before.
Eleven teams that started 3-0 won the Super Bowl.
What Sunday’s game means to the Texans transcends the won-loss column. It means respect. It means the kind of recognition that comes with doing something most don’t think you can do.
Like the Cincinnati game last year in which rookie quarterback T.J. Yates threw the winning touchdown pass to Kevin Walter that allowed the Texans to win the AFC South.
Winning at Denver is no easy task. The Texans should have beaten the Broncos in 2010. They had the game won, but they blew it when they let quarterback Tim Tebow pull out a 24-23 victory.
The odds say the Texans won’t win this game. They’ve never beaten quarterback Peyton Manning on the road. They were 0-9 against him at Indianapolis.
But the Texans have never had Wade Phillips as defensive coordinator when they played Manning.
The Texans are coming off, statistically at least, the best defensive game in team history. They allowed 117 yards in the 27-7 win at Jacksonville. Subtract a 32-yard pass completion, and they would have surrendered 85 yards.
The defense was so good it didn’t allow a third-down conversion. Nine times the Jaguars faced third down, and nine times they had to punt. In two games, the Texans are allowing an average of only 190 yards and 2-of-19 third-down conversions.
Shutting down Miami’s Ryan Tannehill and Jacksonville’s Blaine Gabbert was pretty impressive. Now let’s see them do it to Manning, who will be eager to redeem himself after a loss Monday night.
The Texans’ best chance to start 3-0 relies on a strategy similar to the Jacksonville game. Run the ball to control the clock. It keeps your defense fresh. More importantly, it keeps the opposing offense on the bench.
If the Texans can come close to doing to Denver what they did to Jacksonville — running 48 times for 216 yards — it says here they’ll make franchise history. If coach Gary Kubiak unleashes the double-headed monster of Arian Foster and Ben Tate again, the Texans might remain unbeaten.
If they lose, they won’t be able to blame it on the high altitude. Kubiak played and coached in the Mile High City for 20 years. He knows the effect the altitude can have on an athlete.
“I think it’s been proven that if you think you’re going to go (to Denver) early to get used to it, that doesn’t work,” he said Monday. “But just to fly in town on Saturday and play on Sunday, I don’t think it affected us the last time we played there.”
The Texans didn’t let the altitude get to them. They let Tebow get to them. Now he’s relocated to New Jersey.
“There are no excuses or anything,” Kubiak said. “We’ve got to play good football, and we got to do it at their place.”
When the Texans played at Denver in 2010, Kubiak admitted the game was special because of all the time he spent there.
Asked the same question, he smiled and said, “They’re all special.”
Yeah, they all are special, but not like this one because of what it can mean to a franchise that’s struggled for so long to develop the kind of identity that means instant respect. And the way to get that respect is to earn it, starting Sunday in the Mile High City.
john.mcclain@chron.com
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Texans will have to buck history for team’s first 3-0 start
Posted on September 17, 2012 at 11:27 pm by
John McClain in
General
