Under the Radar Texans Show Signs of Life

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Under-the-radar Texans show signs of life

JACKSONVILLE, FLA. -- Rick Smith had spent a decade in Denver with Houston coach Gary Kubiak, so he already knew what was coming. During Jacksonville's final timeout Sunday, Houston's rookie general manager explained to Texans owner Bob McNair high up in their box at Alltel Stadium why their rookie coach was about to gamble and go for it on fourth-and-inches from his 41 with 1 minute, 40 seconds left and the Texans leading by three points.


"I turned to Bob and said, 'He's not going to punt this ball,'" Smith said.


Sure enough, Kubiak was taking assistant head coach Mike Sherman's advice and telling backup quarterback Sage Rosenfels, in for an injured David Carr, to run "12 Jab." Backup running back Samkon Gado converted behind the tandem of guard Fred Weary and rookie right tackle Eric Winston. After two Rosenfels' kneel downs, the Texans' 12-game road losing streak was over and their season sweep of the Jaguars complete with a 13-10 victory. The road losing streak was the league's longest.

Houston, we have progress. A second win over Jacksonville in four weeks was more than just one small step in the recovery and rebuilding from last season's 2-14 disaster under Dom Capers. No, surviving a defensive struggle with one of the league's best, playing turnover-free football on the road, and clinching it with a gutsy call -- it was more like a giant leap for this improving, suddenly scrappy young team.


The Texans play host to the Bills on Sunday, and with home games against Tennessee and Cleveland and a visit to Oakland remaining, finishing 7-9 and achieving a five-game improvement from last season no longer seems overly ambitious for a team that got off to an 0-3 start.

After a narrow defeat the previous week to the Giants at the Meadowlands in which it took a lead into the fourth quarter, Houston experienced the satisfaction of closing a win. The game didn't produce many highlights, especially in a day when the Bengals and Chargers combined to score 90 points and Saints and Steelers 69, but the outcome was a big deal for the Texans, who are growing up under the radar.

The night before the game, Kubiak talked to his team about the need to play aggressively. And when the moment of truth arrived, the rookie coach practiced what he'd preached.


"Was it the smartest thing? Maybe not," Kubiak said after the game of his bold fourth-down decision. "But for where this team is going, we needed to send some messages about how we're going to play, what we're going to be about. Our guys deserved to go and run that play."


Said Smith: "If you can't get an inch, you don't deserve to win. [The call] sends a message that, 'Hey, I believe in you guys that you can do it with the game on the line.' "


"I loved it," said defensive end Anthony Weaver, who came over from Baltimore in the offseason and whose interception Sunday was one of the four Houston takeaways. "Not only did it say he believes in them [the offense], it showed he believed in us that we would stop them if we had to."


And with good reason. Defensively, the Texans were pretty soft the season's first three games as they searched for chemistry under new coordinator Richard Smith, allowing averages of 483.7 yards and 32.7 points. But over the past six games, Houston is yielding just 277.8 yards and 18 points (15.6 when not including a fumble and punt return touchdown) per game.


McNair, Kubiak and former general manager Charley Casserly were roundly criticized for passing on Reggie Bush and hometown hero Vince Young and taking defensive end Mario Williams with the first overall pick of the draft. The jury is still out on that decision, and it'll be another few years before we can arrive at a fair verdict.

In the meantime, the Texans are getting great production from their 2006 draft class. Charles Spencer (third round, Pittsburgh) looked like a pretty decent left tackle prospect before suffering a broken leg in Week 2. Winston, a Miami Hurricane taken one pick after Spencer, will step in at right tackle now that the season is over for Zach Wiegert (torn ACL).


Sixth-round pick Wali Lundy, from Virginia, leads the team with 343 rushing yards. Tight end Owen Daniels (fourth-round, Wisconsin) has a team-leading five touchdowns. Williams, the former North Carolina State star, has settled in and leads the team with 4½ sacks despite playing with plantar fasciitis in his right foot. But Williams hasn't even been the Texans' best rookie on defense.


"The real surprise has been this DeMeco Ryans kid," Kubiak said of the linebacker taken in the second round from Alabama. "We put him at the 'Mike' and he's just taken our defense over." Ryans, through his attitude and preparation, has asserted himself as Houston's leader on defense. He calls the defensive signals, and the coaching staff selected him as a captain for Sunday's game.


Ryans has a team-best 79 tackles, which ranks fifth in the league and best among rookies, and is a leading candidate for Defensive Rookie of the Year. His hit on Jags quarterback David Garrard produced an interception by Morlon Greenwood that led to a field goal and a 10-0 lead.


Carr has bounced back from his third-quarter benching against Tennessee three games ago -- he was turnover-prone -- and played "clean" football for the most part the past two weeks. Houston turned it over just once the past two games. Still, "he's got a long way to go," Kubiak said.


By no means are the Texans "there" yet. This team still needs a stud running back, a left tackle and a ball-hawking safety. And then there's the matter of consistency. They have yet to show they can string wins together.


The good news? Kubiak likes the overall work ethic of his young team, one that is growing mentally tougher each week. "I like the emotion we're playing with as a football team," Kubiak told the Houston media Monday. "I think we've played with a little bit more emotion in the last few weeks than we did early.


"The biggest thing I see from the group is when something bad happens in a game right now, our football team doesn't linger. I think that's a sign of guys getting a little bit more mature and I think playing a little bit better together."


Indeed, everyone's working together to get this franchise on track. In the victorious postgame lockerroom, the media, some of whom had cameras, gathered around Weaver, who was wearing an athletic T-shirt. Tony Wyllie, the team's vice president of communications, interrupted the interview and handed Weaver a dress shirt and tie, even going so far as to help with the knot. Weaver wasn't happy that his cufflinks didn't match. It's long been a rule of Wyllie's that his players project an image of professionalism.


As for the Texans' on-the-field makeover, it isn't complete, but they're cleaning up nicely.