IT'S ABOUT TIME!
How silent majority is finally giving Texans much-needed reality check
Jun 24, 2021, 1:49 pm
This is how an NFL team operates in the Bizarro World. Composite image by Jack Brame.
About six or seven years ago, a Houston Texans official told me privately - "you can't quote me on this" - the Texans had more people on their season ticket wait list than the Astros and Rockets sold actual season tickets. Of course the Texans official was bragging, but I'm thinking he probably was right.
Last week a friend told me, "Guess who just called me? The Houston Texans! They told me I could buy season tickets. I made it to the top of their wait list."
It's not such a long list. Not anymore. Three years ago, my friend filled out the form to buy season tickets. The Texans were serial AFC South champs and hotshot Deshaun Watson was the darling of Houston. "Fine, you're Number 26,000 (and something)," he was told.
Last year, he moved up the list to No. 20,000 (and something).
This year, how many do you want?
This means over the past three years, enough Texans season ticket holders didn't renew their tickets to have the team offer those seats to at least 26,000 people who also said no thanks. Although, given the current state of the Texans, they might not have been so polite. I asked my friend, so did you buy 'em?
He said, "Hell no! And they keep calling and emailing me! Actually my wife was more against buying Texans tickets than I am. She is a big football fan and used to love the Texans. But for her, the last straw was when they released J.J. Watt.
"The Texans have sold out every regular season game in their history, almost 200 games in a row since Sept. 8, 2002 when they defeated the Dallas Cowboys at Reliant Stadium. There is a question of whether the streak of sellouts really will end in 2021, since the county may swoop in and buy any tickets that become available. The Texans have an insanely sweet deal with Harris County. This isn't like Pittsburgh or Green Bay or Chicago where fans bequeath tickets to their next of kin, and long-lost second cousins come out of the woodwork to claim the old guy's seats.
The love affair between the Texans and football-crazy fans in Houston is over. There's a thin line between love and hate and the Texans crossed it. In the past two seasons, the Texans have said goodbye to their best receiver DeAndre Hopkins and greatest player and humanitarian ever J.J. Watt. Their dynamic All-Pro quarterback Watson is accused of sexual misconduct by 22 women, seems to have a creepy massage fetish and wants to be traded. This is how an NFL team operates in the Bizarro World, where "us hate beauty and us love ugliness."
The front office looks like the cast of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Team owner Cal McNair is regarded as a doofus, his Svengali Jack Easterby a whack job and former coach Bill O'Brien a maniac. Like George Costanza, every instinct they've had since original team owner Bob McNair died in 2018 has been wrong. The one adult in the room, team president Jamey Rootes, resigned last February. What's left is a 4-12 team with a new head coach with no experience and a new general manager with no experience and a new starting quarterback who's really a backup. Who's the biggest name on the team? How many Texans players would you recognize if you were sitting at Denny's enjoying a Moons Over My Hammy sandwich? The most noteworthy Texans player might be safety Jonathan Owens, and that's mainly because he's Simone Biles' boyfriend. There is very little to like about this team and even less to cheer about. The Texans are closer to the Jaguars than they are Super Bowl challengers.
And the Texans wonder why their season ticket waitlist has been whittled down to absolute zero?
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There was a conversation Cleveland guard Donovan Mitchell had during training camp, the topic being all the teams that were generating the most preseason buzz in the Eastern Conference. Boston was coming off an NBA championship. New York got Karl-Anthony Towns. Philadelphia added Paul George.
The Cavs? Not a big topic in early October. And Mitchell fully understood why.
“What have we done?” Mitchell asked. “They don't talk about us. That's fine. We'll just hold ourselves to our standard.”
That approach seems to be working.
For the first time in 36 seasons — yes, even before the LeBron James eras in Cleveland — the Cavaliers are atop the NBA at the 25-game mark. They're 21-4, having come back to earth a bit following a 15-0 start but still better than anyone in the league at this point.
“We've kept our standards pretty high,” Cavaliers coach Kenny Atkinson said. “And we keep it going.”
The Cavs are just one of the surprise stories that have emerged as the season nears the one-third-done mark. Orlando — the only team still unbeaten at home — is off to its best start in 16 years at 17-9 and having done most of that without All-Star forward Paolo Banchero. And Houston is 16-8, behind only the Cavs, Boston, Oklahoma City and Memphis so far in the race for the league's best record.
Cleveland was a playoff team a year ago, as was Orlando. And the Rockets planted seeds for improvement last year as well; an 11-game winning streak late in the season fueled a push where they finished 41-41 in a major step forward after a few years of rebuilding.
“We kind of set that foundation last year to compete with everybody,” Rockets coach Ime Udoka said. “Obviously, we had some ups and downs with winning and losing streaks at times, but to finish the season the way we did, getting to .500, 11-game winning streak and some close losses against high-level playoff teams, I think we kind of proved that to ourselves last year that that's who we're going to be.”
A sign of the respect the Rockets are getting: Oddsmakers at BetMGM Scorebook have made them a favorite in 17 of 24 games so far this season, after favoring them only 30 times in 82 games last season.
“Based on coaches, players, GMs, people that we all know what they're saying, it seems like everybody else is taking notice as well,” Udoka said.
They're taking notice of Orlando as well. The Magic lost their best player and haven't skipped a beat.
Banchero's injury after five games figured to doom Orlando for a while, and the Magic went 0-4 immediately after he tore his oblique. Entering Tuesday, they're 14-3 since — and now have to regroup yet again. Franz Wagner stepped into the best-player-on-team role when Banchero got hurt, and now Wagner is going to miss several weeks with the exact same injury.
Ask Magic coach Jamahl Mosley how the team has persevered, and he'll quickly credit everyone but himself. Around the league, it's Mosley getting a ton of the credit — and rightly so — for what Orlando is doing.
“I think that has to do a lot with Mose. ... I have known him a long time,” Phoenix guard Bradley Beal said. “A huge fan of his and what he is doing. It is a testament to him and the way they’ve built this team.”
The Magic know better than most how good Cleveland is, and vice versa. The teams went seven games in an Eastern Conference first-round series last spring, the Cavs winning the finale at home to advance to Round 2.
Atkinson was brought in by Cleveland to try and turn good into great. The job isn't anywhere near finished — nobody is raising any banners for “best record after 25 games” — but Atkinson realized fairly early that this Cavs team has serious potential.
“We’re so caught up in like the process of improve, improve, improve each game, improve each practice," Atkinson said. “That’s kind of my philosophy. But then you hit 10-0, and obviously the media starts talking and all that, and you’re like, ‘Man, this could be something special brewing here.’”