2011 NFL Regular Season: An analysis of highs and lows for the Houston Texans – NFL Feature
The Houston Texans is the only team in the National Football League (NFL), which has more than one reason to celebrate the 2011 regular season as its success story.
It is for the first time in the franchise's history that the team has finished atop the American Football Conference (AFC) South division.
They were finished there and then still went on to win the AFC South division, that too for the first time in the franchise's history.
Houston went a step further to claim their berth in the playoff, making it their first ever since becoming a league team.
They were hailed and celebrated as heroes on their return to Houston after finishing their regular season, which unfortunately was on the losing note.
The Texans lost their final game of the regular season to their divisional arch-rivals, the Tennessee Titans, with a close margin of 22 to 23 points.
The team, however, had opened the season on a winning note.
Texans fought the Indianapolis Colts and handed them their very first defeat of the season, beating them with a clear and wide difference of 34-7.
Bad luck for the Colts, as their loss in the first game against the Texans, proved to be a trend setter for them.
Indianapolis went on to lose 13 consecutive games before ending the losing streak in their 14th game.
Texans have ended the season with 10 wins and six losses and finished the year with an overall .625 percent.
They are probably the only side to have been confronted with so many injury related problems, the worst being the injuries faced by their star quarterbacks, Matt Schaub and Matt Leinart.
Furthermore, their wide receiver, Andre Johnson, missed as many as nine games due to his hamstring injury.
Houston however, was successful in minimising their chances of being affected by these injuries and absences.
They had been on regular reshuffling and made changes in their line-up to offset the injuries' impact by promoting their fifth round draft pick, Taylor Jonathan (T.J.) Yates, at the number one quarterback spot.
Yates performed reasonably well in their first two games before failing in the next three starts.
They also hired Kellen Clemens as the backup to Yates but released him the very next week.
Houston then signed veterans, Jake Delhomme and Jeff Garcia, to be their number three and four quarterbacks.
There was a fear at one point that the Texans might lose the race for playoff without their key players but to the surprise of many, won both the division and playoff berth.
The biggest and highly important development that came for the Texans in the past season was the joining of their defensive co-ordinator, Wade Philips.
Philips has rebuilt the team’s defence from its 30th position in the league in 2010 to make it the second best before the following one came to an end.
The Texans have credited him for building the side as a playoff outfit and winning them their first playoff berth.
One of the other highlights of the 2011 regular season was their record seven-game winning streak, which ended with their loss against the Carolina Panthers into Week 15 of the season.
However, the loss was too late to affect the Texans’ chances to be the AFC South champions.
Looking at the Texans’ performance throughout the 2011 regular season, overall, their ability to stage a late comeback had been the main strength of their wins.
Many teams have taken them lightly after pushing them down in the score at the end of first-half score.
The complacency shown by their opponents in the second-half helped them claim wins in a number of games.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own and in no way represent Bettor.com's official editorial policy.
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