The Texans’ remarkable turnaround season seems to keep getting better.
Just one day after securing an AFC playoff spot, on Sunday they clinched the AFC South title as a result of the Tennessee Titans defeating the Jacksonville Jaguars in their regular-season finale. The Texans punched their ticket into the playoffs Saturday when they beat the Indianapolis Colts on the road to make a return to the postseason for the first time since 2019.
Now the Texans, the AFC’s fourth seed, will host the fifth-seeded Cleveland Brown (11-6) in a rematch of their Christmas Eve matchup in which the Browns 36-22 while rookie quarterback C.J. Stroud was out with a concussion.
“That’s what’s special about it,” first-year Texans coach DeMeco Ryans said following Saturday night’s win to secure at least a wild-card spot. “We didn’t come this far just to get this far. Guys they wanted it. Our guys wanted this opportunity, and they went out and had the determination to go and make it happen. It wasn’t easy.”
The Texans are making a dramatic return to the postseason after a few losing seasons that resulted in the team not winning more than four games in any of the seasons since the 2019 playoffs and going through three head coaches during that time, two of whom were one-and-done coaches.
After going 3-13-1 last season under Lovie Smith, the Texans went 10-7 this season to make an unexpected return to the playoffs.
While the dramatic turnaround was a complete team effort from the front office down to the players and coaches, much of the credit is placed on Ryans, who is in his first year as s head football coach and also Stroud, who has been a sensation since the Texans picked him No.2 overall in last spring’s NFL Draft.
The Texans were able to sit back and watch the final day of the regular season with the only unknown being if they would be a wild-card team or if they would be crowned the AFC South champs and earn the right to host the Browns, who are a wild-card following an impressive campaign.
“What’s next? Enjoy this,” Ryans said late Saturday night after a 23-19 win over the Indianapolis Colts. “We enjoy this moment for sure, enjoy tonight, and get to sit back and watch football (Sunday), see where we’ll be going, who we’ll be playing, who will be at home. There’s a lot of things that can happen that we know. We get to sit back and watch now. We get to breathe and not be in the last-second situations anymore. We get to sit back and watch the other teams play.”
