I was having a conversation with MDC earlier this week, and I made an unforgiveable confession.

As a 27 year old male, and die-hard Texans fan, the team that lured me to becoming a football fan was the Dallas Cowboys. I mean, I can remember being a big Warren Moon fan, hell, I was a Vikings fan for a while(I lived right outside the Twin Cities for a couple of years in the late 80’s), but when I was playing QB out in the street, I was Aikman. When I pulled in a sweet one-handed catch, I was Michael Irvin. When I finally made that perfect spin move to juke the hell out of a guy in a game of touch football, you damn well better believe that I Emmitt Smith for a few seconds there(it really was a thing of beauty, I promise).

I mention all of this to say this: The Houston Texans are on the cusp of being to kids nationwide what the Cowboys of yesteryear were to this depressingly impressionable kid. Well, OK, I agree that it’s pretty damn premature to be throwing that kind of prediction around, but I’ll be damned if the stage doesn’t seem to be set for this kind of takeover. Our team in Houston has gone from being considered a weak, finesse group of guys, to a true blue-collar smashmouth squad. They(screw it, I’m going to break one of my cardinal rules and refer to the team as ‘we’. I’ve invested enough in them for this, dammit)have arguably the best RB in the game. We have a quiet giant, a future HOF WR. We have a DE that dropped out of school to deliver pizzas before going to Wisconsin, and ending up a top-15 draft pick(and also managing a pick-6 in his first career playoff game). We even have a #1 overall draft pick that was highly argued against by most of the fans, but ended up being a fan favorite who ISN’T EVEN PLAYING FOR OUR #2 RANKED DEFENSE. To top it all off, we have a not our first string QB, not our second string QB, but our third string QB going out and winning the franchise’s first EVER playoff game. Of such things are dreams and lifelong fans made of.

I was, unfortunately, forced to work today. Joy of all joys, my shift was supposed to start at 3:30 this afternoon, and to toss salt on an open wound, I was called in early, so I got to work at 2, so I even missed the pregame fun. That said, I have to admit that, even listening to the radio, I’ve never been so excited by a single game in my life. I may or may not have teared up on several separate occasions(JJ TD, AJ TD, Victory formation). I’m pretty sure I freaked a bunch of people out with my screams, arms thrown up(out my car window), and random swerving when those things happened. Every time something good happened. Every. Time.

Anyway, I’m not sure what the point of this fanpost is, but good lord, I’m freaking happy right now. I guess I just had to get it out and share with someone else who might feel the same.

We’re the proud fans of a winning playoff team. T.J. Yates has as many postseason wins as Tony Romo. Your Texans are 2 games away from playing in Indy. I’m fucking excited.