When Will The Texans Be Competitive Again?

After kicking off the 2010s with their first AFC South Championship and playoff appearance and falling apart down the stretch in 2012, the Houston Texans spent the next decade under the spell of Bill O’Brien. The would consistently win the AFC South and forever fail to get past the divisional round of the NFL Playoffs. Despite bottoming out in 2013 and 2017, the Texans bounced to at least respectable every year. The 2014 Texans, O’Brien’s first team in Houston, didn’t rebuild. They were a talented team that had a black cat season in 2013. The 2017 Texans fell victim to an atrocious pass defense and a Deshaun Watson season-ending injury.

The last two seasons have been entirely different. The Texans saw their talent level plummet along with their win-loss record. The bounce-back never arrived. Houston won four games in 2020 and four games this past season, going 8-25, with half of their eight total wins coming against the Jacksonville Jaguars. Their one possession record flipped from 2019 to 2020 when Watson was no longer able to pull off the impossible. Last year, their turnover luck flipped, with Lovie Smith’s defense taking advantage of mistakes made in front of them. The current poor state of affairs isn’t the result of bad luck; it’s the result of terrible management and disastrous decisions.

Now, the Texans are officially rebuilding. Last year they tested some quasi-rebuild and signed a horde of veterans to short-term contracts to fill out their roster and try to pull off some respectable six or seven win season. It didn’t happen. This year, Houston has to eat dead money but does have the third overall pick in the 2022 NFL Draft, along with possible Deshaun Watson and Laremy Tunsil trades that could add first round selections to their draft chest. There are resources now, even though the state of the roster is still bleak.

It’s a dark, dense cave without a glimmer of light. We all want the same thing. We want the Houston Texans to be a good football team. The question this offseason, and in future offseasons, is when this transformation is going to happen. If Houston nails the Watson trade, and the draft picks resulting from it, it could happen by 2023...maybe. If not, it’s going to be a long time until football is fun and beautiful in Houston again.

So I turn to to you. When do you think the Texans will be competitive again?