18 weeks of regular season football are in the books, and that means 14 teams are left standing with one goal, one dream still in tact... join the greatest fraternity of teams in all of sports as Super Bowl champions.
For the third consecutive year, the Houston Texans are one of those 14 teams. Unlike the last two years, the Texans' trek toward a Super Bowl title won't begin at NRG Stadium, but now more than ever before, there seems to be a legitimate belief that this will be the group that brings the Lombardi Trophy to Houston.
And for the record, that's a belief that belongs not just to loyal, passionate fans of the Houston Texans, but more importantly, the players and coaches who have made this one of the most dangerous teams in the Playoff field.
“When we broke it down, I told them: 'We’re four games away from being world champions. Whatever you have to sacrifice, whatever you have to give up, don’t look too far ahead, but really be in the moment, really look what we’re striving for,’" Will Anderson Jr. said after Sunday's win over the Indianapolis Colts, according to Aaron Wilson of KPRC2 Houston. "Man, we’re a couple of games away from being exactly where we want to be at.”
To be exact, the Texans are four wins from a Super Bowl title, but only two wins from reaching a point that no other team in franchise history has been to, which is playing in the AFC Championship Game. Each of the last two years, Houston has been bounced in the Divisional Round of the Playoffs... the very same fate as the 2011, 2012, 2016 and 2019 teams. But this will be the first time in franchise history that the Texans have made the postseason three years in a row.
Perhaps with that postseason experience under their belts, the third time will be the charm for the Texans this year. But for all intents and purposes, the Texans have already accrued a great deal of Playoff-like experience this season, having to dig themselves out of 0-3 and 3-5 holes that forced every game to feel as though it had postseason stakes.
“We just know what playoff football looks like,” Pro Bowl cornerback Derek Stingley Jr. said on Sunday. “We treat every game like a playoff game.”
“Nothing shifts for us when it comes to our mindset,” DeMeco Ryans added. “Our mindset never changes. We don’t turn it up because we’re in the playoffs. We continue to grind out, put the work in, do what we have to do to practice really well throughout the week. No matter who our opponent is, we got to have a great week of practice and that shows up whenever that game is. How we work throughout the week, it’ll show up then. Our process and mindset doesn’t change.”
Months of games with virtual win-or-go home stakes have hopefully calloused the Texans and given this team a toughness and resilience on both sides of the ball that is required this time of the year, when the intensity and pressure get dialed up to the max. But the question is, do the Texans have another gear they can get to as everyone else starts playing just as desperate?
We'll get that answer in exactly one week, when the Texans make the trip up north to take on the Pittsburgh Steelers in the final game of the Wild Card Round of the 2025 Playoffs.