After the Houston Texans lost their fourth game in a row to start the season on the first Sunday of October, DeMeco Ryans said he couldn’t believe his team had lost.
“I’m in shock,” Ryans said after the loss. “I still can’t believe what happened. It’s unbelievable.”
Advertisement
Texans fans might have been uttering those same sentiments in homes from Corpus Christi to Cypress after Sunday’s 34-30 loss to the Dallas Cowboys. But those words didn’t come out of Ryans’ mouth a few days ago.
The quote is from 18 years ago, after the Indianapolis Colts came back from a 17-point deficit in the final five minutes to send the Texans to 0-4 on Oct. 5, 2008.
That 31-27 loss was the first time Ryans lost four games in a row during his NFL career. Sunday’s defeat to the Cowboys marked the latest time it has happened.
“From the standpoint of shock, it’s where we are,” Ryans said Monday. “As I told the guys yesterday, we haven’t done the things necessary to earn a win. When you do those things, you play team football, you play together, that’s when you’ll win.”
Advertisement
Of seven teams Ryans has played on or coached that had a losing streak of at least four games, only one made the playoffs: the 2021 San Francisco 49ers. The 49ers lost four straight from Week 3 to Week 7, with a bye mixed in, to fall to 2-4. They then won eight of their next 11 games to earn a wild-card spot. San Francisco won two playoff games before losing to the Los Angeles Rams in the NFC Championship Game.
That’s just part of the history that isn’t on the Texans’ side as Houston hopes to work its way back into the playoff hunt.
Since the playoff format expanded to seven teams in each conference in 2020, about 12% of teams that made the playoffs had experienced a losing streak of at least four games. The odds are even longer for teams that start 0-4. Only one, the 1992 San Diego Chargers, has ever made the playoffs after dropping their first four games.
Yet Ryans isn’t thinking about what the past says about the team’s future.
Advertisement
“I’m not concerned about it right now,” Ryans said. “I’m concerned about finding a way to play better, coach better and go beat the Tennessee Titans.”
While Ryans might have experience battling back from losing four straight, some players on the team haven’t dealt with a month of losing in the NFL or college.
Will Anderson Jr., who has lived up to his preseason billing as a Defensive Player of the Year favorite despite the team’s disappointing start, said he has never lost four games in a row to start a season.
Not in his first three years as a pro with the Texans. Not during his three years at Alabama. Not as a varsity high school player at Dutchtown High in Georgia. Not even as a youth player.
Advertisement
Anderson said that while this is a new experience for him, it has brought the kind of adversity that reveals who is a dog and who is not.
“It’s easy to give up,” Anderson said. “When you’ve built yourself a type of way, when you’re around people who are built just like you, you overcome that adversity because you’re around the same people who have the same mindset as you.”
Someone who has dealt with an 0-4 start and withstood it is quarterback C.J. Stroud, albeit in a very different situation. During his junior year of high school in California, Stroud lost the first four games of the season. Then Rancho Cucamonga High rattled off seven straight wins, including a playoff victory.
Stroud doesn’t think there’s much to take from that experience – it was high school football, after all – but he said there’s one thing the Texans can do that the 2016 Rancho Cucamonga Cougars did.
Advertisement
“I would say the main thing is block out the noise,” Stroud said. “That’s what we did when I was 17 years old, and we’ll do it now.”
The noise likely isn’t going away, no matter what happens this weekend in Nashville. But a loss to the Titans, also 0-4, would turn the volume up to death metal concert levels.
Even without the noise, it’s a game the Texans must win. As long as the odds are now, someone before them has at least fought back from similar odds.
No 0-5 team has ever made the playoffs.
“One of the only glimpses of hope is that every game that we’ve lost, we could have won,” cornerback Kamari Lassiter said. “We could easily be 4-0. That’s just the frustrating part about it.”
Subscribe
There’s more to Houston with the Chronicle. Subscribe today for just 25¢.
This article originally published at What history says about DeMeco Ryans, C.J. Stroud, Texans and 0-4 starts.
Comments
Advertisement