Monday, August 12, 2002 Updated: August 13, 12:49 PM ET
Lift Off
By by Chad Millman
After the Houston Texans walked through the media receiving line at their training camp hotel, and after they checked into their new home for the next six weeks, the first event on the schedule was a chapel service. No hitting, no passing, no yelling, no sprinting for the NFL's newest team, not just yet.
First pray, then play.
David Carr, the matinee-idol rookie quarterback, was there. So was head coach Dom Capers. The preacher told those assembled that they had been given gifts. He warned them about sin and temptation and Satan in the guise of greedy fans. And he reminded them of their purpose: serve their families, serve their team, serve their city.
Especially their city. That's what a lot of people in Houston would say. This city's had it hard when it comes to pro football. Forget about the consecutive losses in AFC championship games to the Steelers in the late 1970s. Or blowing the largest playoff lead in NFL history to the Bills in 1992. Or even the fact that the team's contributions to the game include the run 'n shoot and Bum Phillips.
No, the lowest point in Houston history came six years ago, when the biggest city in the most football-crazy state in the union allowed a professional football team to leave town. Losing the Oilers to Tennessee was a blow to the city's very soul, tantamount to New Orleans letting Bourbon Street relocate to Salt Lake City.
"The way we left was, well, it was just crappy for everyone, fans and players," says Texans defensive tackle Gary Walker, who played for the Oilers their last year in Houston. "One day we're working out, and they just tell us to leave, we're shutting the place down."
Move over Dallas, there's a new America's Team.
The Oilers had always suffered from an inferiority complex, playing ugly stepsister to the sleek and sexy Cowboys, who, even as the NFL's original expansion team back in 1960, got more respect than the Oilers, forever stigmatized in many Texas eyes for their AFL origins. The Cowboys wore a star on their helmets, built a hole in their roof so God could watch their games, and were the most popular team in the nation playing America's favorite sport.
The Oilers, meanwhile, were small-town stuff, barely drawing outside of Houston. The Astrodome may once have been the Eighth Wonder of the World, but it had long since become a cold, soulless venue, perfectly suited to a perennially lackluster team. Truth is, losing the Oilers was more a blow to Houston's ego than to its heart.
But: "We're a major city," says owner Bob McNair. "And these days major cities are defined by whether or not they have an NFL franchise." McNair never dreamed of owning an NFL team, never saw himself playing a bigger-than-life-size game of chess against Jerry Jones. Although he lived five houses away from Oilers owner Bud Adams and used to carpool to games with him, McNair was never more than a casual fan. But when he sold his energy company, Cogen Technologies, to Enron for $1.42 billion in 1999, McNair recognized that he was "the only one in town who had the political and financial ability to bring a team back here." Three years later, the Texans -- underwritten, in effect, by Enron cash -- are supposed to help restore civic pride to a city with a self-image tarnished by Enron.
McNair realized from the outset that his team needed to become, in every way, what the Cowboys already were -- Texas' Team. So he turned bringing pro football back to Houston into a statewide referendum. He gave speeches in San Antonio. He held focus groups in Austin. Then he picked a team name that embraced everybody from Alvin to Amarillo, El Paso to Texarkana. And for the team logo, he selected a pumped-up version of the Texas Longhorn, molded in the image of the Lone Star State flag. "Not everyone in Houston works in the oil business," says McNair. "But we're all Texans."
Still, expansion teams like Jacksonville and Carolina had clean slates. Cleveland got back their team name and all their history. But the Texans have to balance the lingering effects of the Oil Spill of '96 with building a legacy of their own. "Right now," says Capers, who's coaching his second expansion team, "we have no idea who we are."
This much is certain: Capers has a high tolerance for the growing pains of expansion teams. Flashback to 1995. The Carolina Panthers, Capers' first expansion adventure, start out 05, and a front-page headline in The Charlotte Observer predicts the team will go 016. Instead, they win 20 of their next 29 games, advancing to the NFC championship in their second season, with Capers named Coach of the Year. But then the team goes backward -- practically inevitable, since it's built around good veteran football players with only a couple of years left. By Year 3, with fans and the local media confidently looking forward to a Super Bowl, the Panthers are running on gimpy legs. After Year 4, and a second-straight losing season, Capers -- no longer a genius -- is fired. "We knew we were in trouble after two years," Capers says now. "We had a false sense of how good we actually were."
That won't be a problem in Houston. Two months before he interviewed for the GM job in November 2000, Charley Casserly put together a white paper on how he thought the team should be run. He interviewed the owners and execs of the Panthers, Jags and Browns, after which he concluded that a team that started fast was usually rebuilding within four years. His guidelines for building a franchise from the ground up emphasized developing players, not buying them.
Most important, Casserly told McNair that he needed to "believe in the plan, because the honeymoon will end fast." Casserly included an itinerary for the "First 100 Days" and was adamant about taking a franchise quarterback if one was available.
Once Casserly hired Capers in January 2001, both agreed Year 3 should be when the team would begin to peak. Their strategy was to not overdo free agent signings (the biggest name signed was Packers receiver Corey Bradford), not to pursue players older than 28 (the team's average age is 25) and to leave themselves cap room in the next few years to build around the young playmakers -- specifically Carr and second-rounder Jabar Gaffney, a wide receiver -- developed in Year 1. "The hardest things to acquire are playmakers," says Casserly. "All our ideas for how to develop in Year 2 are dependent on how these guys do first."
The plan is to play Carr immediately -- and that suits Carr just fine. "Jabar and I were talking about how college had become repetitive," says the ex-Fresno State All-America. "The fun part now will be having to recognize in a split second what to do. But with 11 guys on the field, someone has to tip something off, right?" (He's a rookie, remember.)
How anxious is Carr? Try not at all. He knew Houston was his destination a long time ago. Before being picked No.1 last April, he had bought a house, signed a contract and practiced his driving route to and from the Texans' facility. Since then, he's been watching film incessantly on a laptop the Texans gave him. Before camp started, Carr would put his 2-year-old son, Austin, on his lap and they'd break down two-deep zones together.
"David reminds me of Peyton Manning during his first season," says Texans center Steve McKinney, a Houston native who signed as a free agent from the Colts. "You can see the talent, but what's important is his demeanor. He's not yelling or trying to force it with the veterans. He'll do it when it's natural."
Carr looks and acts like the QB from central casting, smiling at reporters, holding hands after practice with Austin and his pregnant, blonde wife, Melody. He calls his teammates "my guys," but he also brings them water, opens doors for them and offers to carry their bags. He knows they're still a long way from being his guys.
There's an old NFL axiom: For every rookie you start, you lose a game. "Rookie QBs get flustered late in a close game," says Walker. "Rookie tackles get beat on third down. That can't be avoided." While the Texans D features Pro Bowlers like Walker and cornerback Aaron Glenn, and Super Bowlers like linebacker Jamie Sharper, the offense will start as many as five rookies: Carr, Gaffney, tackle Chester Pitts, fullback Jarrod Baxter and guard Fred Weary. No problem: Remember Capers has started 05 before. "There is enthusiasm now, but I'm a realist," says the coach. "I know what we're up against."
The Texans hope Carr will drive them to glory.
Two days before camp opened, Capers was sitting in his office examining files and name charts. Player names were arranged in a depth chart on a white board. On his desk was the printout of a PowerPoint slide he'd show his team that weekend. It was a color-coded pyramid, broken into thirds. The bottom section outlined how many practices and lifting sessions the Texans had after the first minicamp. The middle section detailed the total number of practices and lifting sessions after the second minicamp. The top section totaled practices and lifting sessions after training camp. From minicamp through training camp, Capers will have only 100 practices to ensure this team won't get booed out of its brand-new stadium when the Texans open against Dallas on Sept. 8. One hundred practices to establish an identity and a style that screams, This Is Texans Football! without making people laugh.
"The hardest part is not having the history to fall back on," says James Allen, a free agent running back from the Bears. "In Chicago, when we didn't play well, we could see tradition and know we had an identity. We need that here."
Whether by game plan or marketing plan, the Texans will be ... Texans. Nineteen players played high school or college football in the state. And the team hasn't stopped campaigning. Backup quarterback Mike Quinn, who played high school football in Houston, and Texas A&M alums like Glenn and McKinney joined Texan cheerleaders and hit Waco, College Station, Nacogdoches and other Lone Star outposts for pep rallies.
Maybe the campaign is paying off. The Texans' season ticket base of 57,000 is already more than the 40,000 the Oilers topped out at -- and more than the 45,000 the Cowboys currently boast. They can't be accused of being provincial, either: 40% of the season ticket-holders live outside the city limits, some way outside, in 28 other states and five other countries. Fans in Canada, England, Ireland, Japan and Mexico have season tickets.
Oh, and about that Cowboy mystique, the one that had God watching through that hole in the roof? Well, the Texans' first session of two-a-days made front-page headlines in San Antonio, which is where Dallas is holding its training camp for the first time. And at the Texans' first night practice, a public affair held at the practice fields across the street from Reliant Stadium, eight Texas television stations were there to cover it live, and 1,500 fans lined up an hour before practice to watch. As for attention from up above, well, the misty sun shower that cooled everyone off just before the Texans took the field that night was followed by a rainbow that arched over the Stadium.
After practice, Carr, Gaffney, McNair and several other Texans spent an hour sitting at tables, autographing balls and jerseys. As the line at Gaffney's table came to an end, a fan in a Texans No.1 jersey and a Texans helmet, with real longhorns pointing dangerously from the sides, approached him with a ball still in its box. Gaffney scribbled his name and the fan said thanks and turned away. Then he turned back, smiling through his face mask.
"By the way, Jabar," the fan said. "Welcome to Texas."
