Well, our Houston Texans failed their biggest test to date in their young football career.  They failed to best the Colts in Lucas Oil Stadium Sunday, and fell to 5-4 on the season.

By now, all of you probably know how the game played out, but let me recap the game right quick.  The Texans came out flat and gave up 10 points before the offense got on track.  They had 9, count them 9, penalties in the first half and only managed to put up 3 points in the half.  Then came half time.  The Texans came out in the second half firing on all cylinders.  They put up 17 unanswered points to take the lead.  The defense shut down Manning and co., until the end on the 4th quarter, when Manning connected with Addai for the go ahead score.  The Texans drove down again, but an interception of a Matt Schuab pass, ended the drive.  The Texans defense forced a Colts’ punt, Schuab drove the team down the field again and setup a game tying field goal.  Unfortunately, the usually reliable Kris Brown pulled the kick left and time finally ran out for our team.

Now no one likes to lose a game, especially one like this, against your biggest rival, but there are a few glimmers of good news in this loss.  The Texans of old would have folded, after starting so flat, and the final would have been more like 31-3.  That did not happen to our new and improved Houston Texans.

The Texans have proved that they can play with the best in the league and have a shot at winning on any given Sunday.  Our defense has improved drastically and for the fourth week in a row yielded less than 100 yards on the ground, in this case 72 total yards.  They did give up 318 total yards passing but they were playing against Manning.  So 318 yards is not that bad really.

The Texans offense put up 311 yards of passing offense and 81 rushing yards.  They only gave up 2 sacks, although they did have three turnovers, but they battled back and made a game out of it.  To post a 13-3 score to the Colts, with their high powered offense and still come back to have a chance of winning, is impressive to this writer.

So the Texans lost to the Colts (again), are now 5-4 on the season and fighting for a wild card spot.  Yes, they could have won but didn’t, yes they are now (again) on the outside looking in, but this is not the team of a few years ago.  This is a serious team with a serious chance to make the playoffs for the first time ever.  If the Texans continue to improve and play with this kind of fire and desire, they have a legitimate chance of beating anyone in the league.

I think the next step for our Houston Texans, is to learn how to win,  that is learn how to win the hard ones.  The Colts have already learned this lesson.  Now it’s the Texans’ turn.