Disputing the idea that the Texans have been a bottom tier franchise

It’s a slow day at work so I figured I’d take some time to look at this idea that’s been going around on this sub that we are a historically bad/bottom tier/terrible franchise. I’m not going super in depth just throwing some stuff out there to look at the idea that we have been a terrible franchise. Just to get a few things out of the way to start.

1. I’m using stats “since 2010”. Some may think that’s cherry picking but my reasoning is we had our first season ever in 2002 so we get some time buffer for that and it‘s the first season of a new decade. Keep in mind our place in the overall wins state actually gets better if I go all the way back to 2008 so not really positive cherry picking.

2. This includes the games that have happened so far this year

Okay with that out of the way I’m looking at three numbers. Super bowl wins, playoff wins, and total wins. I would have liked to have added number of winning seasons but I couldn’t find the data on that.

First off is super bowl wins, of course to our sadness we have zero. However since the 2010 season 10 franchises have won the super bowl. Meaning of course that we share the honor of no super bowl wins with 21 other fanbases. However there is one thing to remember, Schaub getting injured completely killed our super bowl hopes with our best roster ever in 2011. If you look at super bowl participants since 2010 most of them never went back. Green Bay, Pitt, New York, Baltimore, Philly, Atlanta, and Carolina. None of these teams made it to the big game more than once in the 2010’s. All of these teams would likely have no super bowl appearances if during that year they had their starting QB get injured. While I don’t think that team wins the super bowl with Schaub I have no doubt we win the game against Baltimore (lost by 1 score with TJ Yates at the helm) and at least have a good shot at it.

Second we’ll look at playoff wins. This is our best statistic, that number stands at 4 since 2010. Since 2010 we have as many playoff wins as 4 other franchises and more playoff wins than 13 other franchises. Fun fact here we are only one win behind the Steelers and if you move this date to 2011 we actually have more playoff wins than the Steelers.

Last we’ll look at our worst stat and that is total wins. We come in at number 23 in total wins since 2010. I still think being 23rd in wins in that time frame puts us away from the range of a historically bad franchise it is obviously not good. However I do think the ouch on this stat is softened by the fact that we have had very few 5-8 win seasons. In fact I believe in that period we have zero seasons where we won more than 4 games but less than 9. Basically our lows have been very low. To me that helps my perception of that statistic a bit because I truly do not care about the difference between a 4 win season and a 6 win season. Both of those means your season sucked but at least with 4 wins you get a really good draft pick.

So the point of this was to look at the idea that we are a bottom tier franchise and see if that is true. Looking at this I really don’t agree with that idea. We have had as much or more playoff success than half the league and while our total win count is below average we aren’t in the bottom 10.

I also want to bring to peoples attention the bad luck we have had with injuries and off the field issues at the most important position in football, QB. Watson got injured rookie year which ruined our win count that year, then his off the field issues+BoB basically self destructed this franchise and there’s the Schaub thing I talked about earlier.

I’ll end it here this went on longer than I thought just one last note. I am in no way satisfied with these numbers. We have been a below average franchise and I understand these last few years have been bad I just don’t think that we have been as bad overall as some on this sub think.