Houston, the largest city in Texas, the fourth largest city in the United States, and the largest economy on the Gulf Coast, is a major player in the entire North American continent.

The Port of Houston is the sixth largest port in the world, the busiest port in the United States, and the Fortune 500 headquarters after New York. At the same time, Houston is also home to the Texas Medical Center, home to the world's largest and most important research and treatment facilities.

It is worth mentioning that Houston has the lowest cost of living and housing prices among the 27 major metropolitan areas in the United States with a population of more than 1.7 million.

Houston's most famous nickname is undoubtedly "Space City," as even the White House calls it, because it is home to the Johnson Center for Aeronautics, which is also home to the Mission Monitoring Center. Thus, "Houston" was the first word to be exhaled in the moon landing program; In countless Hollywood movies about space adventures, "call Houston" is also the standard line.

Undoubtedly, this is a very important and extremely prosperous city, as one of the largest ball markets in the entire western region, the three major professional sports leagues except ice hockey all have a professional team in Houston.

Among them, the NBA's Houston Rockets are undoubtedly the most widely known to Chinese fans, because in the 2002 draft, they selected /Yao/Ming/ as the top pick, changing the history of the four major North American sports leagues.

Outside of the NBA, MLB's Houston Astros are also a traditional powerhouse in the league, winning the National League Championship in 2005 and then the American League Championship in 2017 and winning the World Series in one fell swoop, becoming the only team in MLB history to win two league championships.

Finally, there's the NFL.

In the history of the NFL, there has been a traditional powerhouse stationed here, the Houston Oilers, a superstar team with fans throughout Texas, founded in 1959, officially joined the NFL in 1960, won the championship in the first year, and defended the title the following year.

Before the merger of the American League and the National Union, the Houston Oilers were a well-known superpowerhouse; In 1966, after the official merger of the two leagues and the Super Bowl era, the Houston Oilers were still the traditional powerhouse of the league, reaching the playoffs for seven consecutive years from the late 80s to the early 90s.

Unfortunately, the Houston Oilers never made it to the Super Bowl, and even during the Super Bowl era, they never won a league championship.

After 1993, the Houston Oilers' last glory, the team fell into a long slump, faced with a cooling football market and calls for new stadiums that were slow to get a response from City Hall, which led owner Bud-Adams to move the team to Nashville, Tennessee.

In July 1997, the Houston Oilers officially completed the relocation procedures, changing from the Houston Oilers to the current Tennessee Titans; Around the same time, Houston businessman Bob-McNair submitted an application to the league to expand his team, but was rejected because the league lacked confidence in Houston's ball market.

However, McNall never gave up, and he worked tirelessly to bring professional football back to Houston, a commitment that was initially endorsed by then-league president Paul Tagliab.

In March 1998, the NFL approved Cleveland's proposal to expand the team, increasing the league's total number of teams to thirty-one, and the formation of the next new team was raised to keep the team total balanced.

After learning the news, McNul immediately began to take action, united with Houston City Hall officials, and worked together to complete the announcement of the plan at the official residence of the league, and in order to work together to build a new team, they also proposed to build a new stadium with a retractable roof - which is one of the important reasons for the departure of Houston Oilers in the first place.

But at this time, Houston encountered a powerful sniper - Los Angeles, which was also in the absence of professional football. Michael Ovitz, who single-handedly created Hollywood's top overlord innovative artist agency, is the sniper!

Prior to this, Ovitz had climbed to the top of the top in the industry in Hollywood, and it can even be said that he changed the rules of the entire industry, and at his peak, he was elected the most influential number one person in Hollywood for three consecutive years.

In 1995, Owitz decided that Hollywood was no longer challenging, and he decided to make a career change, and he moved to Disney to take the presidency, but it turned out to be a fatal mistake - Ovitz and Disney's then-CEO Michael Eisner (Michael-Eisner), who was also known as the "tyrant"; Two years later, Ovitz was kicked out of Disney and took $120 million in damages.

Ovitz returned to Hollywood, using the reparations to create a brand new agency and start over; But at the same time, the idea of transformation still lingers. He aimed at the NFL.

Ovitz built the team through his connections, came up with a $750 million plan to build a new football team, and received strong support from the City of Los Angeles.

Although McNner's team also received $150 million a year from the Houston Cowboy Show, the huge market advantage in Los Angeles left Houston behind; What's more, Ovitz's eloquence and strong connections have made a huge difference among the 32 teams.

In March 1999, NFL team owners voted 29-2 to approve Los Angeles for permission to form a new army.

But then things took a huge turn for the worse. Ovitz's team was too slow to prepare, and they were slow to keep up; The plan to renovate the Los Angeles Memorial Stadium was also not very feasible and operational in terms of funding, which made the league very dissatisfied, and issued a series of urging instructions, but it still failed to achieve results, and finally angered the president of the league, Tagliab.

In September 1999, the NFL officially notified the McNall team in Houston that they were invited to attend the upcoming meeting of the team owners in Atlanta. At the meeting, McNner's $700 million proposal was a success, passing by a margin of "29-0" in the voting process – with two abstentions.

Houston Texans were born!

Houston's initiative allowed the new team plan to move forward quickly, and in less than a year, the stadium and the team were ready one after another, the team name was decided, and the "Texan" was able to stand out among three different name candidates - since the Texan is an alias for the Kansas Chiefs, McNall also reached an agreement with the Chiefs specifically for the use of the name.

In May 2001, the league was officially reorganized from five divisions to four divisions, and Houston Texans and Cleveland Brown joined the new divisional scheme, which led to the current league structure. Among them, the Houston Texans are in the southern side of the United States, which is in the same division as the Indianapolis ponies, the Jacksonville Jaguars, and the relocated Tennessee Titans.

As mentioned above, the Houston Texans are a very young team, and 2002 was their first official season. Young teams, like young players, take time to adjust to the intense pace of the NFL, as well as chemistry. They have gone through a long process of building, overthrowing, rebuilding, adjusting, and slowly finding their place in the Alliance.

In 2006, former Denver Broncos offensive coordinator Gary Kubiak joined the Houston Texans as head coach; In 2010, former Cowboys coach ade-Philips took over as defensive coach; In 2011, the team drafted J.J. Watt with the 11th pick in the first round.

At this point, the Houston Texans have officially completed all the pieces of the puzzle.

In the 2011 season, the team seized the trough of the Indianapolis Colts, the arch-rival, and performed well, reaching the top of the American League South Division and breaking into the playoffs for the first time in history; In 2012, the team went one step further, with the offensive team playing at the best level of the decade, the defensive team continuing to perform at the same level, and Watt delivering his best performance in a single season to make the playoffs for the second year in a row.

The current team has a balanced offense and defense, a stable level, and there is no shortage of bright spots, with last season's offensive group ranking eighth in the league and defensive group ranking tenth in the league.

In the offensive group, quarterback Matt Seb, wide receiver Andre Johnson, and running back Adrian Foster built an iron triangle; In the defensive group, cornerback Johnathan Joseph and defensive end JJ Watt are all game-changing star players.

In this year's offseason draft, the Houston Texans selected Clemson University's wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins with the 27th pick in the first round, hoping to further improve the offensive team and make a push for the Super Bowl in the new season.

There are many, many similarities in the rise curves of the Houston Texans and the San Francisco 49ers, and the rapid rise of the past two seasons has become; And this season, the situation faced by the two teams is also very close.

In the Southern Division of the American League, the Indianapolis Colts under the leadership of Andrew Luck showed an upward curve, and the intra-division matchups became more and more intense; After two consecutive seasons of outstanding performance by the Houston Texans, the current roster has completed the run-in, but it is also facing injury problems.

It's like the San Francisco 49ers facing the Seattle Seahawks.

In the fierce competition of the NFL, aside from the difficulty of defending the title, it is extremely difficult to continue to enter the playoffs for many consecutive seasons, because of the relationship between the hard salary cap, the strength of the rivals in the same region is unpredictable, which also makes the competition for playoff spots every year full of suspense, the four elite quarterbacks stand out, the fundamental reason is that they have been able to lead the team to the playoffs for many years, which is Ben Roethsberger, Eli Manning, Something that quarterbacks like Philip Rivers can't.

After winning the Super Bowl this year, Lu Ke is also considered an excellent quarterback, but he is still far from being an elite, and that's why - not to mention anything else for the time being, at least see if he can continue to output high energy and stability in the regular season for five seasons, so that he has the qualification to challenge the elite.

San Francisco 49; The same goes for Houston Texans.