[SI] Power of Two (Texans)

Wow love for the Texans from Sports Illustrated.

Here is the mag and the article online..awesome!!!



http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/writers/tim_layden/09/18/power.of.two0924/

Power of Two
By Tom Layden
Sports Illustrated

It's a whole new ball game in Houston, where the pass-catch combo of Matt Schaub and Andre Johnson is turning the Texans into a team to reckon with!

First he tossed his receiver's gloves into a blue equipment bag on the floor. Then he flipped his cleats on top of those. Piece by piece the rest of his uniform followed, until Houston Texans wideout Andre Johnson at last reached into a dressing cubicle in the visitors' locker room at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte and pulled out two footballs -- one for each of his touchdown receptions in a 34-21 victory over the Carolina Panthers on Sunday afternoon. Those he placed carefully into the top of the satchel before a Texans equipment manager zipped it shut.

The fifth-year wideout pulled on his dress pants and watched as the bag was carried out of the room toward a waiting cargo truck. "You know, people always were asking me if I saved any of the footballs from my touchdown catches," said Johnson, who came into the season with 17 career scoring receptions. "I never did. But I'm saving them now."

He's got reason to. The Texans' victory gave the six-year-old franchise its first 2-0 start (Houston has never even been 2-1 after three games), and the situation gets headier fast: The Texans host the Super Bowl champion Indianapolis Colts (also 2-0) this Sunday at Reliant Stadium in Houston. "Six years to get to this point," said center Steve McKinney, 31, a Houston native and an original Texan. "Things feel so much different around here."

The change begins at quarterback, where failed five-year project David Carr has been replaced by Matt Schaub, Michael Vick's understudy for the last three seasons in Atlanta. Schaub has infused the Texans with uncommon poise and teamed with the dangerous Johnson to form one of the best new pass-and-catch combinations in the NFL. They have already connected 14 times for 262 yards (Johnson ranks fourth in the NFL in that category) and three touchdowns. Schaub has completed 36 of 50 passes, with just one interception, and has the league's sixth-best quarterback rating (111.4). It's also instructive that Schaub has been sacked just twice in two weeks playing behind an offensive line that was maligned for allowing Carr to be sacked 41 times last year (and 249 times in five seasons). One reason is obvious: Schaub is quick and decisive in the pocket, and Carr was not.

"Schaub is phenomenal, man," says guard Fred Weary, another original Texan. "He makes plays, and he does not get rattled. And when the quarterback doesn't get rattled, nobody gets rattled."

Three days before the victory in Carolina, Houston owner Robert McNair stood next to a practice field at the Texans' training complex, dressed in team workout gear (as is his custom during practices), and established precisely where the bar is set for Schaub. "We're hoping he can be a Tom Brady-type guy for this franchise," McNair said. "That's what we think of Matt."

The relationship was sealed on a Southern California golf course last March. Texans management had emerged from its fifth consecutive losing season in agreement on at least one issue: "We had to get better play out of the quarterback position," says general manager Rick Smith. When it became apparent that the Falcons might be willing to deal Schaub, the Houston brain trust studied him. And liked what it saw.

Coach Gary Kubiak made one request before Smith and McNair pulled the trigger on a trade. "I'd really like to spend a day with this kid, get to know what he thinks," Kubiak told Smith. Kubiak and Schaub arranged to play golf together at a course in Orange County, south of Los Angeles, one day after Schaub had played in an event hosted there by his agent, Joby Branion. For nine holes, Kubiak and Schaub talked business. The quarterback reminded the coach that he'd been selected out of Virginia in the third round in 2004, in the same draft as Eli Manning, Philip Rivers and Ben Roethlisberger, all of whom had become starters. "I see myself as a starter in this league too," Schaub told Kubiak. "I want my chance."

The coach was sold. They played the final nine holes for fun, and a $20 stroke-play bet laid down by Kubiak. Schaub won, and within 12 hours of Kubiak's triple bogey on the 18th hole the Texans had dealt their second-round draft picks in 2007 and 2008 to Atlanta for Schaub; the teams also agreed to swap first-round picks in the '07 draft. It was a move that would prove fateful for the Falcons when Vick's suspension left them with the erratic Joey Harrington at quarterback.

Schaub attacked his new job. He'd been a high school star in suburban Philadelphia and the most productive quarterback in Virginia history. Yet with the Falcons he'd had to glean experience from tiny nuggets of action: He started just two games in three years, and Vick took nearly every snap in practice. "With the kind of athlete Mike was, I knew that if he was healthy I was never going to play," says Schaub. "The challenge was for me to get those reps in my brain." Schaub would stay after practice and stand on the field, game script in hand, visualizing every play in the game plan. He would watch film as if he were the starter and arrive at the stadium on Sunday convinced he'd play.

Atlanta veterans noticed. "He was savvy beyond his years," says Buffalo Bills wideout Peerless Price, who played with the Falcons in 2003 and '04. "[Fellow receivers] Brian Finneran and Dez White and I always used to say it was just a matter of opportunity for this guy. Right from the start, we all thought he wouldn't be there long. He was too good."

In late March, Schaub moved to Houston (his fiancée, Laurie Flynn, would follow; they live 10 minutes from the stadium and plan to be married next February) and began soaking up Kubiak's West Coast-style offense, blessedly similar to what Schaub ran at Virginia. "Some days I got to the office at five in the morning and Matt was already here," says offensive coordinator Mike Sherman, formerly the Green Bay Packers' coach. "He was on a different clock from all the other players. He was working coaches' hours."

During throwing sessions that began in early April, Schaub forged a bond with his new teammates, most notably the sublimely talented Johnson, who brings a rare and lethal combination of size (6' 3", 222 pounds) and speed. (He was a Big East 60- and 100-meter champion at Miami.) Johnson had caught 103 passes in 2006 and ascended to the highest level of NFL receivers. What he needed next was to use his stats as currency to buy wins.

Johnson's path to the league was markedly different from Schaub's. He was raised by a single mom, Karen Johnson, in tough Carol City, Fla. When Andre finished eighth grade, Karen yanked him out of school in Carol City and drove him 30 minutes each way to Miami Senior High, en route to her post-office job. "My mother didn't like my friends and some of the things I was doing, and my grades were down," says Johnson. "I didn't want to leave, but she gave me no choice." Long after the Carolina game was finished, Karen greeted the older of her two sons outside the stadium and embraced him. She wore a white Texans' number 80 game jersey with JOHNSON stamped above the number.

A star at Miami Senior, Johnson was recruited by Butch Davis to stay home and play for the Hurricanes. "He was not only big [6' 2", 195 in high school] but electrifyingly fast," says Davis. "We had talented players ahead of him, but we tried to get him on the field as quickly as possible." Johnson played as a third-year sophomore on Miami's 2001 national-title team and caught 20 touchdown passes in just three seasons.

More important, he learned passion from older wideouts such as Santana Moss and Reggie Wayne, who embraced the team tradition of mentoring one's positional heirs. "In high school I was just the best athlete," says Johnson. "I never worked. Then I get to Miami, and the older guys are working harder than the young guys. It rubbed off on me. I started going to the weight room. I started working on my routes."

In Sunday's win over Carolina, a team considered a potential NFC representative in the Super Bowl, Schaub and Johnson helped turn the game around during a 12-minute stretch bridging the first and second quarters.

First it was Schaub who steadied the Texans' sideline after Carolina took a 14-0 lead less than 10 minutes in. Houston had gifted Carolina the second of the scores, when tight end Owen Daniels fumbled after catching a pass deep in Texans territory. "Any time in the last five years that this team got down 14-0 on the road, everybody would have been pretty shook up," said McKinney. "But Matt was just telling everybody, 'Don't get down; we'll chip away at it.' There are quarterbacks in this league who when they walk into the huddle, you can sense they're going to do the job. I was with Indianapolis [from 1998 to 2001], and I got that sense with Peyton Manning. I get it with Matt, too."

The Texans needed just three plays to score on the ensuing possession, and it was their QB-wideout combo that did the damage. Schaub hit Johnson on a 33-yard sideline bomb, then two plays later found Johnson on a quick slant that became a 31-yard touchdown. Midway through the second quarter, Houston tied the game when Johnson got a free release from the Carolina nine-yard line and ran past Panthers middle linebacker Dan Morgan for an easy catch at the back of the end zone. Both scores came on the flawless execution of well-designed plays. Texans brass expect that to become a Schaub trademark.

"Here's the thing about Matt," says Sherman. "As a quarterback he never guesses that something will be open. He always has a reason for what he does. He sees the field, anticipates movement and shows an awful lot of maturity for somebody so young."

Late Sunday afternoon Johnson moved slowly out of the dressing room, the pain from a sprained left knee soothed by the balm of victory. "I sure hope it's O.K. next week," he said. "The defending champions are coming in."

Fifteen feet away Schaub sat in a corner, grinding through a series of radio interviews as producers handed him cellphones and BlackBerries. He has prepared for this role too, the Face of the Franchise. "I studied what Mike went through with the media and the public [pre-dogfighting]," says Schaub. "I saw good things, and I saw bad things. I imagined how things should be done when I was in that role. One thing I know for sure: If you win, you've got to come back and prove it again next week."

Leaving now, pulling a rolling suitcase behind him, playing his role. For three years Schaub waited to call an NFL team his own. Now that team is unbeaten in two games, demanding respect. "What am I doing with that?" he asks. "Looking for number three."

 

It was all downhill from here.....seems like 10 years ago.

 

It was all downhill from here.....seems like 10 years ago.