Defying the odds: Can Texans make playoffs after 0-3 start? - ESPN

HOUSTON — The locker room was tense following the Houston Texans' Week 3 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars. The defeat dropped them to 0-3, and their season was slipping away.

It was another loss on the final drive, similar to Weeks 1 and 2. But through the tension, there was no panic — as they felt they could easily be 3-0.

In their eyes, they were a few plays away from flipping the season.

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«We just have to find a way to finish on both sides of the ball,» linebacker E.J. Speed told ESPN in Week 3. «So once you get that done, and you get that fixed and the tides will turn, then the questions like this will stop being asked. And then it'll be about how good we are.»

Then the next week, Houston did just that with a 26-0 win over the Tennessee Titans. The belief grew, as tight end Dalton Schultz said that Week 4 win was just a matter of having the ball «bounce our way.»

«We just needed to see the fruits of the labor,» Schultz told ESPN. «Sometimes faith in this thing only takes you so far. Soon as that hole gets deep. Like it's easy for that stuff to kind of go away.»

Houston had a 14% chance to make the playoffs heading into Week 4, according to ESPN's Football Power Index, and a loss to the Titans would have dropped that down to 6.9%. But history stated the odds were slimmer. Only one team since 1990, the 1992 Seattle Seahawks, had made the playoffs after starting 0-4.

Since the NFL went to a 14-team playoff format in 2020, there have been 19 teams that started 0-3, but none of them made the playoffs. In