With Star Wars: The Force Awakens debuting this week, it got me thinking. What if the Texans 2015 season was a movie? Leading up to Sunday's game at Indianapolis has all the makings of high drama, wrapped neatly into a really well-done, high-budget, box office blockbuster.
Look at what's at stake:
- Sole possession of first place in the AFC South
- Consequently, a very good chance to get a playoff game at home.
- Breaking that annoying streak in Indianapolis.
- Basically, the whole season. Is that overly dramatic?
Opening scene. The team is pretty good. You get to know the players and like them. Just when you get invested in them, they struggle. The team then loses to its most-hated opponent and goes through more adversity.
Something has to change. How do movies show a big shift, a pivotal turning point?
Musical montage. Cue the Rocky-esque music.
Suddenly, the team starts to get on a roll. They all work really, really hard. You know this because the montage shows random scenes of tackling in practice, getting ankles and fingers taped up, lifting in the weight room, doing stuff with ropes, working late hours, the whole bit. Bill O'Brien would be at the front of the room with a white board and marker.
Then, in the typical sports movie formula, the clouds part. We see hard work morph into something else: shots of big plays, celebrating, a closeup of an arbitrary player with his brow furrowed, suddenly nodding and jotting down notes in a team meeting because hey, he's getting it! The Rocky music would still be playing…
It would all lead to the big climax of the movie.
Side note: Come to think of it, I could easily draw this out and make a really good Netflix series out of it. But that's a lot more episodes and I couldn't use the montage.
The character that emerges at the halfway point would be T.J. Yates. In an awesome, yet unbelievable twist, he'd makes his big appearance where he'd won his first game on the road to clinch a division playoff four years earlier. Then we wouldn't see him for like 30 minutes. Well, except sporadically and in the montage.
Ok, he's back. Now T.J. returns to Indianapolis and get this, he's FROM INDIANAPOLIS. He walks off the bus and looks around, cue a 360-degree shot of the city and his memories. Like, young T.J. hitting a baseball, blowing out birthday candles, or doing super-normal kid things that evoke some really cool nostalgia with the edges of the screen blurred.
He suits up for the big game against a team he grew up watching…
That's all I have so far. Pretty good, right?
Speaking of Yates, he's on "Texans Late Night" this week. Yates doesn't disappoint. He'll spin the wheel and take a turn at holiday movie trivia. He's also a whiz with the selfies and Twitter Mirror.
Tune in to find out how he does and how this real-life blockbuster movie turns out…
Until next week!
