Plenty has changed for the Houston Texans since they departed Lucas Oil Stadium as soon-to-be AFC South champions just after midnight on Jan. 7, 2024.
The Texans' offseason was defined by big-name acquisitions. There were the trades to land running back Joe Mixon from the Cincinnati Bengals and wide receiver Stefon Diggs from the Buffalo Bills. There was the splash move in free agency to bring in defensive end Danielle Hunter, who totaled double-digit sacks in four of the last five seasons with the Minnesota Vikings.
For the Colts, the last eight months were defined by continuity. No team will return more of its active roster from the 2023 season than this year's Colts.
But on Sunday, the biggest difference between 2023's season ender and 2024's season opener won't be a player on the Texans.
He'll be behind center for the Colts, wearing a blue No. 5 jersey and that timeless white helmet with a blue horseshoe on the side.
Anthony Richardson.
When the Colts lost, 23-19, to the Texans to end last season, Richardson was relegated to wearing a gray hoodie on the sideline. He watched as Gardner Minshew II battled and Jonathan Taylor lit a spark. He saw a defense get torched by C.J. Stroud's 75-yard touchdown to Nico Collins on Houston's first play from scrimmage, then clamp down to limit the Texans to just 4.2 yards per play the rest of the game.
And he, like the rest of the team, was gutted when Minshew's pass tipped off the hands of running back Tyler Goodson on fourth down, knowing a conversion late in the fourth quarter would've given the Colts a fresh set of downs with a little over 10 yards separating them from a playoff-clinching touchdown.
A few days after that loss, Richardson was asked if he was bummed out to not have been on the field for that do-or-die game. His answer came with both perspective and confidence.
"Not really," Richardson said, "because I know my career is going to be long, I know these seasons are definitely long and I know for a fact we are going to have battles with C.J. (Stroud) for a long time.
"... I know our team and what we are capable of, I knew we should have had that (playoff) spot but they played, they executed the way that they should have and we didn't. It did hurt a little bit but I'm not really too concerned about it because I know we got a lot of stuff to handle in the future and we are going to make those runs."
Sunday will be Act II in what could blossom into one of the NFL's best intra-division quarterback battles. (Other battles in the AFC South will also involve the Jaguars' Trevor Lawrence, and could involve the Titans' Will Levis as well. This division is loaded with young, talented quarterbacks.) The Colts won the first meeting back in Week 2 of the 2023 season, with Richardson ripping off a pair of early touchdown runs before exiting with a concussion.
The Texans won the second matchup, but it wasn't with Richardson on the field.
Neither were Mixon, Diggs and Hunter, of course. Same with Texans wide receiver Tank Dell, who missed that Week 18 game with an injury. Houston's roster undoubtedly improved with the moves they made in the offseason.
But the Colts feel like their roster is better, too, even if their offseason flew under the radar outside of Indianapolis. They feel like the continuity they bring into 2024 from a team that barely missed the playoffs in 2023 is a good thing. And it's not like the Colts didn't do anything in the offseason. They selected the first defensive player in the 2024 NFL Draft – and defensive end Laiatu Latu had an awfully impressive training camp leading up to his NFL debut this weekend.
More than anything, though, the Colts believe their collective team is right where it needs to be heading into 2024, even if that didn't involve a bunch of flashy offseason moves.
"(Houston's) roster got better for sure," defensive tackle DeForest Buckner said. "But at the end of the day, you can talk about rosters and how rosters look — I mean, I've been in this game for almost a decade, and I've seen some great rosters. Super Bowl rosters. It doesn't mean anything until you go out there and play. Back in '22, everybody was talking about our roster, how we had a complete roster, this and that, and you saw how that happened. At the end of the day, you gotta go out there each and every week and compete and play."
"It's not like oh, you made a bunch of big splays kind of decisions in the offseason, but what we did was we brought our guys back," Taylor said. "That continuity, sometimes it's not always the best talent, it's the best team. And now when you have talent and you have a great team with continuity, that's when you can do some special things."
The Colts came close to doing some special things in 2023. They'll aim to do special things with largely the same group that shuffled home from Lucas Oil Stadium on a cold January night, disappointed in how they fell just short against the Texans.
And they'll begin their push to reach their goals, 11 months to the date of his season-ending injury, with Richardson back behind center on Sunday afternoon.
