For Titans Owner Amy Adams Strunk, the upset win over the Texans just means more in Houston
Titans and Texans ownership makes the AFC South rivalry even spicier.
The Tennessee Titans beat the Houston Texans in a big Week 12 upset Sunday, taking down the division-leaders in the former and current hometown of the two franchises respectively.
It's a big deal for the Titans to get their 3rd win of the year over such a competitive divisional opponent, but it's fair to guess that a win against the Texans is always the sweetest kind of victory in the eyes of Titans Owner Amy Adams Strunk.
The ownership families of the Titans and Texans have long been not-so-subtly taking shots back and forth at one another. Strunk's relationship with the city of Houston is complicated. It's her hometown, and the city her franchise began in. But ever since her father Bud Adams picked up the franchise and moved to Tennessee in, um, not the cleanest divorce of all time… well the relationship has been strained.
The Titans introduction of their throwback Oilers uniforms in 2023 furthered this divide, as much of Houston incorrectly lays claim to the beautiful Columbia Blue outfits. Every time one of these teams loses to the other, especially in embarrassing fashion, the folks at the top take it personally. It's long been rumored that the Titans Week 17 loss to the Texans in 2023, at home in their Oilers uniforms, was what set in motion Strunk's ultimate decision to fire Mike Vrabel.
So in their first meeting since that game last season, Titans fans were giddy to hear about how the McNair family took their embarrassing home loss.
If it was anything like the Texans fans in the stadium, I'd guess the answer is not well!
Titans Head Coach Brian Callahan spoke after the team's big upset and admitted that, like in the SEC, some of these games just mean more. Amy Adams Strunk was very pleased with her team's performance in her hometown.
In fact, she was so overjoyed that she felt compelled to give a tearful postgame speech in the locker room according to star DT Jeffery Simmons.
She made it clear to her team how much this game, with all the history involved in the rivalry, meant to her.
Brian Callahan apparently made the history of this matchup a point of emphasis for the younger and newer players on the roster, as rookie CB Jarvis Brownlee Jr. explained postgame:
At the end of the day, it's a massive road divisional win for a team searching for itself, and a feel-good victory for everybody involved in the history of the Titans franchise with the city of Houston.
One old world cliche to remember when watching Will Levis’ final seven games of the Titans season
“Forgive and forget” has never been a wiser approach to evaluating a player.
