The 2002-2003 team I fell in love with because they were so short on talent and depth and were always just grossly outmatched in some of those games, take 2002 for example like early on in that season they played the Eagles a team that was on their way to a 3rd consecutive NFC Championship game here we were just a team thrown together that Summer with rookies starting at all the offensive skill positions, what a mismatch. There were a lot of those the first 2 years but sometimes man we would put up a fight and I fell in love with them for that. The Patriots game in 2003 was one of those games that was one of the best teams/coaches/players of all time in their prime and we took them like 14:30 into overtime.
2004 was one of my favorite seasons to be honest. So many good memories, I loved it when they beat the Titans the first time(and again later that year) and they swept a pretty solid Jaguars team that year too, Faggins game winning pick six where he stood up on the wall gave us one of my favorite pics. I'm still looking for the game against the Vikings from that year in the tape trading groups I'm in on Facebook hopefully one day I'll find it, it was such an underrated classic that I don't think anybody seen and they barely showed any highlights/coverage for it in real time.
Man I would have bet the farm we were going to be a playoff team in 2005, they looked like such a promising young team in 2004, Carr/Andre/Dominick Davis it looked like we had the trio. Of course I didn't have internet back then and there was no way for me to know all the leaders of the team that we lost(Glenn and Sharper) and it seemed like Dunta Robinson and Andre Johnson just didn't want to play that year, it was very weird. Two guys that looked like the future of the league in 2004 just seemed to phone it in that next year in 05 like they were hoping to get out of here.
Carr had a stretch in 2004 where he was actually really fun to watch and seemed like a future star. At one point when they were 4-3 he had a 6 game stretch in there where he threw 64% completion with 1,688 yards 9 tds 3 ints for a 103.7 rating. Not sure what happened to him after that but I really think it was bad coaching that spilled over into that 2005 season. I do think he could have been better than he was but off field stuff gave him a bad reputation with team mates and nobody wanted to invest in him as a starter.
I found the 2006 win over the Colts late in the season on Youtube last Summer and I got to say that has to be the best win in the 20 year franchise history. That was one of the best QB's in NFL history on his best team(went on to win the SB) and they were playing to win for homefield advantage in the playoffs, Texans took them down with Ron Dayne up the gut, Carr looked really good in that game as did that defense. Seems like one of the all time great upsets in NFL history that doesn't really get mentioned much