Tania Ganguli, ESPN Staff Writer 10y

Ryan Fitzpatrick's passion inspired his teammates

HOUSTON -- The bearded madman in the middle of the huddle was screaming almost incoherently.

Sometimes when Texans linebacker Brian Cushing, a regular madman himself, tries to convince a teammate to take the pregame huddle, he has to sell it. Ryan Fitzpatrick took no convincing at all today. He was facing a team he spent four seasons with -- one who signed him to a $59-million extension before cutting him a year-and-a-half later.

So his teammates encircled him and he started shouting. Not all of them could hear him, not all of them could understand his words, but every single one of them felt it.

"I'm not a man of many words," he shouted from deep beneath the scruff, his voice already loud and hoarse. "But this game means something to me. It means something to me!"

His teammates shifted around him.

"If you care about me, if you want to know how to play today, look to me!"

Then the punctuation: "I will lead you to a win."

He did just that. And after the Texans beat the Bills 23-17, he returned to his usual low-key style.

"You saw that?" he said postgame, returning to his low-key form. "Everybody saw that? That's embarrassing."

In the week leading up to the game, Fitzpatrick admitted this one was important to him. In the final minutes of the game, he realized just how much.

"I spent four years of my life there, raising my family," Fitzpatrick said. "... I was maybe as nervous as anybody at the very end of the game, knowing that our defense was going to stop them. That's when I really found out how much this game meant to me, in those final two minutes there, watching that drive."

It was a very Fitzpatrick day. One with some mistakes, some heady plays and a lot of toughness.

He finished with a quarterback rating of 75.0, having thrown 37 passes, completing 25, for one touchdown and two interceptions. He used his legs when he needed to and picked up very important first downs. He got the Texans into the right play on the 35-yard touchdown pass to DeAndre Hopkins. He even blocked a defensive end, whipping his head back, and helping an end-around succeed.

"He's got a lot of heart," Cushing said.

That's just what his teammates needed from him today.

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