Texans fans leave lots of empty seats for home opener vs. Jaguars on heels of disastrous offseason

With more than 2.3 million residents and a metro population exceeding 7 million, Houston is America's fourth-largest city.

It didn't come close to filling up NRG Stadium for NFL kickoff on Sunday.

With the Texans coming off a disastrous offseason and the Jacksonville Jaguars in town, Houstonians largely had better things to do on the NFL's first Sunday of 2021 than show up and watch the home team.

Here's how the crowd looked during pregame ceremonies.

The view from the press box as the home team took the field:

Maybe everyone else was in the bathroom or at the concession stands and would surge to their seats for kickoff.

Nope.

It's hard to blame Texans fans. As football-crazed as Texas is, NFL teams are still obligated to field a viable product to compel people to spend their day off fighting traffic and parting with excess money at every turn to watch football.

The Texans are not fielding said viable product.

Years of mismanagement saw the Texans turn a perennial playoff contender into arguably the worst roster in football. Then came the offseason of 2021, a constant flow of updates on the multitude of sexual misconduct allegations against star quarterback Deshaun Watson.

It seems that Texans fans have had enough.