1994 Houston Oilers season
| 1994 Houston Oilers season | |
|---|---|
| Head coach |
Jack Pardee (10 games) Jeff Fisher (final 6 games) |
| Owner | Bud Adams |
| Home field | Astrodome |
| Results | |
| Record | 2–14 |
| Division place | 4th AFC Central |
| Playoff finish | did not qualify |
The 1994 Houston Oilers season was the 35th season overall and 25th with the National Football League (NFL).
Despite finishing with a 12–4 record and a first round bye the previous season, team owner Bud Adams made good on a threat to break up the team if they did not win the Super Bowl. The two biggest losses the Oilers suffered were the trading of Warren Moon, the team's longtime starting quarterback, to the Minnesota Vikings and the departure of defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan, who was hired to coach the Arizona Cardinals. With Moon being replaced by career backup Cody Carlson and the defense left without its leader, the 1994 Oilers went into a tailspin despite returning several of their explosive offensive players such as Ernest Givins and Haywood Jeffires. The team started out with only one win in their first ten games, which led to the resignation of head coach Jack Pardee. When the season was over the Oilers stood at 2–14, tying their 1983 squad with the team's fewest wins in a sixteen game season and the second fewest overall, with the 1972 and 1973 squads only winning once each season. The ten-game swing is the worst season-to-season drop in games won in NFL history, which would later be tied by the 2013 Houston Texans. Seven of their fourteen losses came by three points or fewer.
Although the Oilers finished with the worst record that season, they did not receive the #1 pick in the 1995 NFL Draft due to the entry of the expansion Carolina Panthers and Jacksonville Jaguars into the league (under NFL rules, a new team is automatically granted the first pick in their first draft, unless they decide to give it up as the Panthers would do). However, the news was not all negative. With the high pick the Oilers chose Steve McNair, who would go on to become one of the franchise's all-time great players, and after Pardee resigned his defensive coordinator Jeff Fisher was promoted to replace him. Fisher would go on to lead the franchise, which moved to Tennessee under his watch, for the remaining five games of the 1994 season and stay for the next sixteen seasons before he was fired following the 2010 season. In A Football Life: Houston 93 the narrator says of the 1994 season that, "1994 would be the first season with the salary cap, and owner Bud Adams followed through on his threat to dismantle the team," and, "Guttered by the (salary) cap, the Oilers started 1-9 in 1994, Jack Pardee was fired along with Kevin Gilbride."
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