by By DALE ROBERTSON, houston chronicle , The Houston Chronicle

Record: 4-3.

Today: at Bills, noon.

TV/radio: CBS; 610 AM, 100.3 FM and 1010 AM (Spanish).

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. - Spooky. How perfect, or perfectly awful, is it that the Texans should have been made to visit this most haunted of houses on Halloween weekend.

Ralph Wilson Stadium is the scariest place on earth for the tortured souls of Houston's Football fans.

Day of the dead? No, decades.

The sad history is cross-generational, too. As the Oilers suffered, so have the Texans . Warren Moon's most inglorious, even humiliating, defeats happened here. He never won in Buffalo as an Oiler.

Backup Tony Banks was the quarterback of record in a rare Houston victory at "The Ralph" in 2003, but the goblins made starter David Carr pay for it on the subsequent visit, when a poor effort revealed the cold, hard truth about his NFL future.

Most of the Texans are too young, or too new to Houston, to know much about the terrible things that have happened in western New York, at least post-Luv Ya Blue.

Owen Daniels and Eric Winston are exceptions. As tykes, Daniels in suburban Chicago and Winston in Midland, remember watching the game that transformed Houston from a town whose teams couldn't win the big one into Choke City.

"I changed the channel at halftime," Daniels said. "The game was over, I thought."

Winston said: "When somebody told me later the Oilers had lost, I couldn't believe it."

National nightmare

Texans defensive tackle Jeff Zgonina was a senior at Purdue. Parked in front of his TV that January afternoon in 1993, he had a rooting interest in the game. A former college teammate, Steve Jackson, was an Oilers cornerback.

"Steve got burned a couple times, I think," Zgonina said.

With the Texans , history tries to repeat itself. Coming off an encouraging 7-9 season in 2004, they seemed on the cusp of turning a major corner. But the 2005 season opener, alas, had to be in Buffalo, and it didn't go well. After throwing three picks and completing nine of 21 passes for 70 yards in a 22-7 whipping, Carr looked like he'd seen a stadium full of ghosts.

The next day, offensive coordinator Chris Palmer was fired, and things quickly unraveled from there. The Texans would lose 14 of the next 15, too, bringing the Dom Capers era to an end. A year later, Carr followed him.

Key game for Kubiak

Now, Texans coach Gary Kubiak and quarterback Matt Schaub must venture forth into the Bermuda Triangle that is Buffalo at a seminal moment in their evolution.

The Texans (4-3) are playing for their first winning record at midseason and the chance to keep the momentum going when they visit another little shop of horrors for Houston - Indianapolis. It's critical they persevere.

Toward that end, Kubiak and his quarterback insist they are masters of their destiny. Ask Schaub about the Buffalo "curse" and he responds with an amused look, barely suppressing a smirk. He's equal parts ignorant and indifferent on the subject.

"We just go play Football, wherever it is," Schaub said. "If we execute our plan, we'll be fine."

Whistling past the graveyard?

dale.robertson@chron.com

Copyright 2009 The Houston Chronicle Publishing Company All Rights Reserved
	Terms & Conditions     Privacy Copyright © 2009 LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.