Texans fourth-year CEO and chairman Cal McNair hands out T-shirts to fans during an August session of training camp.

There was so much to be said. At last, there was a place to say it. The original Texans season-ticket holders filed into the NRG Center, nearly 500 of them, and rode the escalator toward a conference room stocked with food, beer and two long sections of chairs bracketed by two microphones on stands.

Two lines began to form. It was a town hall-style meeting. Predetermined questions had been ditched. The two faces of year two of the franchise’s rebuild — general manager Nick Caserio and head coach Lovie Smith — sat at the front of the room, hands pointing to the microphones. Ask anything. Unfiltered. No limits.

It was an emotional 90 minutes, those who attended the June meeting say. Questions that had festered for two miserable seasons finally found a source, the kind of questions that had been aired out only in private conversations, call-in radio shows and comment sections.

Some people just spoke their mind. These were the franchise’s most loyal supporters, the ones who’d kept their season tickets after the controversial DeAndre Hopkins trade; after the city’s long-awaited franchise quarterback, Deshaun Watson, left in a lewd legal battle; after observing front office enigma Jack Easterby roam the sideline too tightly; after watching the one-and-done David Culley coach a 4-13 season while sitting on their couches at home because that was the only leverage against the Texans they had.

There’s a fallacy in an empty stadium. The network cameras didn’t pan away from Kirby Drive last season, flow in an Indiana Jones-style line for a few miles and zoom in on the house of Larry Stafford, a 54-year-old original Texans season-ticket holder who screamed at his television, slammed the front door shut, and took his dog for a walk to try to calm down.

There wasn’t a parabolic microphone directed at Stafford and his football friends of two decades, who’d witnessed the Texans come agonizingly close to their first AFC title game berth in 2019 only to dive into disaster, who’d watched their tailgating group split up, who’d learned season-ticket holders in their section gave up their seats and knew it was too late for them to do the same.

“We just had to make the choice about not showing up,” Stafford says. “Even though I’ve committed to my tickets, it was just money that I was throwing away, because the product on the field and the way that the organization was making the fans feel like we didn’t matter … it was just too much for us to bear.”

Why not give up the tickets now? Why tax emotions any further? Part of it is familial legacy, Stafford says. He wants to give his 16-year-old son something Stafford’s own parents were unable to pass down. Part of it is because he still believes a Houstonian self-identifies with his city and that a city’s identity is intrinsically tied to its pro football team. Part of it is because he’s seeing that Texans leadership is starting to show they believe this too.

So as Stafford joined the others in line at the town hall, he began crafting the question he felt ultimately mattered. He thought about being a kid and watching Earl Campbell’s Monday Night Football run against the Dolphins in 1978, the sort of national attention the Texans recaptured with Watson, Hopkins and J.J. Watt. He thought of Texans season-ticket holders who’ve died in the last 20 years. He thought about how Houstonians are still staring at a decades-old door that former Oilers coach Bum Phillips once famously said they’d kick in.

Complexities formed into a simple question. Stafford approached the microphone.

“When are we going to win the Super Bowl?”

Pardon the hammers and electric drills. The construction of the Texans’ new business office isn’t quite done yet. This conference room will have to do, but please mind the plastic covering billowing from the third wall’s incomplete paneling.

There’s Cal McNair and his wife, Hannah, on one side of a conference table. Down the hall is an open and sleek office space, a nearly complete renovation project that temporarily displaced the Texans’ business operations staff to a rented unit in the Galleria district.

Now, Texans employees are back. It’s a modernized work environment. Everyone and everything is within view. Soon, a mannequin football player will stand on one end of the room next to a small billboard that has on it Cal’s personal mantra, a phrase that people who’ve worked with the franchise’s CEO and chairman say defines his gradual but persistent process since taking over the day-to-day operations after his father, Bob McNair, died in November 2018.

“I want to challenge us to be great,” Cal says. “I want us to take that next step and challenge everyone, empower them and give them what they need to go there.”

It’s a foundational philosophy rooted in his family. Cal was one of his father’s first employees at Cogen Technologies, where he helped oversee the construction of the three major power plants that made the fortune that enabled the late McNair to front the $700 million expansion fee in 1999 to bring another NFL franchise to Houston.

Cal officially joined the Texans as the organization’s vice chairman in 2008, and his responsibilities increased as his father’s battle against skin cancer intensified. Bob had built a contender by the time of his death, and Cal adopted his father’s low-key approach to trust his general manager and head coach to make decisions related to the football team.

Bill O’Brien was a winning coach, albeit a power-hungry executive. He jockeyed about personnel decisions even with his close friend Brian Gaine, whose one-year tenure as general manager ended in a surprise firing in June 2019 after his relationship with O’Brien boiled over. The coach’s influence filled the void unofficially in a season that produced a deep playoff run, which followed Houston’s backed-off pursuit of Caserio when the Patriots filed tampering charges against the Texans.

McNair had two realistic options: Empower O’Brien or fire him. The latter would have been bold. The Texans were back-to-back AFC South champions at the time, and even in the wake of Houston’s divisional-round meltdown to the Chiefs, firing O’Brien would have carried risks, particularly considering his relationship as a play-caller with Watson, who had two years remaining on his rookie contract.

So McNair officially named O’Brien general manager. Easterby, hired months before Gaine’s departure, had worked closely with O’Brien on personnel decisions, and the trades and contracts they executed over their two seasons together spiraled the Texans into a disastrous cap space and draft capital situation that could not address the roster’s eventual deficiencies.

McNair fired O’Brien after an 0-4 start in 2020, hired Caserio, whom the Texans unsuccessfully had attempted to lure away from New England twice before, then transferred his trust to a tenured football executive who requested the patience and financial support for a massive overhaul.

That capital was granted. McNair is still paying substantial sums for players Caserio cut loose. The 2022 dead money hits from former linebacker Zach Cunningham ($12.8 million), defensive end Whitney Mercilus ($7 million), cornerback Bradley Roby ($4.6 million) and wide receiver Randall Cobb ($3.5 million) exceed all but 12 of the cap hits associated with players actually on this season’s 53-man roster.

Caserio secured six draft picks, including three first-rounders, by trading Watson to the Browns in March, but the former quarterback’s dead money hit ($16.2 million) won’t clear the books until next offseason. Only then can the Texans become big spenders in free agency.

For now, Houston’s roster again embodies frugality. All nine drafted rookies plus three undrafted free agents make up just under a fourth of the team, which underlines just how swiftly new players can overtake the old.

“The McNair family has been supportive from the beginning of what we’re doing from a football perspective,” Caserio says. “So we have a fiduciary responsibility to try and make the right decisions, try to make smart decisions. And certainly grateful for the opportunity to do that.”

Meanwhile, season-ticket holders kept at bay in 2020 by mandated stadium restrictions amid the coronavirus pandemic returned a year later to a dreadful on-field product still associated with Watson, who’d issued a trade demand, then was sued by 24 women who alleged he sexually assaulted them in massage therapy sessions.

The Texans were later added to the lawsuits, which alleged the franchise enabled Watson, and the McNair family settled claims with 30 women in mid-July, calling the action “a clear stand against any form of sexual assault and misconduct.”

Watson’s 11-game suspension marks Cleveland’s Dec. 4 game at NRG Stadium as the quarterback’s debut, a reminder to Houstonians of a situation Stafford says “really almost broke me.” Add that to a 2021 season Stafford called “complete misery,” and he says several season-ticket holders were wondering how much longer their support could last.

Two Texans employees caught up with Stafford as he was leaving the town hall event. They said team president Greg Grissom wanted to meet him. People were still mingling. Raffle prizes were being given away. Grissom approached. He’d been listening to Stafford’s radio calls and reading his social media posts. He’d been moved by Stafford’s question at the microphone.

“I know who you are,” Grissom told him. “I don’t agree with you all the time. But I love your passion.”

There has been a sincere engagement between the Texans and their supporters since the start of the year, Stafford says. That they held a town hall meeting at all is part of the “massive change” in the franchise’s approach to mend its relationships with people who felt abandoned.

Grissom says the catalyst behind the evolution is McNair. Grissom, who was promoted in March 2021, says one of the first conversations he had with McNair about his new role contained a clear message: “We need to evolve. We need to change. We need to try new things.”

Sometimes little things can magnify larger issues. One year, Stafford says, the Texans gave him and his wife a phone charger as their gift for being a season-ticket holder. This year, they received a packed box that included a team hoodie and a personalized blanket.

Then there are larger changes. Perhaps most notably, the Texans overhauled their season-ticket program. They allowed people to pay over 10 months instead of twice annually. They gave members a 10 percent discount on concessions, a 30 percent discount on team shop purchases, and the ability to swap tickets for other games on the schedule.

The program incentivized retention by offering up to a 15 percent discount on season tickets for those who renewed by May 5, and those who renewed by Feb. 4 would pay the same price for their 2023 tickets. They’ll also be included in special events throughout the year. The Texans held a draft watch party at Miller Outdoor Theater for the first time, and they moved their annual preseason luncheon to a nighttime dinner on Aug. 27.

“It was a lot of reflection. A lot of talks,” McNair says. “A lot of conferences and getting together and brainstorming. Just being honest about where you are and where you want to be and knowing that it’s a journey and we want to take this journey together.”

Still, the Texans are selling Houstonians on a football team. An improved outreach can foster a welcoming atmosphere, but it’s winning that creates wait lists.

When the franchise began its series of playoff runs 10 years ago, its season-ticket waiting list had more than 19,000 names. Before the 2021 season, over 12,000 people on that list passed on buying tickets. The team’s 20-season sellout streak ended. The Texans averaged over 5,000 fewer paid attendees than NRG Stadium’s 72,220 capacity last season, and the fans who actually showed up were usually far fewer.

The game itself carries more emotional swing than anything, Stafford says. The bar is not walking out of the stadium more miserable than when you walked in. The Texans lost 14 games by an average of 16 points last season and were shut out twice. McNair approved the firing of Culley, whose one-year tenure came with a $22 million price tag.

What followed was a confounding 25-day head coaching search that nearly resulted in the Texans hiring former quarterback Josh McCown, whose lack of college and professional coaching experience provoked more questions than answers.

“If they would’ve hired Josh McCown, I would’ve given up my season tickets at that point,” Stafford says. “At that point, you’re telling your fan base that you’re not serious about winning football games.”

That Houston instead pivoted to Smith also projected dysfunction. He’d served as defensive coordinator in 2021 and wasn’t officially interviewed until after finalist Brian Flores filed a racial-discrimination lawsuit against the NFL.

Caserio denied the lawsuit affected the Texans' hiring process and downplayed how close they were to reaching terms with McCown. But Stafford and other supporters interpret Houston’s head coaching search as stumbling into a potential blessing with Smith, a third-time NFL coach who led the Bears to Super Bowl XLI.

Caserio and Smith have since characterized their relationship as lockstep. They’ve complimented each other’s professional experience, and the franchise’s draft haul contained fingerprints from both of their football philosophies. They sat together at the June town hall event and formed a more accessible bond with a city that shares their ultimate goal.

“Everybody wants to see a winning team that they can support and be proud of,” Caserio says. “Our job is to try and do that to the best of our ability.”

How much hope can be mended in what is expected to be another rebuilding season? The Texans open up as eight-point underdogs against the Colts at home Sunday, and the franchise isn’t favored by oddsmakers in any of its 17 games. Still, the Texans finished training camp with 60,000 season-ticket renewals, McNair says.

“I’m being patient in the sense that I have to trust that Lovie Smith, Nick Caserio and Cal McNair have finally decided that they want to put a winning product out on the field for the deserving fans who have been patient for over 20 years,” Stafford says.

McNair believes the Texans can be competitive this year. He knows he’s “being a little hopeful,” but when the end of the regular season is approaching, he wants to be running through calculations of what it would take to land a wild-card playoff spot. He has communicated his standard.

“We’re committed to winning,” McNair says. “If we have to make changes that are sometimes difficult, we’re willing to do that because we want to win. We want the fans to know we want to win. We know the fans want to win. We’re all on the same page there.”

Brooks Kubena, a Houston native, joined the Chronicle in 2021 to cover the Texans and the NFL after reporting on LSU football for The Advocate | Times-Picayune in Baton Rouge for three years. Kubena contributed to the AP Top 25 poll and held a Heisman Trophy vote. A graduate of the University of Texas and Clear Lake High School, he's too young to remember the Oilers but old enough to remember a parking lot was once AstroWorld.