HOUSTON (CBS HOUSTON) – Tom Savage has spent the whole season for the Texans on injured reserve after a shoulder injury in the final preseason game landed him on injured reserve.

Now, with the season over, Savage is “ready to go” for 2016.

“Just perform and compete and obviously just stay on top of this whole deal,” Savage said. “I am going to have an awesome opportunity this spring no matter what happens and I am going to be ready to go.”

While on injured reserve Savage couldn’t practice with the team. He would work out on the side with players coming back from injury and fellow players on the IR. He said he had to invent ways to keep himself mentally active during the season.

“I had a plan for each week,” he detailed. “It was beneficial to kind of take a step back and get an outside view of what is going on. I always had these little game plan packages and stuff that I could work on and learn from, so I kept them all and I got all of my notebooks ready and I am ready to go.”

All that preparation, and nothing to do but hurry up and wait.

Of course, his mind wanders. What if he had never been hurt?

“Every night,” he says is when that thought creeps into his head. “Every night. It was tough, but that is a really tough spot to be in as a coach when you have that awkward timing for an injury like that. You can’t really control that and I am just ready to go.”

Until the next chance to show off his skills gets here Savage has quite the agenda to take care of to occupy his time.

He will take his wife on a honeymoon finally.

Bill O’Brien knows Savage has a future with the Texans.

” We like the way he throws the ball. It’s unfortunate what happened to him in the beginning of the season there, in the preseason…But we feel the same way that we’ve always felt about Tom, he’s a talented guy that has a chance to play.”

A chance that, no doubt, will be afforded to other quarterbacks as well.

Savage, in his quest to become a starting NFL quarterback, doesn’t care how many opponents he has to outduel for time under center.

“They can draft 12 quarterbacks,” he said. “I am going to be ready to go. I am definitely excited about competing and that still falls under the category of controlling what I can control. I am not up there. I don’t make those decisions, so all I can do is be ready to compete.”

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