HOUSTON -- He stopped speaking for a second to soak in what he heard. A smattering of fans chanted his name as he stood on grass painted with the NFL logo, lit by bright lights on a muggy night.

Charles James smiled.

"That’s funny," he said. "That’s cool."

Here was the guy who'd made a table full of college teammates laugh when he said he wanted to play in the NFL because they thought it was a joke. Here was a guy who couldn't get any scholarship offers to play football, took out student loans like so many people looking for a path to their chosen professions, and is still paying off those loans. Here was a guy who, seven years ago, lay slumped in his friend's Pontiac Sunfire presumed dead until he awoke, miraculously, without a scratch on him.

"I like beating the odds," James said. "The odds stacked against me, they may be stacked now. Beat the odds."

He might be right about his situation now. James is part of a very talented group of cornerbacks on the Texans' roster, one that already had two established starters in Johnathan Joseph and Kareem Jackson when the team drafted Kevin Johnson in the first round.

James is working now to make the team and doing well. Tuesday night's episode of "Hard Knocks" showed Texans coach Bill O'Brien praising a play James made, and it showed James' drive to contribute.

"It’s very, very competitive," O'Brien said. "There are good guys there, really good team guys. [I] really enjoy being around those guys. They have a lot of fun. They care about each other. They care about the team. That’s going to be an interesting deal as it plays out over the next three weeks."

James would like to make it very interesting for the Texans. He'd like to be an NFL player until he's ready to leave; he'd like to play the game for more than a decade. The odds aren't with him, but they haven't been in the past either.

"He’ll overcome any obstacle put in front of him," said Darius Jennings, his best friend since first grade. "When we were younger, there was a game we used to play that we called 'adventures.'"

They grew up together in Jacksonville, Florida, where James was raised by his mother and his stepfather. They'd walk across a fence in Jennings' backyard in Jacksonville, Florida, that was covered in tree limbs and branches. James always made it across, though not always without a scratch.

Jennings was driving the car seven years ago, the night James' dreams could have disappeared. James was home from college -- he'd walked on at Charleston Southern and taken out thousands of dollars in student loans to pay for the chance -- "Forty grand in the hole for a school I didn’t take a visit to," James said.

It was raining that night seven year ago in Jacksonville, and they turned a corner, Jennings admits, a little bit too fast. They swerved, and had they turned a moment sooner, a tractor-trailer would have hit them and likely killed them.

Instead, they hit a tree, by James' recollection. He didn't have on his seat belt, but he didn't go through the window. His head hit the dashboard and knocked him out for a few moments. Worried the car would explode, Jennings and a friend who was in the back seat worked to pull James out of the car.

"In my head I was just thinking 'Please nothing fatal, nothing bad happened,'" Jennings said. "'I would hate to be the reason that all this goes down the drain.' I knew he was trying to get to the NFL. I didn’t want to be the reason it ended before he even had a chance to prove himself in the NFL."

James never forgot how lucky he was that night.

"From that day, I’ve never taken it for granted," James said. "I’ve never taken football for granted; I’ve never taken life for granted. I try to be the best man I could possibly be. Best teammate I could be to my guys on the team."

James eventually earned a scholarship at Charleston Southern.

"The one thing I can say about him is he was one kid I never saw give up even though things got tough," said Luther Price, who coached James in high school. "When I really saw it is when he went to college."

Academic issues plagued him while there, but James ultimately refocused on his goals, got back to playing and earned a degree in communications.

The Giants signed James after the 2013 draft then placed him on their practice squad for the season's first month. He got a promotion to the active roster on Oct. 5. Last year the Giants cut James during training camp, a devastating blow that surprised him.

"It didn’t really hit me until I woke up the next day. 'I don’t have a job," James said. "I’m not playing for the Giants anymore. They’re playing another game and I’m not out there.' … I was losing it. I just went through a state of depression. Didn’t want to answer any calls, didn’t want to be around anybody. It was a very sensitive moment for me."

With the help of his girlfriend, his mother and his faith, James snapped out of it and refocused on a routine. The Texans signed him to the practice squad in October and then a futures contract after the 2014 season ended. Now he has what he has always wanted: a chance.

"Life is tough and you go through obstacles and you go through adversity just to see how you’ll handle it and how bad you want some things," James said. "I’m blessed, man. I don’t take this thing for granted. I enjoy where I’m at in life. I look at that logo right there and it means the world to me."

He pointed at the grass on the Texans' field, painted with a gold and black NFL shield.