Houston Texans 2007 Preview
Background: This franchise looks great on paper. They have a top ten media market, a sparkling new stadium, shiny uniforms, and “play to the crowd” name (Texans?). However, for everything this team enjoys on the balance sheet, it has been an absolute disaster on and off the field.
When Bud Adams took his Oilers to Nashville, Houstonians quietly applauded. Bud’s act had grown tired. The city was much happier to cough up the dough for someone else to have a stadium besides Bud.
But what does Houston have?
Team Identity: Irrelevance. That is the curse of sports. The day the passion dies in your fans is a day you should never want to see as an owner of an NFL team. In the years between the Oilers’ departure and the Texans’ arrival, much changed in the Houston sports landscape. The Cowboys became a glamour team again. The NBA became a factor in Texas sports. The Astros started winning regularly. Let’s not also forget all the winning going on at UT.
In their goal to be the anti-Oilers, the Texans have merely succeeded in becoming a boring loser.
Last year, the Texans took a team on "identity" life support and inexplicably tried to kick the plug out of the wall thereby insuring instant death. Allowing a lame duck GM to call the shots, the Texans bypassed two of the most exciting players to come out of college in years, Vince Young (a hometown boy who had won a national title at Texas!) and Reggie Bush, in favor of a light, but speedy DE with a questionable motor in Mario Williams. Although this has been chronicled endlessly, let’s review again what a bad decision it was:
A. Supposedly, the Texans supposedly didn’t need Reggie Bush because they had Dominick Davis, but Davis got hurt before the season and is now gone, replaced by a 30 year old Ahman Green (aka Mr. Fumble).
B. Supposedly, the Texans didn’t need Vince Young (this generation’s Earl Campbell to Texas football fans, and we know what Earl did for the Oilers) because David Carr was the real deal who only needed a good coach to properly develop him. David Carr is now in Carolina backing up Jake Delhomme despite coach Gary Kubiak's ringing endorsement last off season.
C. Supposedly, the offense wasn’t the problem in Houston. The defense was. Mario Williams will turn around the defense with his ability to rush the QB. However, most of the year saw Williams struggle to get sacks.
It would only pour salt in an obvious wound to suggest that the Texans completely blew last year’s draft, but here at Swampland we want to see pro sports succeed. When teams are blowing it as badly as the Texans are, they need to hear it loud and clear. Basically, the Texans took a excited fan base (#1 pick!) and turned them into a pissed off fan base and now a bored one. That is called going from the frying pan to the fire to the trash bin.
When your team’s identity is built around an as of yet uninspiring head coach in Gary Kubiak and a career backup in Matt Schaub and an underperforming DE who only reminds you of what you could have had in Bush and Young, then you’ve got some serious identity issues.
2007 Storyline: Can we get anyone in Houston or Texas at large to care about this team? Hello?
Expectation meter: Playoffs aren’t really an option. The Colts are going to win the AFC South. The AFC has 10 other teams that are better than Houston. The Texans will also get to see their favorite son playing QB for their former team and division rival twice.
However, anything, I mean anything, less than a 7-9 season must mean big off season changes for this franchise. 7-9 would mean that Kubiak and Schaub might turn the corner next year. 8-8 shows they have. 9-7 might be a miracle within reach. But another season of 10 losses or more will be punctuated by the collective clicking sound of TV sets in Houston changing the channel to the Cowboys game.
Mr. McNair better already be talking to the Bills, not Buffalo but Parcells and Cowher. The kid's games are over for this team. They need people to start caring. Kubiak’s leash needs to be shorter than Britney Spear’s new haircut. McNair has shown too much faith in his people, and this needs to end.
Allowing a lameduck GM and a career second fiddle coach to call the shots for a team with this kind of market (translation big income dollars) is akin Rick Hendrick to letting some joyriding teenage get behind the wheel in place of Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, or Dale Jr.
Houston, we indeed have a problem. SPF just hopes that Bob McNair recognizes how big of a problem it is. No more vanilla! Give Houston a reason to care about this team!
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