Look, the Wade Phillips thing is a rumor and as a rumor it makes absolutely no sense. Wade runs a 3-4. If your goal is continuity, are you really going to bring in a guy who is going to blow up the entire defense and rebuild from the start? The Texans don't have a whole lot of talent on the defense, but what talent they do have (Cushing, Mario, and Ryans) is completely unsuited to or completly neutralized in 3-4. The Bills can tell you exactly how easy the transition is to make. It is one thing if you are going to bring in Cowher and completely start over. If you are going to do that then maybe you can try and make Mario Williams a 290 pound OLB or you can trade him or something, since you are taking several steps back for gains in the long term. But if you are going to keep Kubiak around and are going to try and sell the whole "continuity" angle, you bring in someone like Jack Del Rio or John Fox or someone like that to run a 4-3. Given that John Clayton seems to have broken the story, I halfway believe that Jerry Jones got Jason Garrett or some other Cowboy coach with ties to Phillips to be the "source" to leak it in order to screw with and demoralize Texans fans. And that fundamentally is the point I made. Don't put stock in the rumors swirling around. For instance, the Cowher "list" rumor has been declared totally false several times, including by Cowher himself who found the idea of the list to be offensive, but people still act as if it is an absolutely true fact. I have no idea how this can be a sad, sad day since nothing has happened. The team is exactly where they were a week ago, with the exception that there is a new completely off-the-wall unsubstantiated rumor floating around. I can make up rumors too. I heard from one of my super-secret sources that the Texans were planning on hiring Art Briles away from Baylor and making him the head coach. How does that sound? If we get enough people repeat it, I bet it ends up in some blog or in some tweet by the end of the week.
This point is way overhyped. You dont need to start over by blowing everything up. You draft a couple LBs and sign a big NT and you are good to go. DeMeco, Cushing, and Mario would be fine as LBs. We just have nobody on the team that can play NT. Thats the biggest issue there, which can be addressed with an early pick in the draft or through FA.
This defense was a Rusty Smith away from being the worst pass defense in 32 years. The term rebuilding would imply there was something of note to tear down beforehand. The incompetency permeates through from HC to DC to schemes to tackling techniques to pursuit angles to play teaching to playcalling and finally to execution. Secondly, many have argued here that many of the personnel could adapt to a change to 3-4. Mario Williams - biggest question mark of all. Evidence of success (Bruce Smith) and failures (Kampmann). He's lined up in both a 2 point stance and 3 point stance before so there's some experience, but it's still a tossup. Cushing - Carroll at USC ran a 3-4 with a down LB, called the "elephant." Both Cushing and Matthews played that role in that system where job one was rushing the QB. Cushing's only strength this year has been blitzing, and converting to a Matthews/Wake type doesn't sound so grating. Barwin was also a noteable "tweener" DE/LB type. Ryans - He has looked slower this year before his injury, and switching to a 3-4 will put him more in run support than coverage. If anything the actual assigned zone will be smaller too. We also have a budding prospect in Sharpton who could play the TED next to Demeco.
#1 I would never hesitate to "break up" something as crappy as the Texans defense. #2 Yes Mario playing in a 3-4 is a big time problem. So what...trade him. You can get a king's ransom for Mario before you have to commit $100 million to him. I'd ask New England for the Raider's #1, Panthers #2 and DT Ron Brace. #3 Cushing to me has much to prove. I would play him inside next to Demeco, put Connor Barwin at OLB (a position he has played before), and draft Von Miller. I'm not counting on Cushing ever returning to his juiced up level of play. #4 You need a NT. Guess what, if you stay in a 4-3 you need a big upgrade at DT too. #5 Regardless of your front, you're going to suck if you don't get at least 2 new CB's and a free safety. I'm also not going out of my way to break the bank for FA to be Bernard Pollard. Is it a long process to fix the D? Probably, but let's not act like there's much to salvage there.
Throwing all your other points aside, it's not as long a process as some people think. This is the NFL. With the right coaching, a good draft, and a key free agent signing or two, we could have an above average to good defense next year. What would it take? Sign a top cornerback in free agency. Draft one of the two stud corners (yes, I'm not very keen on having another rookie back there, but those two are can't miss...Peterson in particular), If neither corner is available, draft a stud DT. Address DT in free agency if you can't find a good one in the draft. Try an experiment of Kareem Jackson at free safety. If he doesn't work, I think Troy Nolan has a shot to be pretty good with some proper coaching. Maybe you steal an outside backer in the middle rounds. Seriously, with a big DT in the middle, some better corner play (let's be honest, the pass rush has really picked up a ton in the second half of the season), and coaching that isn't equivalent to junior high football, this defense has a shot at being at least middle-of-the-pack. When Bob McNair came out and said that we are on the right track, I know it got a lot of people fired up, myself included. Honestly, though, I think in a way, we are on the right track. The only problem is that McNair refuses to see that the one thing holding us back right now is some good coaching. We have one of the younger teams in the league. We have the most talented team we've ever had. We just need that talent to be coached up to where it should be. I don't disagree with Bob in that Gary has built a pretty good offense. What I do disagree with Bob about, though, is that Gary has failed at aspects of coaching such as game management, motivation/preparedness, assimilating proper staff to coach the areas that he's not great with, talent evaluation (to an extent), gameplanning, play calling, and let's not forget, the most important stat: winning.
New England has run a hybrid (both fronts) under Belicheck. Just because I think Mario would be a disaster in a 3-4 doesn't mean everyone does. I'd at least ask. They might not bite, but I think you have to put him on the market.
I still don't see why Mario can't be a 3-4 DE. After all you said in your article And if we trade Mario I think the best we can get for him is a late first round pick.
Kinda doubt that. All-pro in hand = two in the bush. Plus, based on how much guaranteed money the top picks make, those picks are actually a lot more desirable for teams to trade away nowdays. The demands for Mario would probably include a top 15 overall pick and multiple 2nd and 3rd day picks.
Boom daddyo! The next evolution in NFL defense is picking up on what NE does by mixing the 34 and 43. The guys that are wanting to trade Mario....are you kidding me? What this team needs is a pair of shut down corners and a durn safety with a brain. If we had that, all of a sudden our 43 defense will look a ton better and we will be elevated to a top 10 defense easily. It's the defensive backfield that is the primary problem.
Matt Bowen who writes for National Football Post will join us at 830 this morning. I talked with him for about a half hour yesterday. He likes Wade Phillips but is dumbfounded by the idea of keeping Kubiak. It's not that Mario can't be a 3-4 DE, it's that you are probably wasting him there. Most of the sacks in a 3-4 come from the OLB.
I guess if we can find a franchise as bad as the Raiders we can manage a high first round pick out of it. Seymour was traded to the Raiders for a first round pick that was undecided how high it would be until the year was over. I could see us trading Mario to a team for a 2012 1st round pick that would be determined by the teams record the upcoming season.
To the rather smug poster who descended to us from on high to pass judgment on us all: -The league loves McNair as an owner....because he's classy and has been printing money with his expansion team. The league is a business, not a rec league. -I haven't joined in on the "worst owner" hyperbole, partly because I know there is much worse (Ralph Wilson is killing the city of Buffalo) and partly because I know he makes reasonable effort. The problem is, he wants to perfectly copy the Steelers' ownership model (don't micromanage, build without pricey FAs) but doesn't know how to put the right people in place or have good people he can call to evaluate and hold his employees accountable. He hires Casserly, an unmitigated disaster at GM. He gives Carr the bigger of two possible extensions when it was clear he was a bust. He lets an unexperienced Kubiak pick exclusively from his personal buddy system and installs two bad jokes for DC in a row. At the end of the year where obvious underachieving and one-half-at-a-time effort and numerous goofs cost the team at least a couple games and the playoffs, Kubiak is rewarded with a Carr-esque extension. Now at the end of a disasterous season with Kubiak, McNair is very simply unwilling to pay two staffs in the face of a lockout-shortened, revenue-reduced season. He's a good business man, making tight financial decisions (passing on Schobel in an uncapped year)....but he's been ineffective constructing a winner and setting a new record for expansion team playoff futility. Folks have a right to be bent out of shape, with or without your approval.
Yes, but it was alleged more than once by only poster who shall remain nameless DaDakota and is famous for judging players based on one game and changing his opinion day by day. I agree that we shouldn't put too much stock into all this twitter jabber and innuendo and I've said so more than once in this thread. But I do think people have a right to vent. What evidence do we have to suggest that the Texans are actually going to get this right?
Seymour was 30 and due for a contract. Mario is 25, and is under contract until the end of the 2012 season, IIRC.
I get this...but here's the problem. They fielded what is ARGUABLY the worst defense in the history of the NFL after spending high pick after high pick on defensive talent. I have zero faith in management, and that includes the coach. They have gigantic personnel deficiencies...they've swung and missed too many times in the draft...they've rarely even swung at free agency to address any of it. They are poorly prepared. This is a team that scripts its first 2 series on offense...and they average around 2 points in the first quarter of games. On any level, this falls back on the coach and the general manager. Pro sports are a VERY bottom line business. Patience for repeating the same poor results over and over again is not wise, no matter how tempered you make it seem or how extreme you make those who don't share your opinion seem. There was a group of posters here that wanted Kubiak fired at the end of last season. Who thought 9-7 was fool's gold. We were told to give it one more year...that this was the make or break for him. That after 5 years, there would be no more excuses. Guess what...
And to Otto... I think you're taking *us* too seriously. I imagine most of the posters here are enjoying the meltdown. This is high comedy. The exaggeration and hyperbole are what make it so fun. Everything that happens from now on, be it a tweet or whatever, will induce a massive s**t storm of panic, joy, and bellyaching from tons of people. Don't fight it, just go with it. Enjoy the ride. Yay sports.
Guilty as charged. I thought Gary deserved one more year. It was worth seeing where this was going, but unfortunately, this is where it went.
You truly understand the sports board experience; it is really surrogate (and imaginary) power and control. We play, we manage, we trade, we acquire, we fire, we hire, we do whatever we want. And other posters take us seriously! (Sometime). Like we know. This is so fun.
