Nothing about this season has changed my opinion of Kubiak. What has exactly changed, besides the level of competition we have been facing? I mean as far as his coaching.
What has changed is now he has a real DC calling plays on the other side of the ball. Now he has no excuse not to win. Which is exactly what he's doing.
Which just happens to coincide with us playing garbage teams. Of all the things that folks routinely complained about Kubiak before this season, do you think those things have changed? I think it's more of we have been playing garbage teams. Now to be fair, we have dealt with major injuries.
I'm not discounting the record. You can only beat who is on your schedule. But if you are comparing coaches, then my question is what has the coach been doing this season that we were faulting him for in previous seasons? If you think a guy is a bad coach for whatever reasons and you still see those things occuring, even with a winning record (from beating bad teams), then how have your concerns been removed? So what change have you seen related to his coaching, aside from us having an easier schedule? Do we still go flat too often? Do we still stall in the red zone too much? Do we still play too conservative? Etc. I still see the same dumb ish, but luckily we have been facing some garbage teams. Now to his credit, he has dealt with some major injuries this year.
And the target has moved! You and your fascination with elite teams, btw.... as if there are all these elite teams and the Texans are tip-toeing around them. There are 12 teams right now with a losing record; 6 more with a .500 record. That's 18 teams at or below average, which is more than half the league. And I would argue, btw, that the Texans had a much easier schedule in 2009 and were 5-4 after 9 games on their way to 5-7. So given that they're 6-3, playing with a ton of confidence and rolling these inferior teams makes this a decidedly different Texan team, IMO. I can't believe anyone who claims to have watched this team the past five years could see it any differently.
Which was the whole point of making the post... Cower will never win a Superbowl with a 2nd team because no coach has ever done it before is basically the same as saying Kubiak will never win a big game etc. because he's never done it before. How many times have you heard that being thrown around in this forum?
They don't seem to go offensively braindead for a half each game this year, which is a huge improvement. Overall, I think Kubiak is a flawed coach that should have been fired last year, or the previous year if a star coach was interested at the time. There's no reason to fire him this year - that would be silly. At this point, you give him a chance to show what he can do - I just don't think he'd earned that coming into this season. In terms of performance this year, the Texans - even with their weak schedule - are in the top tier of AFC teams and very capable of winning the conference, especially as they get healthy. They are probably the most balanced team in the conference all around. My guess is that Kubiak will do something stupid somewhere along the line to cost them a playoff game, but he hasn't as of yet this year and he deserves credit for that. Barring a disaster, he absolutely deserves to be back next year, though I wouldn't be prepared to extend him beyond that point just yet - I'd like to see more evidence of what he can do against higher level competition, and he's just not going to have much opportunity to show that this year due to the schedule.
It's not though. The reason you provide for Cowher makes no sense - "no one having done it before" is irrelevant to whether it can be done - there's no causal relationship there. But the reasons people provide for Kubiak are different - they are based on him making stupid decisions or bad clock management or not being able to motivate or whatever else. You can agree or disagree with those, but those are things that actually have impact on the game and affect the likelihood of winning or losing. Based on your standard, no coach could ever be evaluated on their past.
To clarify - he should not be a lame duck coach next year, but he doesn't get any additional extensions. You should always have a coach on a 2yr contract minimum so that, if they do well, they are not a free agent. And he will, of course, get the opportunity to show his abilities in the playoffs, so those results would affect extensions.
You mean besides playing infinitely better in all 3 phases of the game? Besides having the best running game in the league? The best O-line in the league? Besides all that, I haven't seen anything. When we're up by 20 points in the 2nd half, yes. No. You mean when we're up by 20 in the 2nd half and playing to our strength by running the ball at will? I suppose we should be throwing more bombs and running more flea-flickers though. Or how about a halfback pass every once in a while? That play has worked so well for us in the past.
Which begs a very simple question. If everyone knew the Texans defense sucks and need a true DC, why did Kubiak never hire a true DC? Why did it take a fortuitous coaching fire by the Cowboys, and the coincidence that said coach just happened to have a huge connection with this city, for the Texans to hire a real DC? Kubiak to me gets no credit for everything Phillips has done to this defense. Because Kubiak had 5 years to find someone who knows defense, and he has not done it. Just because his defense sucked so historically bad that McNair was forced to do something to quell the angry fans, and the son of the legendary Oilers coach just happened to be available, does not make Kubiak any smarter at being a head coach. It just means that he never had a clue about defense, still has no clue about defense, and likely never will have a clue about defense. And I'm leery about such a person being our "Head" Coach. You know, a coach that controls the team's offense AND defense. Sure, as long as the Texans coaching system can work out the egos between a strong DC with Kubiak being a glorified OC, then the system may work. But this doesn't make Kubiak better. It just meant the Texans as an organization found a way to make the coaching staff as a whole better.
Waiting . . . we will see Honestly. . . .I will relax and feel more comfortable with Kubiak . .. once we win that 1st playoff game I will be feeling better about next year and beyond. Call me gunshy. I love how people giving Kubes Credit for the Wade hire and Defense If it were up to him he'd be battleFighting with the old DC IMO this is an extremely talented team. AS THE KOOLAID DRINKS STATED On Offense YOu have an above averaged QB, Best Back in LEague Best WR in league and Above average line and TEs. .. . . . The Talent is here . . .. If Kubes Wins out . .. . I'll eat Crow If he only has 1 loss . . I'll eat Crow BUT!!!! I won't be comfortable until that 1st Playoff win which . . I am confident we CAN do . .because we will probably be the more talented team Rocket River
Do we still go flat too often? Not more than a majority of the team. We have the 4th most points and rank 6th in points/game. Every team goes 3 and out, even on consecutive drives. Do we still stall in the red zone too much?Overall season, we are ranked 21st so that indicates we are in the bottom half. But the last 3 games, we have converted 67% which is 5th best in the league. i feel the overall ranking is a bit skewed because we missed Foster the first half. probably 4 of those RZ stalls were during the NO game which of course is the one game everyone remembers most when it comes to RZ ineptitude. Do we still play too conservative? We've been playing with the lead in EVERY game. When it's a early blowout, conservative is the usually the better strategy. why throw the ball around when you've got the best running tandem and a 3 TD lead? as for the close games and losses, they may have been playing conservative. or maybe the defenses were just making plays on the Texans. part of being a successful on plays is execution. Kubiak calls them but if Schaub overthrows/underthrows or Vickers/Tate drops a pass, how is that Kube's fault? the only thing that i can say that definitely hasn't changed is his challenges. i can't believe he fails so much at that.
The target hasn't moved. Why do you keep going there? It wasn't true related to Schaub and it isn't in this case. The question is pretty direct. For the things that you didn't like about him prior to this season (not you per se), has he shown you improvement in those areas? For me the answer is no. I'm happy with the record but I also realize the level of competition that we have been playing. It doesn't necessarily mean our coach has made big strides. If you need more clarification see Major's post a few below mine.
Not really. They've scored 30+ in 4 games and rank 6th in the NFL in points/game. And that's with AJ and Foster both missing significant time (they've been on the field together for 2.5 of 36Qs so far this year). In fact, if you'll remember last year, the big complaint was that they started slow. Well that has most assuredly been corrected. They're 3rd in the league in 1Q scoring; 6th in 2Q scoring and 2nd overall in first half scoring (16.4/game, a TD improvement over last year - which, of course, is all Wade Phillips' doing, right?). They've had some flat second half stretches (I'm going to throw out cruise control halves against the Colts and Browns) - but two of those were against the 2nd and 3rd ranked defenses in football (Pittsburgh, a win; Baltimore, a loss - guess what? A lot of offenses have flat stretches against those 2 teams). They did have a flat first half against Jacksonville (5th ranked D). So you could legitimately pin Miami (a win) and Oakland (a loss) on flat, inexplicable stretches (both defenses rank in the mid-to-late 20s). No. In fact, they're scoring red zone TDs 67% of the time in their last three games, a considerable improvement from the first six games and a better pace than last year when they were 5th best in the league (which begs the question -where is this "still" coming from? They improved on that considerably in 2010). And, oh btw, they played their first 3 games without last year's NFL TD leader. (And the past 5.5 without one of the best offensive weapons in football.) This is such an empty complaint; it has no merit. They're averaging 26 points/game (a 2-point improvement over last year, BTW). Being conservative hasn't cost them any games; it's a made-up complaint, like Schaub not audibling enough. I will continue to call people out on this - what dumbish thing are you seeing? Keep in mind, EVERY NFL COACH makes poor decisions; don't raise the bar so high that he can't possibly succeed. None of them are perfect.
12-4 obviously means we can only lose one more game. The schedule is soft but I don't know if it's THAT soft. We'll either lose both of our games against good opponents, or lose one of them and give away a game against a bad/mediocre team in an upset (maybe next week even). 11-5 seems more likely.
