Yes, he deserves a little credit, but I'm not falling all over myself to congratulate him. I'm suspicious of his actual contributions given what has transpired this year. Wade and Gary, on the other hand, are undoubtedly masters at their craft.
This is his crowning achievement, pretty much. The Antonio Smith signing looked rocky, but turned out great as well. He's laid some eggs, but he hit a homer or two as well. I think we could do better, but we could certainly do worse.
Yes, but *all* players require at least some modicum of competent coaching. And I would argue that the scheme is working so quickly and effectively because the team had loads of talent already on hand. Cushing managed to win DROY without Wade Phillips, as did Demeco Ryans. Mario Williams made a couple of Pro Bowls without him, too. And guys like Smith, Barwin, Quin - it's not like he found them under a rock: they had been decent players for us. In fact, I made the argument this summer that he was inheriting a team with a boatload of 1s and 2s and was summarily dismissed (by you, in fact). I'm not by any means degrading what Phillips has done - but it's not like he turned the 2005 defense into a top 2 defense.
Who cares if he's just doing administrative stuff? What they're doing as a franchise is working. No one here has said, "Give Smith more kudos than Kubiak, McNair, Wade Smith, the Pope, and Vince Lombardi." The Texans are winning on his watch. Give the man his props. Hell, give the janitor props, too.
I wonder what influence Smith had over the choosing of the two DCs we had here prior to Wade. Because we know that Wade was a McNair hire.
That is the funny of it IF I DRAFT TALENT . . and my coaches f' it up I am blamed because I 'really didn't draft talent IF I DRAFT TALENT . . and the my coaches make the look spectacular I get no credit because. . .well the coaches did it I think what you have to understand is If the buyer buys HIGH QUALITY meats . . . . It is not his fault if the CHEF burns it!!! Frank Bush was burning the d*mn meat Wade is looking like fricking . . .i dunno . . emeral? [insert famous chef] In both cases . . .. . RICK GOT THEM BOTH HIGH QUALITY MEAT! Rocket River <maybe I should have just said ingredients.>
He wasn't here for the first hire but he absolutely deserves to be blasted for not stepping up when Kubiak wanted to repeat the same mistake with Bush. And hey - maybe he did; we don't know. I have no idea who does what over there; but as the GM, this roster is loaded and he's been here for very nearly all of it.
By the way, I searched through the entire 2011 offseason thread and didn't find this exchange you're talking about. Was it in another thread? You might be mistaking me for justtxyank or Reeko. And, the difference between the 2005 defense vs. the 2010 defense is 31st vs. 30th, respectively... so, either Wade is a god, or Frank Bush is the most incompetent DC in history. Maybe both?
You were searching the wrong thread. Me: http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showpost.php?p=6117797&postcount=114 You: http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showpost.php?p=6118668&postcount=137 Definitely both. Phillips is very good; Bush is very bad.
In fact, that entire thread is just a calvacade of hater fail. You guys rail Wade, Watt, moving Mario to OLB, the inevitable no free agent singings... Well done, everybody.
Well, obviously I give Wade a little more credit than you in this scenario. While I'm happy to eat crow about our defense turning out to be more talented than their previous production indicated (I still chuckle at the irony of having so many talented guys on a league-worst defense...), if I'm going to give Rick Smith credit for acquiring the talent, then I'm definitely going to give him the blame for putting the wrong coaches in place to use that talent. It's pretty eye opening seeing how important coaching can be. Although this defense has 6 new starters this year (w/ Barwin becoming a starter, Quin changing positions...), so it looks like we had a heavy dose of talent change as well as coaching.
I've had my doubts about Rick Smith, but the guys deserves credit for putting this team in the position it is in now. Outside of Kareem, he has generally hit on his high draft picks (Brown, Cushing, Barwin, Tate, Watt, Reed) and he has built up really good depth on the roster to withstand the injuries we've endured this season. The 2 FA signings in the off-season are what made me change my opinion on him. The combo of Jonathan Joseph and Manning have been huge in making this a top defense (in addition to Wade, of course). I don't think we would be here with just Nnamdi instead of we surely wouldn't be here if he had paid Dunta. Just like the team that doesn't have 1 guy deserving of all the credit, Smith, Kubiak, Wade, and even Bob McNair deserve to share in the credit for this great season so far.
Smith deserves credit for putting together a deep enough team to withstand all the injuries and make the playoffs. It's his job to make them all fit within the salary cap and he's done a good job of it.
Read the thread, I expected improvement, but I don't think it would have been quite this incredible if not for the 50% overhaul of personnel on D. Almost everybody was sick of hearing about how awesome a defense was that managed to break league-worst records. Can you blame them? Spoiler P.S. How ya been, Fatty?
