Let's face it, we are stuck with this guy. The last three games of the regular season represent the reasons I think Kubiak is subpar, but the overall season was exceptional. Wade made a huge difference. For better or for worse, McNair is going to stick with him. Up to me, he would have been gone long ago, in fact, I would have never hired him. Kind of like Wade, much better coordinator than head coach. The key is to get Wade to stay because it is really going to hit the fan if he goes, Kubiak will be exposed again.
I would have fired Kubiak last year possibly even the year before... BUT I have to give him props... I would have definitely taken 10-6 before the season told me we'd miss Mario for 3/4 of the season...Have Andre miss most of the season and be somewhat a shell of himelf the rest and having schuab miss a decent amount of the season...I almost forgot Foster missing a month or so..... I would have told you we would be in the Andrew Luck sweepstakes not in a playoff race.... Amazing season....Everybody deserves praise including Kubiak...
KEEP Kubiak. I am NOT saying FIRE Kubiak. I'm saying his LATE GAME playcalling was a bit suspect TODAY. 5 out of the 63 plays. But whatever now. I am NOT the "Abandoned Arian" camp. Texans were BEHIND in PASSING mode to come back. Foster has the darn playoff RUSHING RECORD for first 2 games of playoffs. I did say if Foster has 27 carries, if he helps you win with 37 carries in the PLAYOFFS then fine by me. Like the sucked ass in the Red Zone Kubiak. The offense is #4 in yards but still middle-of-the-pack in actual scoring Kubiak The "halfback pass" Kubiak. The Matt Schaub has choked games late though it its Kubiak calling the calls Kubiak. ...Yes just weeks ago TJ Yates led a nice comeback against the Bengals. That drive was a clinic of GOOD PLAYCALLING. This last drive was looking like that for a while then they started getting impatient and overconfident with AJ lol.
ya cry that Kubiak is handcuffing Yates. Yates throws bombs that gets intercepted. then ya cry that Kubiak puts the game in his hands. Idiots.
Kubiak still needs to go. His play calling was still bad. Only reason we were in the game is Foster's heroics and Wade/defense.
Kubiak had a good year, and he's not going anywhere this offseason anyway. His play calling at times (like going away from Arian at crucial times) and stubbornness to make player adjustments (hi Jacoby!) are frustrating as hell though. Hopefully those improve. And thank god they gave the defense to Wade. There was the real difference this year.
you're missing the most important factor: committing to yates for 6 weeks including playoffs sink or swim was sheer f'ing insanity from day 1. sick of harping on this, because it gets me fired up and i know this is a case where i am 100% correct and it blows my mind that anybody can honestly believe that there was never any question that putting blind faith in a 3rd string 6th round qb was the correct call. and to answer your next post: brett favre or jake delhomme. kubiak is a stubborn moron.
who the **** made the decision to start the bum sink or swim for the remaining season plus playoffs???? this wasn't the first game that he sucked.
He also played well though at times. Good enough to beat Atlanta and Cincy twice, one of them being in the playoffs. Your argument would be more valid if he was as bad as he was yesterday in ALL the games... but he wasn't. I'm not going to lose sleep over the possible results had we had another QB out there... because they likely end up doing no better throughout the course of the season and playoffs. We knew all along that Schaub (not Foster, Andre, or Mario) would be the hardest player to replace on this team. All things considered, the job they did preparing Yates to perform as well as he did is actually more of a reason why Kubiak is a good coach, rather than a poor one. Even with Schaub, winning the division and advancing to the second round of the playoffs would have exceeded expectations going into this season. Not that I'm content, but I'm not going to get rid of a coach because his offense didn't perform at an elite level on the road against a great defense.
I've been super critical of Kubiak in the past....but I can not criticize the job he did this season. If you had told me before the season started that we were gonna lose Arian for a few games...Andre for about half the season...Mario for virtually the entire season...and Schaub for the last 6 games or so....I would have told you that there's no way we'd be in the playoffs, much less be hosting a game at home and win the franchise's first playoff game. It happened, nonetheless.
In the paper today, they had both Kubiak and Yates saying that the deep ball Yates threw to AJ that got picked by Ed Reed was a called run that Yates changed to a pass based on his pre-snap read. Can't fault the play call, but you certainly can fault the inexperience of Yates for taking the bait that Ed Reed set for him.
Good lord, what is wrong with some of you? Look...I wasn't just a member of the "FIRE KUBIAK!" fan club...I was the president with a f***ing bullhorn. But the job he did this year wasn't just deserving of one more season. He deserves a full on contract extension for at least 3-4 years. Yes, it took the addition of Wade Phillips for the team to finally turn the corner. This is, after all, A TEAM! Keeping this bunch together and winning after all they went through was nothing short of phenomenal. About my only point of real contention yesterday is that they should have pulled jacoby out of the game after the 2nd punt.
Hindsight .... If TJ read that AJ was on single coverage, he threw it deep. You can't blame coaching for that by allowing Yates to read situations and audible. One more thing about TJ's performance. That first interception, if you go back and watch it as many times as I've watched it..., the pass was thrown riught as AJ made the cut. That one looked like a design play. As a WR, you have to seal the guy off regardless. The pass was to the spot that AJ was going. I think blame goes 50/50 on that play. Someone was arguing about the 4th and 2 play? There was 19 seconds on the clock as soon as it was snapped. Both sidelines were completely covered. You could have someone cut through the middle and get a first down, but it's a coin flip on whether you have time to spike the ball or not. There are always questionable play calls, but they're questionable because it did not work. If Walter catches that last ball where he definitely had a chance to do, even with the slight deflection, then you're talking about a miracle play heading into overtime. Others could question Arian running it out of the backfield on their own 3 yard line on 3rd and long. But then again, due to two subsequent sets of punts, Texans get it back at the 20. Nobody agrees on every play. The same people that says that Foster should've gotten that ball is livid because THEY felt that it should be a run after 2 passes. Gary's offense has always been to deceive the defense. They think it's a run?, we'll bootleg. They think we're passing down the field?, we'll throw a screen pass. They think we're going to run on 3rd and 1?, we'll play-action. They think that the rookie threw an interception and he'll be rattled, and stuff 8-9 in the box?, we'll make him throw again. It's how it's been all year. Defenses tend to think things even out, where if a team pass pass pass, that they have to run. It's not how it works here and the element of suprise is needed with what we have under center. If AJ makes an amazing catch, NO ONE would be throwing fits like they are today. They lost, plain and simple. The thing that hurts is that they didn't get beat; they beat themselves. Coaches prepare you and get you ready for execution. Mistakes happen, but you just have to limit it. The plays being called are all a part of it. Defenses can make right calls too. You won't beat the defense every time, esp. not against this Baltimore defense. You win some call battles, you lose some.
have honestly never read a post seen through the lenses of a sharper prescription of rose-colored glasses than this one. yates didn't beat the bengals or the falcons. his ineptitude simply didn't supersede the performance of his teammates. he avoided devastating ints/pick 6's in all of those games. avoided about 4 more ints that slipped through the hands of teammates yesterday. all of the signs were there. any qb "looks good at times" if they are given the reigns for 7 weeks of games. dan orlovsky, the qb that was cut in favor of yates, looked good at times, including when he outdueled yates on one of the worst teams in nfl history. starting yates was NEVER the right call. he isn't our qb of the future, they have no long-term commitment to him. they aren't indebted to him in any way. it was downright irresponsible and borderline insane to anoint this guy starting qb sink or swim on a runaway division winner with one of the best offenses and defenses in the nfl. no other head coach in football would do that. there is no way that you can tell me that he was the best possible option. they didn't even put a claim in for kyle orton. there is no way brett favre isn't better than tj yates, and there's no way jake delhomme would have been worse. here's my favorite sentence of yours: "Not that I'm content, but I'm not going to get rid of a coach because his offense didn't perform at an elite level on the road against a great defense." yup. the man was in a no-lose situation all along, and he knew it. he was playing with house money. throwing tj yates out there for 7 games takes any and all possible blame off of him, and always gives him an excuse. never seen a worse coach better at saving his job. his offense broke 20 points one time in 7 games with yates. the ravens d was there to be had, and even a mediocre qb would have. we wasted a year of a superbowl caliber team by our head coach making t.j. yates our quarterback, sink or swim. it's really that simple. i'm not sure how anybody can possibly disagree with this, and excuse him.
His surgery has to be a huge red flag. It takes a good 6 months to have full recovery after a nephrectomy with the size of tumor that he had. He will need routine follow up testing here, and he's still not going to be fully cleared by the time OTA's and training camps start for other teams. Hell, if I were him, I wouldn't have come back this season... and would have strongly considered retiring alltogether. More power to him that he had enough dedication in his job here (even if the motivation was to be a head coach elsewhere) to come back as fast as he did.
You're making arguments to fire Gary Kubiak after what this team went through this season. And I'm the one who's seeing things through a biased view?
Going into Sunday, Yates had a QB rating of 82.9. He was not a problem, and I'm not convinced that Favre, Delhomme or anyone else available would have done better. In fact, Yates had third-highest QB rating in the NFL with 2-WR sets. His athleticism also made several plays that others could not. Of the picks yesterday, only one happened in a true game situation. The others came when the Texans were desperate (3rd-and-forever, 7 minutes left) and the one in the final two minutes, when they had to try and make a play. I'm not going to judge a guy too harshly for forcing it in those situations. I really don't think the Texans would've fared any better with one of the other options, once Schaub/Leinart went down. Yates wasn't a great quarterback, but he was league-average, and that's the best you could hope for in that circumstance, imo. He gave them a chance.
