Did the Houston Texans pull a goofy on Free Agency.

No; it means teams are in different stages of their development with varying levels of talent. There are no apples to apples comparisons; every team is unique. This isn’t terribly difficult.

OK, I will… and it turns out, you’re wrong. Arizona has $12.2MM ; Houston has $13.6MM. And the Texans are currently carrying less than $6MM in dead money this year so I will again ask: which onerous contracts are killing the Texans?

(And let's wait and see where Arizona is in 2-3 years when they have to pay Patrick Petersen, when the bill finally comes due for their continual restructuring of Fitzgerald's contract...)

Uhm…

 

I think the real separation between the two camps on this board is whether the Texans roster is total garbage or not.

I happen to think that, outside of Schaub, most of the contracts they handed out were good decisions and a lot of their FA/Draftee acquisitions have been good (Ed Reed notwithstanding, lol). I think a combination of injuries to key players and inept coaching is what really held the team back from significant playoff success 2009-2013.

I don't want to "drain the swamp". This operation requires more of a scalpel and less of a hammer, IMO. This is not a rebuild, it's a retool. QB, RT, and DL. Fill those 3 positions with above-average players and we're right back to 10+ wins, IMO.

 

Mother of God. The battlefight is strong in you.

 

There are 32 teams in the NFL. FYI...

 

I know you're the polar opposite of me regarding this issue. But you should have noticed by now that I don't mock and ridicule you for thinking that the Texans are a total dumpster fire.

After 2 wins, it's reasonable to think everyone blows ass and needs to go. However, I remember seeing almost all of these same exact players kick ass and take names in 2011-2012.

I happen to think the talent is more or less there. A quarterback who went full derp, several critical injuries, and a coach with a playbook from 1997 are what really sunk us, IMO.

You'd be hard pressed to find a 2 win team in the history of the NFL with as much talent as the Texans have. Watt, Johnson, Hopkins, Brown, Cushing, Foster, Joseph, Jackson, Swearinger. There are teams that won twice as many games as the Texans last year with rosters half as talented as that.

 

More importantly, the Ravens were a competitive team for basically a decade. They had bumps sure, but for the most part they were a good AFC team for 10+ years.

So yeah, the Ravens I can understand a little better than the "2 year window and then we suck again" Texans having cap problems.

I've been warning for two+ years that this team was managing the cap poorly on this very site.

 

You sure about that Texans number? We signed Graham and I don't see him on that list....

 

This is where you are making a mistake. You are seeing talented names at the top of the roster and deciding that means they are a talented team.

The roster has no depth to it and that is entirely because the front office has been terrible at drafting with a few exceptions since day 1. We can't fill a roster out from the draft and that is a HUGE issue. There may be teams that won more games with less top tier names, but they all have more quantity of quality on the roster than we do.

 

The biggest cap problem the Texans ever had was not this year, but a couple years ago due to the lockout. A lot of teams that were high on the cap going into the lockout ended up essentially gambling on the outcome of the union negotiations. The cap didn't get raised nearly enough after the lockout, and as such, we ended up jettisoning several key contributors... which in no smart part led to the crash of late 2012-early 2013. This year's cap problem (which can almost entirely be blamed on Schaub) is not as bad as that situation was.

 

Problem with your confidence is that the NFL is fickle when it comes to player production, especially after injuries. You act as if 2011-2012 was a season were we were the best team in the NFL. The toughest opponent we beat was the Colts in Week one and maybe if you want to count the Steelers on the road....that's it.

That team was nothing special then and bring up Schaub's injury if you want but there's no reason to want to recreate that team. That team is just not AFC Championship caliber in THIS coming season's AFC. If all you care about is at least a 10 win team then....then I don't know what to say, maybe you just hate the idea of bad football for the sake of a better foundation and REAL run at a Super Bowl in 2016

 

I can't say I agree or disagree because I'm not familiar enough with the depth on teams like the Cleveland Browns, Tampa Bay Bucs, and Oakland Raiders, to know if they are more talented teams. But it's fairly obvious the Texans have more high level talent than those franchises. I guess we'll find out next year if my theory is right. I hope it is.

 

How convenient of Hey Now!

 

What is exactly is a rebuild? Do you guys who say we are rebuilding think Bob hired O'Brien because he told him "Mr. McNair, your football team stinks and you only have 1 good player in that Watt kid, hire me and I will rebuild this team and have you really competing in about 4-5 years!". "Well gee Bill that sounds great, I know going into last season I thought we could win a Super Bowl, but if you think you can get us back to that level of play in 4-5 years, well here's a check for 30 million dollars!"

Maybe I'm misunderstanding this whole rebuild process. did the colts rebuild when they went 2-14? What about the chiefs last year? When you say rebuild do you mean hire a new coach in the offseason and pick up some good players in the draft and then make the playoffs?

 

Bill O'Brien keeps talking about culture. When I hear that I think of rebuild because in order to establish culture you need fresh young players or like minded Vets. I don't think it will take 4 years to make the team a SB contender but I know it's not going to take 8 months. Let's get this straight, we ARE NOT the Chiefs. They are the exception, not the rule.


The Colts did rebuild. They gutted a ton of vets except for Mathis and Harrison. They struck God on Luck so that's like winning the lotto. Remember they could have kept Manning.

 

Most people, including the majority of NFL experts, agree the Texans are closer to the 2012 Chiefs than the 2012 Jaguars.

The 2012 Colts ditched a bunch of guys who had gotten too old. Dallas Clark, Joe Addai, Jeff Saturday, Gary Brackett, etc. Those guys simply weren't good anymore or worth the money. The only player of any consequence (aside from Manning) they let walk was Pierre Garcon.

There are few, if any, players on the Texans who are as completely worthless to the Texans as the guys mentioned above were to the Colts. The Texans core talent is quite young compared to that. So it's hard to compare the situations.

The guys the Colts drafted to replace those departures have been good (most notably and importantly the QB), which they deserve credit for. But the 2012 team was not great by any means. If you want to talk exceptions, that was a once in a lifetime kind of lucky season for an NFL team.

I think the Texans "rebuild" process and the Colts "rebuild" are going to end up being wildly different, with the only shared part being a new QB.

 

and Foster. RBs are still typically overpaid on second contracts.

 

I believe Foster can be productive throughout the life of his contract, and perform up to his price tag. Obviously last year was garbage, but I think he is talented enough to warrant finishing out the remaining 3 years of his deal (which coincidentally ends when he turns 30, otherwise known as the kiss of death for RBs). This is a big year for him. If he flops, he's a goner. I predict he will bounce back.

 

I think the issue is "poorly" I'll never convince anybody that the Schaub deal wasn't the least bit onerous - when it was signed - because, you know, Schaub and all... But what other deals worried you because they were both poor financial *and* personnel decisions?

They have less than $6MM in dead money this year...

 

RBs, in my opinion, get more credit than they deserve. His performance (as well as most other RBs) is largely based on how well the offensive line blocks. If Foster bounces back, the offensive line will deserve a good chunk of his salary.

 

Undeniably true, but Foster's game is more than just YPC. He's a very well-rounded football player. More than most RBs, anyway.