There are a lot of things you can point to and say, "hey, it's not Kubiak's fault". Our interior o-line was decimated by injuries, we lost an all-pro tight end, etc. It's also easy to see the progress he's made in 4 years and how close we are. Besides the division record, the thing that really burns me is just last week's game. I hate to narrow it down to a single game, but think about it- our season was on the line and we lost to a team in which there is no doubt that we can beat. On top of that, the playcalling is the biggest reason that we lost. I mean, if Kubiak can't win THAT GAME, with everything on the line, against a division opponent that we know very well and arguably an inferior team from a talent perspective, why should he get another year? You have to have good coaching to win big games, and that game proved we can't win the big ones. I was ready to give him another year, even with the 3 prior losses, but not anymore.
Close meaning we've been in every game since the opener. A play here or there in any of those games and we have a different outlook on where this team is. Yes, the results have been less than desirable, but would people be saying, "Fire Kubiak!" if they had somehow lucked into a few more wins along the way? The goal is to continue to become a better team; we've done that. Sometimes you have to separate the results from the process. Team (losses in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009) Colts (4,3,4,0) Titans (8,6,3,7) Jaguars (8,5,11,5) Maybe it's an indication of where the other teams are. We've closed the gap in that we're competitive in all of the games now. You couldn't say that in year's past. How so? You mean if Battier passes up a three point shot in the corner, he has a chance of making it? That would be illogical.
There isn't much of a sample size, at least not in today's era (going back approx. 20 years). Most coaches that won the super bowl either never went to another team (Brian Billick, Jimmy Johnson, Barry Switzer, Mike Shanahan, Dungy) or retired (Cowher, Seifert, Gibbs). The only guys you can look at are Parcells (won in '90, did return in '96 with different team but lost), Holmgren (won in '96, returned in '06 with different team and lost), and Vermeil (won in '99, had success with different team but no SB's). If you're trying to say the Cowher's, Gruden's, and Holmgren's aren't likely to win another Super Bowl, I don't think there is near enough evidence to conclude that.
No offense, man. But I'm really tired of hearing this. The results are the only thing that matters. We are 5-7. 5-7. Every team in the league can say "well, if this would've happened or that wouldn't have happened, we would be 12-0." It doesn't matter. We are 5-7. That's it. We are 1-5. That's not competitive. Again, that's 1-5. It doesn't matter how close the games were. We're 1-5.
This assumes that winning close games is just a matter of luck. Of the 4 games they lost by one bad play near the end, all would only have been *tied* by that play. It's still only 50/50 that they win those games even if they make all those plays.
It'd be fairer to say we went from being a hapless 0.281 team going nowhere to a mediocre 0.453 with promise. The Capers era was unwatchable. The Kubiak era has put together one of the better passing attacks in the league (for 2 quarters a game *cough*). But still: Loser mentality remains, and teams adopt the personality of their coach. The team openly underperforms for a half each game and has been making a habit of it for two years. Kubiak's major promise was to establish a strong running game, something we've seen evidence of only once in a 4 year period. Major playcalling gaffes have been haunting us this season. There is increasing evidence that the players are tuning Kubiak out, something that almost no coach can recover from (Coughlin is the only real example I can think of). History has shown that the right coach can absolutely be good for an immediate 2+ game improvement. The NFL is the most common league to see overnight turnarounds happen. Kubiak is a good coach, but the team is not progressing. People are crying injuries, but what we suffered last year was far worse and we finished 8-8. The year before that was Schaub's first go as a starter and lost Andre Johnson for half the season.....and we still landed at 8-8. You can't look me in the eye and tell me injuries held us back this year from a winning record. Choke jobs have kept us from being 8-4 today. Period.
I understand that - we're all tired of it. Those who pay to go to the games, those out of towners that pay for Sunday Ticket so they can still watch the team, all the fans that invest so much time and energy into supporting the team. And I'm not saying we go onto win all those close games, I'm just saying what if we'd won one or two? We'd be in the playoffs right now. And yet, despite the fact that we've fumbled, missed kicks, and all together squandered opportunities, we can't separate that from what Kubiak and crew have done. Rebuilt the entire roster. Given us an offense that features a well-designed passing game, a running game that was producing (albeit last year), and a statistically improved defense. He may have lost any faith the fans have had in him, but I - me, singularly - am not of the mindset to waste these previous four years of OJT with Kubiak (which we knew we'd be doing hiring a rookie head coach) to blow things up (relatively speaking) and let him walk out the door to another team where he can build on the lessons learned here.
desihooper, I get your point. We're just going to have to agree to disagree. Before the 4-game losing streak, I felt like you. I felt that a few breaks and we would be 7-1 instead of 5-3. I said so on here lots of times. But after a while, those things tend to even out. But for us, they have yet to even out. And that makes me think that we really are who we are - a 5-7 football team. Bad luck happens in a game or 2 per season - not 6 out of 7 losses. That's not bad luck. To me, the bottom line is this -- we're in the 4th year of Kubiak's regime. I think we should be better than 5-7.
By close I mean if you go back and look at almost every game, it's a turnover here or a couple of penalties there that separate the Texans from a bunch of wins; really from being a playoff team. Oops on the Wisenhunt miss, typing faster than I was thinking. But as a personnel evaluation point, they show that you should never pass on a super talent even though you have 1 at the position. You'll miss 100% of the shots you don't take!! Because by definition you neither miss nor make a shot not taken. If you don't take it, it doesn't exist. It's neither a miss or a make.
Poppycock. Every loser is almost a winner. You make your own luck. This team if habitually overmatched for 30 minutes a game. This team fumbles, false-starts, late-hits, and bumbles its way to mediocrity. Or worse. "We almost had 'em!!!" is the rally cry of the habitual loser.
Or it's the truth. Bad football teams don't have adequate personnel. Bad teams routinely get beaten badly. Bad teams don't start the season with any hope. I will grant you, great teams overcome the bad breaks. But out of 32 teams how many really superior ones are there, I'll say 5. And there are probably 5 really bad teams. So that leaves 22 pretty good teams that are fairly evenly marched, could win on any given Sunday that are defined by how their breaks go.. #1 injuries #2 turnovers #3 calls Like the phantom horse collar, or pass interferences. For the middle of the pack in the NFL it's like they all toss a coin 100 times and the ones with the most Heads win. But it's because they are all pretty good. Of the thousands of good football players and the hundreds of good football coaches most of the better ones rise top the NFL. The chances of there being a great differences in the quality are slim and are usually because they are divergent from the trend (Raiders) or make mistakes in the evaluation of their top draft picks. And you can almost boil that down to the quality of their quarterbacks. If your quarterback sucks you have almost no chance to win.
doubtful. Yeah, I don't mean to say the Texans are a *bad* football team. This is infinitely better than 2005 or 2006, and a *smidge* better than 2004. ...but that ain't saying much. ...and the rest are mediocre. Some of the mediocre teams make fewer boneheaded, idiot plays or calls and end up 9-7 or 10-6. By virtue of their winning more games than they lose, they are not losers. Then there are this year's Texans. (and a handful of similar mediocre teams) Losers. No excuses. Loser, by definition: "one who loses." They're not Rams-bad or Lions-bad or 2005-Texans-bad, but they're still losers. And that statement will be mathematically accurate until they, you know, WIN.
This is an example of Richard Justice being misleading. Fisher was taking a team through a transition between cities during his first 4 years. We all saw the mess that was both here and when they first moved to Tennessee but didn't have a stadium, etc. Bill Belichick's first 4 years: 6-10 7-9 7-9 11-5 Jimmy Johnson's first 4 years: 1-15 7-9 11-5 13-3 Anyone notice a trend there? As compared to: 6-10 8-8 8-8 5-7 (so far)
You keep believing what your high school coach told you. But I will state this as my belief: Changing coaches is a business decision to keep selling tickets. There is no better than a 50/50 chance that it will produce more wins. Look at it this way: Almost every head coach that has been fired in the NFL has gotten another high level coaching position in the NFL. If there were any true incompetence (or exceptional competence) they wouldn't. Your new brilliant head coach will have a staff of someone else's fired retreads.
to address some of the other points: other mediocre teams sustain injuries, too. they don't finish with 11 games, but they don't turn over multiple game-changing plays inside the 5, either. for every "phantom horsecollar" I can find three or four dropped passes, idiot play calls, fumbles, etc. on the same lines, for every "bad bounce of the ball" or every "bad break" that was out of the Texans' control, there have been at least four or five bad decisions or poor executions. Bottom line: the Texans have made their own "luck". Watch their play from Q1-15:00 to Q4-0:00 and they look like the 5-7 team they are. (I didn't say they were earth-shattering horrible, just that they are precisely what their record indicates: right around average, and generally losers). All this other talk is nothing but excuses. After 8 long years, aren't sick and freaking tired of "what-ifs", "if-onlys", and "yeah-buts"?
Since I've been arguing with you on your other points, I will say that I agree with the quoted portion here. While it may be a good decision to change coaches, it guarantees nothing whatsoever.
Some problems here: 1. Skills that make a good head coach are different than, say, a coordinator. So if a head coach (say, Dom Capers) gets fired and goes back to being a coordinator does not mean he's a good head coach. 2. Often times, head coaches just need change or have taken a team as far as they can. Players tune them out, coaches get into ruts, teams need new ideas and approaches, etc. So yes, the same guy can have success elsewhere. That doesn't mean he didn't need to be fired at the previous job.
Depends on who the coach is and who's replacing him. If you replace me with Bill Cowher, you're more than 50/50 likely to get a big improvement. If you replace Bill Cowher with me, you're more than 50/50 likely to go backwards.
