"Deserter"? No. They are my team and only leaving H-town would change that. As a fan though, I *try*, with what limited knowledge I have, to be honest with myself about where they are as a team. and they're mediocre. Yep. When they get those little things right, they'll be really good. Until they get them right, they're *not* good. While I was encouraged by the defense's 2nd half adjustments, I'm still concerned about stopping the run against a good team. I'm also more and more suspect of Kubiak or Shanahan, whichever is responsible for the offensive game plan and play-calling. Seriously--going for the end zone on 4th and 1???? Holy crap.
i don't see it as spin; not at all. when you're an 8-8 team trying to get over the hump, it's important to measure how far you have to go. if you can legitimately say that this season is 2 yards away from being *very* different (and it is), that simply can't be dismissed. but it doesn't necessarily mean it's being used to blast a silver lining out of our buttockals. you can certainly say that they're two yards short because of the personnel and/or coaching and use it as an indictment. i mean, you don't break down and then rebuild a team that's 2 yards short of being a contender. the question is: are they two yards short because they need another year/draft/free agency period or a new regime/direction/approach? you're STILL missing the point. i never, ever said they would win those games. i'm very much aware that there're no guanratees from week to week in the nfl and that anything can happen. but you have to set a standard to evaluate the team. and *my* standard was a 5-3 start. who questioning its legitimacy?
schaub was on 610 this morning; they asked him about that play. he said walter was the intended receiver underneath but that he was covered. aj was his hot read. given the call, you stand a better chance letting johnson go after a ball than trying to force one into a covered walter on a stop route. what i didn't understand was where was johnson on the final three plays at the goal line? ugh. what a heartbreaking sequence. slaton was sooooo close to pushing it in, dressen, even with the gag pass, was soooo close to coming up with a pretty remarkable grab........ man.
Ding! Ding! Ding! That is precisely the question. And I have no opinion on it. I just don't know. There are some coaching calls that just really bewilder me, but the talent isn't all that great either (Slaton, for example, is beginning to have "one-year-wonder" flashing in Neon over his head).
My thought after their start so far: they're wildly inconsistent. it's like an entirely different team shows up from half to half. they have yet to play 4 quarters of good football in a game. coaching concerns me. i have no idea where they're going.
What about Anderson? Driessen? Daniels? The only choices were underneath and the back of the end zone? Holy crap. Man, that's just bad. And why aren't they playing Casey???
he didn't mention them. i do know kubiak chewed him out as he came off the field so he obviously wasn't happy with either his choice or throw.
i think one thing people need to keep in mind is that the team is markedly better. someone on another thread said they were headed for 9-7 and called it pathetic. you can certainly be (justifiably) disappointed in 8-9 wins... but you need to keep enough perspective to recognize that winning 8-9 games for 3-4 years in a row is NOT pathetic. it's average. it's an average team. there's a good foundation here. personally, i think youth and inexperience is biting them so far this year - and i think you can most assuredly pin that on kubiak. ther're are too many key positions being manned by young, inexperienced people. looking back in hindsight - some veteran guys changed hands this summer and i can't help but think the texans were foolish to not respect how important that might've been to the team. when you're 8-8, veteran experience could be the thing to get you over the hump. and that goes for bush, too. i really and truly wanted them to go after nolan - after all, he had the bronco ties and would've brought *experience* to the coordinator position. and now he's working magic with the broncos. i like kubiak, and he's done a lot of good here - but he may ultimately be undone by putting too many eggs in the same inexperienced basket.
I'm still on the fence. The team shows flashes of being pretty good. And they are traditionally a very slow starting team. Maybe it's taking time for them to jell...again. So while I was ready to go nuts after halftime, but the second half made me hold off for at least a little while.
Ric, I think you misunderstood what I was talking about. I do not feel a 8-9 win season is pathetic. I meant: 1. that with the encouraging signs we had at the end of the year with their play. 2. The addition of Cushing and a healthy Dunta as well as the aggressive play calling defensively. 3. Combine that with the obvious talent we have, expectations were much higher than a 8-9 win team. Maybe they were false expectations but after the mediocre play thus far, 8-9 wins would be nice record. However, I feel the word "pathetic" is more to the fact that we can be semi-happy with 8-9 wins when the team's talent level says 10-11 wins. We, as fans, deserve better than the usual excuses. If they were different mistakes being made, I would contribute that to the youth and inexperience. However, these mistakes are the SAME mistakes we have seen time and again with this team. When is it youth and inexperience and when is it poor coaching and game planning?
this team's talent level screams "mediocre", not "10 wins". Look past your two star receivers and your pro bowl tight end. You got nothing else on offense, you got MW, Cush, and Meco on defense. Everything else is replaceable poo-poo.
I don't see how they can possibly win @CIN with the way the Bengals defense is playing right now unless the Texans spread the field with 4 or 5 WRs. Joseph & Hall are playing too good at CB to go with our vanilla offense. Don't forget the Bungles have become clutch in the 4th quarter; the Texans not so much. Some of you guys thinking 9-10 wins could use a reality check. This team is too wildly inconsistent at everything expect being inconsistent.
Well we have one the best collections of WR's in the league. I would stack them up against almost anyone. If we actually played to our talent, we would throw more AND win more. I agree that we are not the best however, we are NOT bereft of talent. The cupboard is not empty. On paper,10 wins is achievable with this collection of talent. Of course they do not play them on paper either...LOL
i fall somewhere between the two of you. i think it's pretty obvious this team, personnel-wise, is still not there. you can't have such a wide disparity in talent amongst your starting 22. but i think you're underrating the team a bit starting with, you know, the QB - he's pretty good. and i think slaton would be a really good 3rd down/change of pace back (told you guys he was no sure thing). along the line, winston is very good & brown is good. they have two pretty legitimate playmakers on special teams and, yesterday aside, kris brown has been amazingly good the past three years. the problem is that the drop-off to the next level is pretty significant. their interior line in poor. leach seems like a versatile guy - but he also seems to struggle in run blocking, not a good sign for a FB. same thing defensively, though more pronounced: i think they have 3 really good players and 3 good (somewhat inconsistent) players. but after that, the talent level falls off a cliff. BUT... i still think (hope?) they can fight to 4-4 at the break. if they can do that, and bush can right the defense (they just have to be average, not the '85 bears), perhaps some of these growing pains will be worked out and they'll be able to finish strong - just not battling out of an 0-4 hole. i don't think they can make the playoffs - tough league. but if they can get to 9-10 wins, i think kubiak saves his job.
This continues to be my issue as well. Joe Marciano seems prepared, I think I like baby Shanahan....but otherwise, the coaching just pisses me off....even moreso because apparently they have assistant to assistant coaches in there. I mean Ray Rhodes is the teams "senior defensive assistant"...whatever that means. Which all ignores the real issue imo...Kubiak and Smith. They are consistently underwhelming or underprepared. They continue to attempt plays that they know won't work, or have never worked in the past. Their clock management continues to boggle the mind. They fail to improve in areas where they need improvement. On the personnel side, the same story. After last season, the biggest area of concern defensively was in the backfield, offensively was short yardage situations. Either through the draft or FA they once again made absolutely zero effort to address these concerns. Is it really that surprising that the team isn't a good short yardage rushing team? They had/have virtually the same line and scheme. A healthy Chris Brown was expected to help them improve??? Is it really that surprising that their backfield hasn't been good? The older I get the more bandwagon I get (mind you, never with the Rockets, but other sports). I want to be a better fan, but I've got a lot more stuff on my plate - my time is precious, devoting it to something so consistently disappointing is not my idea of an effective use of it. I went full on bandwagon with the Astros the last year and half. I barely watch any baseball anymore. It was never my favorite sport to begin with, but I could always get into a decent Stros team. Not anymore. Football benefits from being (1) a lot more exciting, at least to me, (2) only on once a week, so even with a mediocre or bad team, it isn't a in your face bad every night, and (2) a much bigger draw locally and in the state. people in texas love football. That said, it has to fight with an increasingly popular college version of itself. Now, I'm not close to abandon stage yet, but will I make a point to watch every second of every game the rest of the season...no, not even on DVR. Out of curiosity, the outside run plays seemed to be working in the first quarter with Slaton, like the outside screens to him seem to do...why did they abandon those completely? I understand they were clawing from a big hole so had to go pass happy, but once they had it tied up, they did attempt a running play here or there (including the goal-line failures)...this goes back to my point about continuing to try and fit a square peg into a round hole - except in this case it looks like they found the square hole in the first half, but then forgot about it.
QB, Winston, Brown, and especially Brown I'll give you. Slaton as a "change of pace" back would be nice, but he's the *starter*, so on paper that hurts your talent level. Bingo! Ding! Ding! Ding! You nailed it, once again. I didn't mean to say this team was total crap, because it's not. But nothing about this collection of talent tells me they should win 10 games. I named the receivers, and then Dennis named the receivers in his response. How about the rest of the team??? You have to account for the bad parts of the team just as much as the good. And, the Oline has been dishearteningly horrible at run-blocking, the rbs have been pedestrian, the secondary is an absolute joke and the DLine *still* isn't penetrating anything. We have perhaps the best receiving corps in the league and a nice QB. We have the flat-out worst defense in the league, although they showed some encouraging signs yesterday. Then there's all the head-scratcher coaching decisions. Sounds like a 7-or-8 win team to me. I hope to see it as much as you or anyone else. But I just doubt it. WAAAYYYY too much inconsistency. One half, Schaub is Joe Montana, the next he's almost David Carr. (I said ALMOST.) The defense will have a great three-and-out then they'll quietly lay down for a nice six-minute TD drive. At least they didn't give up any 99.9-yard TD runs last week.
IMO they can and should be able to win 10-11 games with the roster they have right now. However, do not misunderstand me either. They have performed far below their abilities many times. They have a ways to go but I would have thought we would have been further along then this 3 years into the Kubes regime. Yet we still have the same things happen time again.
samo, samo.... mediocre Texans. We're going nowhere fast with this staff. They need to crank it up a notch, and start their usual, stong, late season finish NOW, or GTFO Kubes and crew.
