BRIAN T. SMITH ON THE TEXANS' BAD START
Winless start puts the Texans in a precarious spot, but going 0-4 renders them irrelevant
INDIANAPOLIS — I refuse to overreact after just three games. So I’ll just stick to simple facts. The Texans have started a new year as the most disappointing team in the NFL.
The McNairs should start looking for a new coach at midseason if this mess continues.
Jadeveon Clowney — flagged for a taunting penalty in Week 2, despite being in street clothes; a world removed from Khalil Mack and Aaron Donald — publicly taking a shot at the Texans at the same time his underperforming team sits at 0-3 isn’t the best look for an organization still learning how to win.
Said coach Bill O’Brien: “We just did what we felt was best for Jadeveon Clowney. We communicated with him, and I think we’re all on the same page. That’s my perspective on it.”
The too-often disappointing No. 1 pick of the 2014 NFL draft, when asked why he didn’t participate in training camp: “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
Added Clowney: “There wasn’t anything wrong with me. … I was ready to go when I came back.”
He actually did participate. Clowney was just limited after undergoing minor offseason knee surgery. His slow ramp-up coincided with stalled contract-extension talks, which went nowhere at the same time Mack and Donald received recordsetting paydays.
So it goes on Kirby Drive, where everything from a failed season-opening handoff to a fake punt, uncalled timeout, redzone woes and unsuccessful third downs have dragged down a season that is already on the brink.
Talk is indeed cheap
What’s more likely, Houston: A road win over Andrew Luck and Frank Reich in the Colts stadium that Peyton Manning built, or the 0-4 Texans hosting a meaningless game against the Cowboys next Sunday night on national television?
Thank gosh I don’t bet for a living.
“Talk is cheap. We’ve got to go out there and do it,” O’Brien said Friday, as the Texans tried to tighten their leaky ship one more time. “Everybody’s got to take the field with confidence and everybody’s got to take the field with great energy. Everybody wants to start fast. To me, it’s really sustaining energy throughout the game. Then again … it’s also complementary football. We don’t complement each other yet, and we’ve got to start doing that.”
You’re already screaming for major changes.
We haven’t seen or heard from owner Bob McNair in a while, and his son, Cal, has increasingly become the primary figure (outside of O’Brien’s) on Kirby. I wanted to ask Cal a few questions last week, knowing full well the Texans chairman/ chief operating officer would probably stick to the franchise’s long-term script and likely was to employ a horse-racing analogy.
That interview request was denied, so all you get from the top is a fifth-year coach vaguely discussing his recent conversations with the McNairs.
“We talk all the time. Almost every day, I would say,” O’Brien said. “We’ve got to get better. Bottom-line business. We have to win. We all understand that. Bob has made it very clear to me that we need to improve.” I second that times 100. The Texans have trailed 21-6, 14-0 and 20-3 in their opening three games. That’s almost as backward as the Ryan Grigsonera Colts and as inexplicable as the offensive line that Indy once protected Luck with.
I knew going into this season that the Texans’ theoretical rise would take time. Despite young, high-level talent at offensive skill positions (Deshaun Watson, DeAndre Hopkins, Will Fuller) and the potential return of a once-dominant defense, the organization believed it would have to capture old-fashioned lightning in a bottle for everything to click in 2018.
Yet to earn the right to win
As players walked into the lobby of The Greenbrier hotel two months ago, new general manager Brian Gaine was asked if this should be a playoff team.
“(I) won’t make any assertions as it relates to that,” Gaine said in West Virginia. “My hope is we play to the best of our abilities and let the results come from that. But you have to earn the right to win, and that’s something that Bill and I have talked about with our players — you have to earn the right to win.”
The Texans own the longest losing streak in the NFL and didn’t deserve to win in weeks 1-3. Then they spent last week saying they were just a TD away in each defeat, which ignored the hard truth of 0-3.
I watched the Rams brilliantly outshoot the Vikings on Thursday and randomly thought of the Texans. Everything that has been off and missing. A coach perfectly in sync with his young QB and team; a big-city franchise that clearly wasn’t settling the year after rising to 11-5.
Los Angeles went 4-12 in 2016 — the same record O’Brien’s Texans fell to last season. Then major changes were made in L.A.
The McNairs can afford to keep thinking slow and long term. There’s still a path to 3-3 for what’s currently the NFL’s most disappointing team.
But if the Texans fall to 0-4 in Indy and O’Brien’s overall losing streak hits 10 consecutive games?
Houston’s pro football team will be irrelevant less than a month into the 2018 season, with the reigning world champion Astros returning to the playoffs next Friday at roaring Minute Maid Park and the 65-win Rockets starting a new, already-hyped season.
And that’s not an overreaction. That’s just another fact.