DOUBLE THEIR PLEASSURE?
TEXANS COACH BILL L O’BRIEN ISN’T KEEN ON PLAYING TWO QBS, BUT IT’S NOT EXACTLY UNPRECEDENTED IN THE NFL
Halfway through his fourth preseason here, Bill O’Brien has a big problem at quarterback, which is nothing new, of course.
As the Texans’ head coach, O’Brien has never not had a big problem at quarterback. But, based on what we’ve seen so far this summer, Tom Savage vs. Deshaun Watson in no way resembles Brian Hoyer vs. Ryan Mallett (2015) or Ryan Fitzpatrick (2014) and Brock Osweiler (2016) vs. their own glaring inadequacies. How so? “The Texans have two really good quarterbacks now,” observes Andre Johnson, a man whose Houston tenure was frequently marked by the Texans not having even one.
Johnson doesn’t know Watson personally as a football player, but he can vouch for Savage. He became a Savage fan when they crossed paths as Texans in 2014. He thought the then-rookie had the makings of an NFL quarterback because “he threw a good ball and he was real accurate.”
Still, this should have been simple. By now, Savage should have caved in to the pressure of not being the chosen one, the Future of the Franchise. But, making Johnson appear prescient, Tom has been more terrific than not, refusing to accept the futility of his mission. Heading to New Orleans this weekend for the one
preseason game that’s supposed to bear a passing resemblance to the real deal, the fourth-year pro from Pittsburgh (via Rutgers and Arizona) is behaving like the job really does belong to him. And what if that doesn’t change? What if Savage keeps dealing and finds a way to stay upright and ambulatory? The wondrous upside is that the Texans’ offense will have moved on from the stupor that defined Osweiler’s lone season.
As ex-Texan guard Wade Smith said, “If Tom Savage plays well enough to keep Deshaun Watson at bay, that’s great for the Houston Texans organization.” The downside is that this hugely valuable asset they have in Watson will go to waste, at least for the short term.
Time to be bold?
At any other position on a football roster besides quarterback, a first-round draft choice who isn’t able to crack the starting lineup can still be put to excellent use in situational packages and/or special teams. Example: Kevin Johnson two seasons ago.
But quarterbacks either start or they stand around. With Savage when he was a rookie, that didn’t much matter because he was a fourth-round draft choice, an intriguing prospect at best who arrived without much — if any — hue and clamor. The Texans, however, have three über-premium
picks over two drafts — two No. 1s and a No. 2 — invested in Watson.
Would O’Brien, being an Ivy Leaguer, lay some visionary thinking on us as he attempts to secure his own job beyond this season? Is there any chance the Texans might ultimately have two de facto “starting” quarterbacks before the season is over? In a word, no. “That’s not the approach we’re taking,” O’Brien said. “Sure, I can envision that, but I’m not going to do that. Tom’s the starter. Tom has had a really good camp. He’s got a good command of our offense. Deshaun is a very, very good young player who has a great future in this league. Let’s put our cards on the table. That’s what it is.
“But Tom has been here for four years. (Based) on the way we want to play, the style that we need to play relative to getting guys lined up, relative to cadence, relative to protection points and putting guys in the right spot, Tom’s ahead of Deshaun.”
Nonetheless, if ever circumstances merit such outlier thinking, the Texans’ seemingly qualifies — for the moment — with Savage having completed 17 of 20 passes while directing a pair of nifty touchdown drives and Watson having shown flashes of instinctive brilliance,
“IF TOM SAVAGE PLAYS WELL ENOUGH TO KEEP DESHAUN WATSON AT BAY, THAT’S GREAT FOR THE HOUSTON TEXANS ORGANIZATION.” WADE SMITH FORMER TEXANS GUARD
reminding his new Houston fans how he won a national championship at Clemson.”
“It’s a great problem to have,” said Chester Pitts, an original Texan who also never tasted playoff success in his eight seasons here in large part because of shortcomings at quarterback.
But note that Pitts strongly endorses O’Brien’s conventional approach visà-vis Savage and Watson because the latter is too valuable to be exposed to injury simply to pick up a first down here and there.
“If something happens,” Pitts said, “you want the other guy 100 percent ready to go. It wouldn’t be worth the risk. Not at all.”
Johnathan Joseph, the Texans’ veteran cornerback, admits dealing with quarterbacks as stylistically different as Savage and Watson from one series to the next would seriously complicate things for a defense.
“You’d be doing a lot of adjusting, especially if you’d only game-planned for one of them,” Joseph said. “They have different skill sets.”
More confusion than benefits
Still, whatever benefits are accrued by confusing the defense might be cancelled out by the confusion that results offensively. There’s a reason why we don’t see much co-quarterbacking in the NFL. Having two equal quarterbacks, we’ve been told since Pop Warner’s day, means you have no quarterback. Nonetheless, coaches with Hall-of-Fame names like Tom Landry, Don Shula, Bill Walsh, George Allen plus Bill Cowher and Dan Reeves have fiddled to varying degrees with the concept and, in
seasons in which they did, Landry, Shula and Cowher all got their teams to the Super Bowl.
Landry tried it to the most extreme degree in 1971 when, torn between relying on the serviceable and experienced but middling talent Craig Morton or giving the young, dynamic, inspirational Roger Staubach, he decided to play both against the Chicago Bears, giving them alternating snaps. Instead of sending plays in with his guards — this was way before electronic communication between the sideline and the huddle — he dispatched them with the quarterback.
“If I’m going to call the plays, it makes it easier to shuttle the quarterbacks because they have time to think over their keys,” Landry reasoned.
While that made sense in theory, it didn’t work very well. The Bears won 23-19 and Landry scrapped the idea the following week. Staubach became the starter, then and presided over 10 consecutive victories, the last of them coming in Super Bowl VI.
Two seasons later in Washington, Allen had two shaky choices to be his quarterback, the 39-yearold Sonny Jurgensen or the 34-year-old Billy Kilmer. “Hobble and Wobble,” the press called the two codgers. Kilmer, who had led Washington to the Super Bowl the previous year in place of the injured Jurgensen, got the nod on opening day and Washington won 38-0.
When a loss in St. Louis followed, Jurgensen reclaimed the reins. But then he got hurt again. And so it went, back and forth. Somehow Washington went 10-4 before losing to Minnesota, behind Kilmer, in its first playoff game.
Shula experimented with co-quarterbacks in the strike-shortened 1982 season, alternating between Don Strock, the veteran who had backed up Bob Griese for a decade but never challenged him for Miami’s starting job, and a younger journeyman named David Woodley. Strock had the better arm, Woodley the better legs. Known collectively as “Woodstrock,” they forged a strong enough partnership to put the Dolphins in Super Bowl XVII.
One there, though, it didn’t go well. Neither completed a pass in the second half and the Dolphins 27-17 lost to Washington. Shula had seen enough. He drafted Dan Marino the following spring.
Walsh, for his part, alternated Joe Montana, the future Hall-of-Famer in his second season, with the thirdyear pro, Steve DeBerg in San Francisco in 1980. Montana got three midseason starts against teams Walsh thought he’d match up well against (he didn’t; the Niners lost all three), then also started the final four games as Walsh saw into the future. A year later, Montana presided over the first of his four Super Bowl victories.
With John Elway out for a game against the Cowboys in 1992, Dan Reeves alternated his backups, Tommy Maddox and Shawn Moore. Oddly, both passed for 104 yards and the Broncos’ offense gained 354 against a Dallas defense that had been yielding fewer than 250 per game. The Broncos lost, though. Maddox and Moore also shared the workload in another defeat the following week at Buffalo with the latter throwing three picks. Elway returned for the next game and that was the end of that.
With the Steelers in 1995, Cowher found himself with two very dissimilar quarterbacks in Neil O’Donnell and the mobile rookie Kordell Stewart, who carried the nickname “Slash” because of how he was listed on the roster: quarterback/running back/ receiver. O’Donnell was the starter, but Stewart did his part, sometimes in electrifying ways, to help Pittsburgh reach the Super Bowl.
Of all the aforementioned tandems, they probably most closely resemble Savage and Watson, although O’Donnell had already made almost 50 starts when that season began and Stewart wasn’t nearly as credentialed as Watson coming out of college.
Also, no matter how, when or where Watson ultimately gets deployed this season, there’s no chance you’ll see him play anything except quarterback.