Is a curse at hand for Texans?
A bad trend continued this week, leaving us to wonder if something sinister is to blame.
A pparently, there is no such thing as the “Matt Schaub ThirdRound Draft Pick Curse.”
While belief in curses rank below beliefs in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy — at least they are held only by children — this is a surprise. Come on, internet. Do better. I mean, seek and ye shall find is a Biblical justification for just about any ridiculous Google search one happens to undertake. And all crazy theories can find a home on the web.
Yet, my return on “Matt Schaub Third-Round Draft Pick Curse” is surprisingly thin.
Even after the Texans cut former third-round pick Jaelen Strong on Monday.
Oh, it’s easy to find hits for “Rick Smith is clueless” or “Rick Smith doesn’t know what he’s doing” or “Rick Smith is ruining the Texans with all of these missed draft picks.” But the Schaub curse? Nothing. Atop the list is a two-year-old archived post on Reddit (“The curse of Matt Schaub”) about his personal 20game losing streak, which at the time included 14 straight losses by the Texans and six in a row for the Raiders.
Schaub’s streak eventually reached 24 games. Since there were a host of players on the 1976 and ’77 Buccaneers, who entered the NFL with a 26game losing skid, that’s not a record. But it was a good try.
There is a Grantland piece from January 2013 labeling Schaub as the poster boy for “The Curse of the Quarterback Middle Class,” several pieces about whether the Texans are cursed, people cursing the Texans and a “Cold Hard Football Facts” write-up on SI.com about the “Curse of Flutie,” which it alleges struck Schaub and the Texans because of Wade Phillips’ presence.
Google will lead you to a poetic
screed, an oxymoron, I know, but a perfect descriptor for the particular anguish laid out in “A Retrospective On Matt Schaub As Texans Quarterback,” which is tagged as “an exhaustive four-part series on Battle Red Blog detailing Matt Schaub’s time with the Houston Texans.”
A Jack Densmore column last week in the Daily Toreador, a student-run publication at Texas Tech, suggests that the Texans have had a quarterback curse since 2013, when “everything seemed to fall apart” at the end of the Schaub and Gary Kubiak era.
The only draft-related Schaub curse item I found is an off-base CBS San Francisco/Bay Area post “How Can Raiders Finally End The Draft Curse In 2014?” Not only did it describe the then recently acquired Schaub as Oakland’s “presumptive starting QB,” which as anyone who saw the 2013 Texans play knew was a ridiculous notion, but it mentioned Johnny Manziel as a potential curse-buster without nary a mention of Derek Carr.
It is amazing no one has written about the “Matt Schaub Third-Round Draft Pick Curse.”
The most accomplished thirdround draft pick in Texans history is Matt Schaub.
No, the Texans didn’t draft him. So? He was a third-round pick (Falcons 2004), and to this point the best quarterback the Texans have had.
As a two-time Pro Bowler and four-time AFC Offensive Player of the Week, who finished in the top 10 in the NFL in passer rating five times and in the top five in passing yards per game three times, he is by far the best third-round pick to ever don a Texans jersey.
While Schaub is no Elvin Bethea, by far the greatest third-round pick in Houston sports history, he deserved applause.
Admittedly, he struggled mightily with the pick-sixitis, the disease he contracted in September of 2013.
But for some reason, Schaub’s affliction didn’t elicit the caring response from Texans fans that other illnesses — airborne or otherwise — normally would.
When his first pass of the season was intercepted, he didn’t look well.
A few weeks later, after Schaub had set an NFL record for consecutive games throwing an interception that was returned for a touchdown, it was obvious that pick-sixitis had consumed his body.
Instead of rallying around the poor man with a dreaded disease, Texans fans turned on him, placing a figurave Battle Red “I” of shame on his jersey.
Two days after his fourth straight pick-six game, Schaub called police because people, presumably upset Texans fans, were circling his neighborhood and taking pictures of his home.
The next Sunday, when Schaub went to the turf with an injury, fans at NRG Stadium added insult to injury to illness, by booing.
In years past, the Texans had plenty of success with third-round picks, picking up a number of starters like Eric Winston, Fred Weary, Antwan Peek, Earl Mitchell and Brandon Brooks, to name a few. They even had a Pro Bowler in the mix with Jacoby Jones.
That was before the “Matt Schaub Third-Round Draft Pick Curse” began. (If you believe in such things.)
In 2013, the Texans drafted two players in the third round. Neither ever played a down with the team.
One week after Schaub was booed while lying on the field injured, defensive end Sam Montgomery was suspended for a game at Kansas City and then released.
A few weeks earlier, Brennan Williams, the other third-round pick that year, had knee surgery, He never recovered and was released a few months after the Texans traded Schaub.
Louis Nix, one of the team’s 2014 third-round picks, whom they traded up to take, never played in a game.
C.J. Fiedorowicz (third round, 2014) had a rough start to his career with only 21 catches in his first two seasons, then broke out of the curse with 54 catches last year. Unfortunately, he suffered a concussion late in the season, one in preseason and another in the season opener, and is now out on injured reserve.
Strong never lived up to the team’s expectations, with just 28 catches, none this season.
Receiver Braxton Miller, a 2016 third-rounder, and rookie running back D’Onta Foreman have yet to make any major impact. But it’s early. In their careers … and in the curse. If you believe in such things. Googling … “How to get rid of curses … or Rick Smith.”