As I'm writing this fans of the Houston Texans are busy screaming at the Cincinnati Bengals as they get ready to face another New Year's Monday with no playoff berth on the horizon for their (on and off) beloved Texans. While it's true that, technically, the Texans had a shot at the playoffs this year they needed what amounted to a Rube Goldberg contraption of losses and tie-breakers to get them there. So why it may seem easy for fans of Steel blue, Liberty white and Victory red to cast dispersions at Chad Ochocinco and the boys perhaps a bit of perspective is in order.
First off, congratulations to the team for finishing the season 9-7, the first winning record in team history. Second, congratulations to the fans for making enough nosie to make it difficult for the Patriots 2nd string rookie quarterback to mount a rally. Finally, congrats to the 1560 crew for making a blowout game entertaining. (on Twitter anyway.) All of this is great fun, but it hides some very real problems that the Texans need to address should they have designs on next year's playoffs.
That's next year however, what Texans fans need to do is realize what went wrong THIS year. For example:
The Jaguars won three games against teams with winning records. The Texans were responsible for two of those wins, the Jets the other.
Dunta Robinson is a shell of his former self. He should not be re-signed.
The kicking game fell apart.
At times, the offensive game plan looked as if it was drawn on the back of a McDonald's napkin. Kubiak's supposed to be an offensive guru right?
This are still the "yeah but" Texans as far as the rest of the league is concerned.
Mario Williams and the rest of the D-line have severe motivation problems.
Some of these problems are items that can be fixed in the draft, but some of them are issues that are systemic and could be hard to fix. Mario Williams is your defensive bell cow, and he only seems to be willing to lead the pack two weeks out of the season. Absent a heart transplant for Williams it looks as if it might be wise to invest a draft pick on a high-motor guy, and a defensive back with some ball skills, and a back-up running back, and depth at corner....
In other words this team didn't make the playoffs for a reason, a reason that had little to do with how the Bengals or Colts played. Beat a team quarterbacked by David Gerard one time and the Jets wouldn't have mattered. (Hell, beat the Jets for that matter)
It was announced today that Kubiak is coming back so it will be a 2010 of (hopeful) Texans improvement versus a Texans rebuilding under the pipe-dream of Bill Cowher.
That's not necessarily a bad thing, but there's not much in the history of this franchise to suggest that a great improvement is in the cards.