I’ve been trying for quite some time to write something (anything really) about the Texans that might be worth reading but I’ve been sitting on an enormous case of writers block for a couple of weeks now and about the only thing I’ve managed to acquire is renewed feeling of respect for Texans Chick and the work she put in writing a blog for the Chronicle. I can spew words all over the place on a message board but this is different. This is hard work.
My first instinct was to write about Mario Williams. It’s the never ending topic of the day and in the past few weeks I’ve found it impossible to escape the subject. I turn on the television and there’s someone talking about Mario Williams and what he hasn’t done. I pick up the Chronicle and there’s a story about the same thing. Everywhere I turn for news I see that the news is about this one man who seems doomed to fail in his attempt to live up to his draft position and the expectations of Texans fans.
I’d just about concluded that what Texans Talk needed was another story about David Carr when Vinny called me and as sure as the sun comes up every morning I again found myself talking about Mario Williams, or as I like to call him “The new David Carr”.
That’s when the thought occurred to me that all of this talk is really about the wrong defensive end and that I really did want to write a story about David Carr and how we got to this point....
The similarities between David Carr and Mario Williams are hard to see sometimes because of the circumstances under which each of them arrived here in Houston. Once you get past the fact that they were both selected first overall in their respective drafts by the Texans it looks like they couldn’t be more different. David Carr was picked in 2002 by a hopelessly optimistic Texans team that had yet to lose 56 games in 5 years and that thought it had made all the right moves every step of the way. Looking back and knowing what we know now the confidence of that time borders on arrogance. In David Carr’s first professional game however it appeared that the Texans had every reason to be confident. As Gary Walker shouted and mocked a visibly embarrassed Jerry Jones we all felt that absolute certainty that the Texans were on the right path. The picture of David Carr walking off the field with his arms raised in victory and looking like the hungry, aggressive quarterback we believed him to be will always be lodged in my mind. It’s what I see in my mind’s eye when I remember that night.
Reality set in one week later when the Texans visited the San Diego Chargers. The first real win in franchise history had come quickly. The first real loss was right behind it and is at least as memorable. The Chargers destroyed David Carr the following week. If memory serves he was sacked 9 times that day and driven into the ground over and over again.
I used to watch a lot of football when the Oilers were here. I’ve watched a lot since the Texans arrived. I don’t remember watching a greater exercise in futility than I did in week two of the 2002 season. David Carr was never really the same again following that game. I’d been certain that the Texans would lose many more games than they won in their first season but I had not been expecting what I saw in San Diego. I had not been expecting to fear for David Carr’s life at the hands of the Chargers one week after I saw him beat the Cowboys with relative ease.
I don’t think I ever saw the Texans the same way after that game. The illusion of the Texans brain trust being “infallible” had taken its first real shot, been chipped badly and it wasn’t going to “polish out”. Of course I was still certain that they knew best and that as a loyal fan I needed to give them time. This was true of course. Expansion teams need time and they can ill afford to make mistakes in drafting or free agency. The beating in San Diego highlighted a question that I and many other fans had on our mind back in April of that year. “Do you really want to start an expansion team with a rookie quarterback?”
Like many Oiler fans I remembered the post-Bum Phillips rebuilding era of the Oilers and the dividends that years of drafting offensive linemen had paid. I wasn’t sure about the plan to draft a quarterback first. I wasn’t comfortable with starting with skill positions. It didn’t make any sense to me at the time. I put my concerns aside though and sat back on my couch to enjoy some NFL football. In that first week I knew the Texans were on the right track. In week two I had a doubt.
Mario Williams was picked in 2006 by a Texans team that had gone 2-14 the previous year after releasing the core of its defensive veterans in an attempt to get “faster”. The result was a team that went from 15th to 32nd in Points allowed and had dropped from 21st to 31st in yards allowed. They were however very fast. In a refrain that’s become all too well known to Texans fans the team brought in physical specimens and parted ways with football players. In the NFL it pays to have some football players on your team.
Nobody could argue that the Texans didn’t need defensive help going into the 2006 draft. With the players available however it was debatable which side of the ball could be helped most with the first pick. The Texans as we all know went with defense (again), picked Mario Williams, and added a whopping 47 tackles (35 solo) and 4.5 sacks to their defense.
The disaster in 2005 brought about the first real change in the front office of the Texans organization since they had been awarded their franchise and so the decision to take another defensive player in the first round (their 4th defensive first rounder in 3 years) was made by both incoming and outgoing leadership. One person who was without a doubt soon to be on the outside was Charlie Casserly, the Texans General Manager since their inception and the man who had (we understood) a detailed knowledge of the way an NFL franchise works.
One would have assumed that this detailed knowledge might have contained some information on the fate of Tim Couch and the expansion Cleveland Browns who began their current incarnation with a similar expansion deal to the Texans. Tim Couch made his mark on the NFL by losing 43 games in his four years as starting quarterback. One would think that this might have resonated in some way with Charlie Casserly as he prepared to take Bob McNair down a similar path three years later. There’s no doubt in my mind that Bob McNair wanted David Carr to be the first player his team ever drafted from the moment they met. The affection and respect he holds for David is genuine and his actions from the very beginning where #8 was involved betrayed that this wasn’t just an employee. This was and is a friend and someone he very likely thinks of as a son. To say that Bob McNair took to David Carr immediately is probably an understatement.
As General Manager of the Houston Texans and the man charged with steering Bob McNair through the shark filled waters of the NFL I believe that it was clearly Charlie’s duty to have seen a few things “in the beginning”. I think it was close to a criminal act to start a rookie quarterback in 2002. I think Charlie should have known better than to take a charismatic quarterback from a weak quarterback class to build around. I also think Charlie should have seen the obvious and steered his owner towards the smart pick. He should have steered him towards Julius Peppers.
I think Mario Williams is the surrogate for the defensive end that Charlie knows the Texans should have taken in 2002. I doubt he’d ever admit it but I think on some level Mario Williams can be seen as the apology for not taking Julius Peppers. I think he is, like David Carr before him a mistake.
The Texans began their existence by passing on a defensive end named Julius Peppers and by drafting a quarterback. 5 years later they started over and found themselves crucified by their fans for drafting a defensive end named Mario Williams and passing on a quarterback named Vince Young. You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried.
In the years between the 2002 draft and today Julius Peppers has been to the Pro Bowl three times and recorded 52.5 sacks. David Carr has become a promising backup on Julius Peppers team. Going into the 2007 season Carolina owns the top two picks of the 2002 draft and seems to have them in their proper places on the depth chart. The question is will we also be releasing Mario Williams four years from now and find ourselves in a position to make another “first overall” mistake. Another question is why was Charlie Casserly given input into the second most important pick the Texans may have ever had after blowing the most important pick the Texans ever had? What kind of an organization lets a widely known lame-duck GM drive the car in a draft prior to his dismissal?
People talk about the weight of expectations that Mario has to carry around and the burden he must bear for not being Vince Young or Reggie Bush but what often gets overlooked is the other, bigger burden he has to carry. That would be the burden of being this teams new “David Carr” and Mario gets to do it without the enormous cushion of goodwill that David enjoyed from day one. If anything the Texans fan base has reached a point of near paranoia about any highly touted player who fails to perform quickly. When Mario plays poorly he’s roundly criticized as a bust before the end of the first quarter. When he plays well he gets touted as a future Hall of Fame DE on the basis of a single hurry or sack in the first quarter. He can do no wrong or he can do no right. No matter what he does he will forever be one bad series away from being labeled as Charlie Casserly’s last mistake.
We took the wrong guy 5 years ago and 5 years later we did it again as a direct response to the situation created by our first, worst mistake. The NFL draft is a cumulative thing and mistakes tend to snowball down the road. One or two great drafts can turn a franchise around in a hurry but a bad draft and refusing to admit it can keep a team down for a decade or more. A single bad first round pick can be like a tsunami in a lot of ways. Out there in the ocean where it first forms it’s not that big a deal. It’s a little ripple on the top of the water and barely noticeable. Once it’s traveled a while however it becomes hard to miss and when it finally reaches its conclusion the effect is devastating.
David Carr gets drafted by the Texans over Julius Peppers and a little ripple appears that nobody notices.
Two years go by and the Texans trade a slew of valuable draft picks to reach for Jason Babin because they can’t get to their opponents quarterback….the wave gets a little higher.
Two more years go by and the Texans bypass Vince Young in the draft and select Mario Williams because they still can’t get enough pressure….the wave starts to rise up out of the water.
One year after that the Texans trade a pair of second round picks that they will surely need in rebuilding to acquire quarterback Matt Shaub and the wave finally hits the shore. We’re right back where we started (new QB) minus a few years and ton of draft picks. Fortunately this time it looks like we got one who can get it done.
Step back and consider what drafting David Carr and not Julius Peppers cost this team. Look at the various moves that resulted from that one decision. Think about what we might still be seeing if the original Texans front office was still in charge and struggling to justify their previous decisions. Now look at what Kubiak and Smith have done instead. That’s really the silver lining in all of this. The arrival of Gary Kubiak and Rick Smith and the team-wide “reboot” they’ve begun will break us out of this cycle and, if it’s possible save Mario Williams from becoming Charlie Casserly’s last mistake.
Would Kubiak have agreed to take Carr in 2002 if he had been hired instead of Dom Capers? We’ll never know.
Ultimately I’m not mad at David Carr for not being our franchise quarterback. He looks like a franchise QB. I’m not mad at Mario Williams for not being a franchise DE either. He sure looks like one to me. Neither of these men forced the Texans to take them first overall. Neither of these men hid their shortcomings from the world or misled anyone.
I believe that David genuinely gave us everything he could give us. It’s not his fault that we could have gotten the same thing from Tony Banks for a fraction of the price of a first overall QB.
I think Mario is trying as hard as he can too and I hope that he can become a force on the defense. I don’t expect him to break any sack records (unless maybe it’s the Texans single season sack record which is infinitely reachable) and I don’t expect him to get many invitations to the Pro Bowl in his career. Unlike David Carr however I think he can get the job done and I think he eventually will get the job done.
With the Texans personnel history my first impulse is to think that he’s going to be a bust but it’s not fair to look at 2007 as we did the previous 5 years. Last year the new administration showed that regardless of what they had invested in a player that player had to perform. David Carr came up short and that was it. Story over, experiment concluded. Smith and Kubiak both seem to understand that telling Bob McNair what he wants to hear and losing ten games a year won’t keep them employed for long. Mario Williams may work out and he may not. That remains to be seen. For now we can point to one more thing that Mario shares with David Carr. He’s going to have to perform or hit the road.
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