Was Dan Reeves completely wrong?

[thunderkyss]

You know the story. Bob McNair didn't know which way was up, so he brought in Dan Reeves to help him sort things out. Dan Reeves said the talent was there to win... we needed a new Coach.

4 years later, we're talking about how bad the talent was, & that's the main reason we haven't been able to win early in Kubiak's career.

What's the real scoop?

[IlliniJen]

<insert my pink soap here>

[Honoring Earl 34]

I'd say both .


http://www.jt-sw.com/football/pro/ro...nnual/2005-hou

[dalemurphy]

Originally Posted by thunderkyss

You know the story. Bob McNair didn't know which way was up, so he brought in Dan Reeves to help him sort things out. Dan Reeves said the talent was there to win... we needed a new Coach.

4 years later, we're talking about how bad the talent was, & that's the main reason we haven't been able to win early in Kubiak's career.

What's the real scoop?

I think that's just code for, "you need to fire your coaching staff".

[TexansFanatic]

I could be way off but I've always thought Reeves wanted Capers' job.

So, what does he do? He says: "In my opinion, the talent's there. Heck, I could win with it...."

The talent wasn't there. Kubiak built this team from scratch.

[Goatcheese]

Since most of the players from that team are working at McDonald's now, I'm going to go with Reeves was completely wrong.

[Second Honeymoon]

Originally Posted by TexansFanatic

I could be way off but I've always thought Reeves wanted Capers' job.

So, what does he do? He says: "In my opinion, the talent's there. Heck, I could win with it...."

The talent wasn't there. Kubiak built this team from scratch.

There was talent there but we had garbage at QB. Any talent we did have was wasted during those years. As for defensive talent, I thought we had a pretty good thing going until they got rid of Aaron Glenn. He gave us a veteran presence and our defense was tough the first few years and had some talent. Letting guys like Marlon McRee leave because you don't want to pay your playmakers didn't help either. He made plays for us but for some reason he was sent packing. I could never understand Casserley's moves. I actually think Capers did a pretty good job. Even Vince Lombardi himself would have been a losing head coach with Carr starting at Center.

That being said, we didn't have a lot of depth in those days and that was one of our achilles heels and it showed in our W-L record even with pretty good frontline talent.

[dalemurphy]

Originally Posted by Second Honeymoon

There was talent there but we had garbage at QB. Any talent we did have was wasted during those years. As for defensive talent, I thought we had a pretty good thing going until they got rid of Aaron Glenn. He gave us a veteran presence and our defense was tough the first few years and had some talent. Letting guys like Marlon McRee leave because you don't want to pay your playmakers didn't help either. He made plays for us but for some reason he was sent packing. I could never understand Casserley's moves. I actually think Capers did a pretty good job. Even Vince Lombardi himself would have been a losing head coach with Carr starting at Center.

That being said, we didn't have a lot of depth in those days and that was one of our achilles heels and it showed in our W-L record even with pretty good frontline talent.

When Reeves was brought in, guys like Jamie Sharper and Aaron Glenn had been cut. Here's, as memory serves, the team's talent:

Seth McKinney
Victor Riley
Todd Wade
Seth Wand
Zach Weigert
M. Bruener
AJ
Corey Bradford
J.Gaffney
J. Mathis
Dom. Davis
D.Carr
Rosenfels
Rob.Smith
J.Babin
A.Peek
Jay Foreman
K. Wong
Dunta
Faggins
CC Brown
G.Earl

that's about all I can muster.

[D-ReK]

If Reeves thought a team this boasted our starting lineup was just missing a coach, then yes, he was completely wrong. Warning to those who are squeamish, this is very, very ugly:

QB - David Carr
RB - Domanick Davis for 11 games, Jonathan Wells for the rest
FB - Moran Norris
WR - Andre Johnson and Jabar Gaffney for 13 games, Corey Bradford and Derick Armstrong for the rest
TE - Mark Bruener and Marcellus Rivers
OT - Victor Riley and Todd Wade with Wiegert swinging out to RT after Wade's injury
OG - Chester Pitts, Zach Wiegert, Milford Brown, and Fred Weary
OC - Steve McKinney

DE - Gary Walker and Robaire Smith mainly with Travis Johnson, Jerry DeLoach, and Junior Ioane filling in due to injuries
NT - Seth Payne
OLB - Shantee Orr and Antwan Peek mainly with Jason Babin getting a few starts
ILB - Dashon Polk and Morlon Greenwood after Kailee Wong got injured
CB - Dunta Robinson, Phillip Buchanon, and DeMarcus Faggins
FS - CC Brown and Marcus Coleman
SS - CC Brown and Glenn Earl

It didn't help matters that the only decent players on the team that didn't miss significant time due to injury were Dunta, Payne, and Pitts, but that team overall was just garbage. No coach could have won with this talent, but it's partially Capers' fault that these players were here. Remember how Morlon Greenwood was supposed to be the next Sam Mills and we were going to be so much better because we were younger and faster?

[GP]

The first batch of Texans felt very much like a group of guys who were about 3 years away from retirement. Year 4 rolled around and things got pretty fragile. In a hurry.

You had a child (Carr) among men and it showed.

McNair surely could not have thought he had significant OFFENSE talent in place, or he wouldn't feel the need to retain Carr to finally figure out if it was the coach, the offensive line, the receivers, the offensive system itself, etc.

McNair wanted an outsider's opinion. I guess he got one.

I do find it funny that Dan Reeves was the consultant, Kubiak became the coach and Schaub eventually became the QB. There's some triangulation there:

Reeves-Broncos-Kubiak

Reeves-Falcons-Schaub

Not that there's any TRUE conspiracy or anything, but sorta' funny in a way.

We should do a 6-degrees Of Separation with how you can tie everyone in the NFL to Gary Kubiak and his years at Denver. LOL.

[m5kwatts]

Reeves has an axe to grind

[Hervoyel]

Think about something though when looking at that team. Try to look at the players in the context of that time and as we saw them at that time.

Exempt David Carr because nobody in 2005 was going to tell Bob McNair that David Carr wasn't a winner just waiting for a coach to tap his ability. It wasn't going to happen. Some of us still believed that he might still be a viable option. It's beside the point though because no answer other than "You can win with David Carr" was going to be accepted so set that issue aside completely.

RB: Domanick Davis, Vernand Morency, and Jonathan Wells. Domanick Davis was more or less a thousand yard back for three years. There weren't many people thinking we'd never see him play again that off-season. He was our RB and people back then talked about Carr-Johnson-Davis as being our "triplets" (which just seems so ridiculous in hindsight). Jonathan Wells was a special teams player at best but Vernand Morency was still just a rookie RB. That's hope right there. I can understand Reeves saying we had talent here. It's just that we lost Davis and he never came back. Depth no, but talent absolutely. Moran Norris was a perfectly good FB.

WR: Andre Johnson, Jabar Gaffney, Corey Bradford. We know about AJ of course but Gaffney is talent. Gaffney is still playing today and he's a very serviceable #2 on any team where the QB is capable of more than looking at the #1 and then dumping the ball off to the RB coming out of the backfield. Bradford was never anything more than a really fast guy with questionable hands. That's why he was available and that was what he did. He's depth at his best on a team with a legitimate 1 and 2. That was the 2005 Houston Texans by the way. We just didn't have a QB who could see both of them in the same play (much less all three of them).

OL: Chester Pitts can play. Fred Weary could play too but he had trouble making it onto the field with the previous coaching staff. He did just fine when Kubiak got here until he broke his leg. He looked like he was finally going to be the lineman we hoped he might be when he was picked but admittedly he wasn't a great fit for what we do here since Kubiak arrived. Still he was getting it done. Todd Wade played for the Redskins after leaving here and started 10 games for them in 2007. In his career he started 96 games over 8 years and the only place he was lousy was here. Figure it out guys. He was more of the "Frankenstein" big guy than a quick athletic offensive lineman but then the Texans seemed interested in those types at the time. Seth Wand was another one. With his admittedly limited skill set he still managed to stay in the league until 2008. Steve McKinney was serviceable at center. There was talent on this line. Again, not much depth but some of these guys weren't bad and none of them sucked as much as David Carr made them appear to. Don't you think Reeves knew that when he told Bob McNair he could win with this talent?

DL: Seth Payne and Gary Walker were talented defensive linemen at the end of their careers (10 and 11 seasons resepctively). Robaire Smith played in 14 games last year and had 43 tackles for Cleveland. He's in his 10th year now. Clearly we needed help on the DL and Dan Reeves probably would have drafted Mario first overall in 2006 too to try and address it. We'd just added TJ and nobody knew he was going to be a complete slug at the time. This was still a serious problem for the Texans in 2005 but what team doesn't have weaknesses? Obviously something(s) needed fixing here or Bob McNair wouldn't be calling in consultants. Reeves probably would have tried moving Babin back to DE like we ended up doing too.

LB: As bad as he was Morlon did start 108 games in 8 years. Jason Babin clearly wasn't getting it so we needed a replacement for him. Orr and Peek were still showing flashes and a lot of us kept hoping one or both of them would break out. Clearly neither one was ready when we started them in 2005. Orr, Babin, and Peek were our starters most of the year. Where was the leadership? Where was the veteran presence? Wong was without a doubt our best LB that year but we lost him to injury and never got him back. Not really. Again though there is some talent here. Not a lot but some. As always no depth to speak of.

DB's were Dunta Robinson and Petey Faggins with C.C. Brown and Marcus Coleman at the safeties. Dunta has always been considered talented and Brown was getting tons of hype in 2005. I remember him being talked about as some kind of bright spot back there. Coleman was never as good a safety as he was a CB and should never have been moved but we had a couple of pieces (in most peoples opinion) back there.


Very thin but there was talent here. A better coach than Capers could have gotten some more wins out of that team. There was a core of players (some are still here, others are playing elsewhere in the league) to build on. Keep in mind that some guys left here of their own accord, others were cut loose because they weren't the type of player at their position that Kubiak wanted. Wade and Wand for instance were doomed from the start because they were plodding road grader types and we wanted more athletic linemen. They both went somewhere else where they fit the mold and stuck around for a while.

Some guys were young and still getting the benefit of the doubt. Others were new here and were expected to improve over their 2005 performance. Still others were good but got injured and were lost permanently or never came back at their pre-injury levels.

[nero THE zero]

Are we sure that Reeves said the talent was there to win?

From what I recall, Reeves advised (1) that we needed a new coaching staff and (2) that we needed a new QB (he was a VY fan IIRC). I don't remember any mention of him advising that we "had talent to win"

[Texans_Chick]

Originally Posted by nero THE zero

Are we sure that Reeves said the talent was there to win?

From what I recall, Reeves advised (1) that we needed a new coaching staff and (2) that we needed a new QB (he was a VY fan IIRC). I don't remember any mention of him advising that we "had talent to win"

He said that David Carr wasn't the problem and recommended that Carr come back. But he also liked Vince Young.


http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=2325442

The Texans' confidence has wavered only slightly in Carr in four seasons. Every indication in recent weeks was that the Texans would pay the "buy back" bonus to keep Carr.

Former NFL head coach Dan Reeves, who served as a consultant to Texans owner Bob McNair, recommended keeping Carr, the top overall choice in the 2002 draft.

Dan Reeves said that David Carr was not the problem. He liked David Carr. But that he also wanted to review Vince Young. (Though it is stupid stupid stupid under a salary cap system to extend Carr's contract three years if you think VY is the guy):

Well, let me say first of all that you never know about a draft after one year. Okay? It's two to three years, at least three years in my opinion, before you know how good of a draft you have had. When I came here, we looked at Vince Young because I felt like, having watched him, that we needed to look at him. Whether you had a David Carr or not, you had to evaluate the young man and see if this does fit in your picture. And basically what it came down to is I liked what I saw, and I also liked what I saw in David Carr.

But then it was, in my opinion, who ever came here as a head coach, for him to sit down, look at David Carr and evaluate him and say, you know, is this the guy I want? And that's exactly what they did. Gary Kubiak came in and felt comfortable with David Carr so then it eliminated the possibility of taking Vince Young. And I don't disagree with that at all. To me it's up to who you bring in as a head coach to make that evaluation.

Now, as far a Reggie Bush, I looked at Reggie Bush, and I felt like if you're not going to take Vince Young, my opinion, Reggie Bush would be the guy. Now, I never looked at Mario Williams. That never was part of the equation when I was here. I did not even know about Mario Williams until right before the draft. You know (when) people started talking about him. And I did look at some film on him, you know, on my own. But that was not part of the equation when I was here."

He says that after their first year in 2007.

I think the Reeves thought Vince Young was the right fit talk came from a Chronicle article that didn't say that but had that headline. That link explains it better.

[beerlover]

Reeves told McNair what he wanted to hear & was compensated generously

[Texans_Chick]

Originally Posted by thunderkyss

You know the story. Bob McNair didn't know which way was up, so he brought in Dan Reeves to help him sort things out. Dan Reeves said the talent was there to win... we needed a new Coach.

4 years later, we're talking about how bad the talent was, & that's the main reason we haven't been able to win early in Kubiak's career.

What's the real scoop?

I don't recall Dan Reeves saying that the team had the talent to win. He recommended that David Carr come back.

He also thought that the Texans needed a more aggressive passing game to compete in the NFL, and that's why he recommended Kubiak.

[thunderkyss]

Originally Posted by D-ReK

It didn't help matters that the only decent players on the team that didn't miss significant time due to injury were Dunta, Payne, and Pitts, but that team overall was just garbage. No coach could have won with this talent, but it's partially Capers' fault that these players were here. Remember how Morlon Greenwood was supposed to be the next Sam Mills and we were going to be so much better because we were younger and faster?

I can see this line of thinking. But my what boggles me, is that Casserly got to graciously exit. He was even allowed to spend $30 mill on Anthony Weaver, which road blocked our efforts to improve the DE position for a few years.

[thunderkyss]

Originally Posted by Hervoyel

RB: Domanick Davis,He was our RB and people back then talked about Carr-Johnson-Davis as being our "triplets" (which just seems so ridiculous in hindsight).

[Texans_Chick]

Originally Posted by thunderkyss

I can see this line of thinking. But my what boggles me, is that Casserly got to graciously exit. He was even allowed to spend $30 mill on Anthony Weaver, which road blocked our efforts to improve the DE position for a few years.

There's the point of view that:

1. All that draft staff was Casserly's. They'd been spending the year evaluating the draft. By the time Kubiak was hired, it would have been difficult to get a whole new staff. Might as well use Casserly, but have the focus be what Kubiak wants.

2. Weaver didn't roadblock the DE position. They drafted Mario Williams. Switching from the 3-4 to the 4-3 meant you needed lots of help. They thought Weaver would be the guy, and they thought wrong. It also didn't help that Weaver got hurt.

3. I like that the Texans allow staff members to have gracious exits. I used to do HR law, and generally speaking, gracious exits are good to the people who leave but more importantly, good to the people who stay. You can escort someone out with security and not let them say goodbye, but then it tells all the remaining people that you might do them that way too, no matter all their hard work.

On the football level, Casserly had some good relationships with a number of the players who stayed--no sense kicking him on the way out. It demonstrates to the outside world that your business is a good one to work at.

Allowing people to leave and save face is valuable. You never know when an exiting person may end up helping you down the road too.

Overall, the best example of this concept is the Raiders. Al Davis is a nutball, he trashes people on the way out, refuses to pay them, and now it is hard for him to attract good staff members and free agents without overpaying or getting total noobs that no other team would possibly want. McNair is trying to give the Texans the reputation of being a good place to be for players and staff.

4. It might be fun to publicly blast a guy on the way, and list all their failings but it does nothing positive for your organization either in the short or long term. Sometimes class behavior is also good for business.

[Texan_Bill]

2006 (The team Kubiak inherited):

Roc Alexander
Charlie Anderson
David Anderson
Jason Babin
Brad Bedell
C.C. Brown
Kris Brown
Mark Bruener
Phillip Buchanon
David Carr
Earl Cochran
Jameel Cook
Lional Dalton
Owen Daniels
Ron Dayne
Glenn Earl
Troy Evans
Demarcus Faggins
Mike Flanagan
Samkon Gado
Kevin Garrett
Morlon Greenwood
Drew Hodgdon
Von Hutchins
Andre Johnson*
Derrick Johnson
Thomas Johnson
Travis Johnson
Bennie Joppru
N.D. Kalu
Cedric Killings
Vonta Leach
Derrick Lewis
Wali Lundy
Anthony Maddox
Alfred Malone
Roy Manning
Jerome Mathis
Dexter McCleon
Steve McKinney
Vernand Morency
Eric Moulds
Shantee Orr
Seth Payne
Antwan Peek
Bryan Pittman
Chester Pitts
DaShon Polk
Jeb Putzier
Dunta Robinson
Sage Rosenfels
DeMeco Ryans
Ephraim Salaam
Lewis Sanders
Guss Scott
Edell Shepherd
Jason Simmons
Charles Spencer
Chad Stanley
Michael Stone
Chris Taylor
Kevin Walter
Fred E. Weary
Anthony Weaver
Zach Wiegert
Mario Williams
Eric Winston
Kailee Wong
Dexter Wynn

2009 Roster:

Xavier Adibi
David Anderson
Dominique Barber
Connor Barwin
Fred Bennett
Kevin Bentley
Chris Brown
Duane Brown
Kris Brown
Tim Bulman
John Busing
Khary Campbell
James Casey
Shaun Cody
Brian Cushing*
Owen Daniels
Andre' Davis
Zach Diles
Joel Dreessen
Nick Ferguson
Arian Foster
Rex Grossman
Anthony Hill
Tim Jamison
Andre Johnson*+
Jacoby Jones
Vonta Leach
Glenn Martinez
Brice McCain
Ryan Moats
Antwaun Molden
Chris Myers
Amobi Okoye
Chester Pitts
Bernard Pollard
Glover Quin
Jacques Reeves
DelJuan Robinson
Dunta Robinson
Brian Russell
DeMeco Ryans*
Matt Schaub
Steve Slaton
Antonio Smith
Kasey Studdard
Chaun Thompson
Matt Turk
Kevin Walter
Chris L. White
Mario Williams*
Eugene Wilson
Eric Winston
Jeff Zgonina

* = Pro Bowl
+ = All Pro