Still, he's only the 7th or 8th highest paid receiver in the league.
The cap hit of a certain player in a certain year is not as important as the over all cap for the team going forward.
It looks to me like the Texans have been quite responsible in the way they spend money.
Been thinking about some things, going to share them now:
Three guys upstairs: Bob, Rick, and Gary.
Out of these three guys, which guy has the most pressure upon him?
Bob is the owner. What REAL ramifications await him on a daily basis? I mean, at the end of the day if his team is profitable, if it's valued as high as we all know it is by Forbes' standards, and if fans are pouring through the parking lots and stadium doors on almost a religious basis...Bob is fine. He's good to go.
Gary is the head coach. He has to be responsible for the football product on the field. So he obtains his assistants, he pinpoints what players we need, he trusts he scouting departments and the guidance of his owner and GM to shape what he thinks is the best team he can create out there.
Rick is the general manager. His role is to manage practically everything, in a sense, especially things affecting MONEY now and MONEY later. Sure, there are departments headed up by other important personnel. But face it, at the end of the day it's Rick's ass on the line for the operations side.
I think the toughest job of the three is Rick's. He's between the owner and the head coach. Rick has to juggle a lot of balls, if you know what I mean.
We've got an owner and a head coach who don't operate in the world that the general manager operates within. On either side of Rick, it appears he's got two guys in Bob and Gary who each want us to be as loyal to guys as we can be...and I see Rick as a guy who is ruggedly opposed to wasting time and resources for such things as loyalty and honor.
When we hear of players being pissed off at the Texans, when they go to their new teams, who are they pissed off at? They aren't mad at Bob. They aren't mad at Gary. I'd bet a donut they're aiming the barbs at the GM.
Rick is an assassin. He gladly relishes the "bad cop" role. Before him, we had so much dead money on the books...via Casserly's incompetence...that it affected us for about three or four years after Casserly left. I think Rick has managed the team well. Not perfect, and sure...it could be that Rick has pushed for some of the bad contracts such as Schaub's...at the end of the day, though, taking everything into consideration, I'd say Rick Smith is doing a pretty good job of things so far.
Anybody here think it was Bob or Gary who decided to not even make an offer to Mario? Which guy of those three do all of you think was the one pushing for Winston to get unceremoniously released? Who do we think pushed to trade Ryans and get value out of him...Bob? Nah. Gary? Nah. A-hole Rick Smith? Yep.
Good heavens, I don't even want to think about what type of wussy-centric team we'd have right now if we had a noodle-wristed GM at the controls. We'd be so dysfunctional, we'd be at the bottom of our division and wondering why were still there.