That's one way to look at it. Allow me to present the other side of the argument.
The team was a QB and maybe a WR away from being serious Super Bowl contenders this past season. They were a Jacoby Jones away from potentially moving on to the AFC Championship game even without that QB and WR (full strength AJ). Since then, the only personnel change to the team has been a net loss of players.
1.) Mario - let me get this out of the way first. I'm a big fan of Mario I was one of the few people cheering when they announced the night before the draft they were taking him. The guy caught a ton of unjustified flack while he was here and played well when he was healthy. WHEN HE WAS HEALTHY is why I'm perfectly OK with him moving on. You don't pay a guy 96mil for missing games every season and/or ineffectively playing through injury. I think we all suspected Mario would be gone, and I think the FO made the only choice they should have to maintain long term viability. Thank you Texans for not mortgaging the future on Mario.
2.) Schaub has missed significant time 3 of the 5 seasons he's been a Texan. TJ Yates is a possible replacement someday, but we all saw that he's not quite there yet. Just wanted to point out that they're still potentially a QB away from being a serious SB contender.
3.) WR - Jacoby sucks. I've been saying it for a long time, and my hatred for him as a player (not person) is pretty far from objective after the playoff game. He's still here. AJ is great WHEN HE'S HEALTHY. He's missed more games in the past 5 years than Matt Schaub. Maybe people don't realize or want to accept that; I don't know.
4.) Myers - glad he was re-signed, but I'm not buying the hype that's been put out there about him. He's had one really bad year, one really good year, and the rest has been solid. You didn't fire him after his really bad year, so don't blow smoke up my ass about his really good year. Make him do it again. You made Foster do it a second time, after all.
5.) Brisiel - not to be confused with a HOF guard or anything, but he's consistently beaten Caldwell, even coming back from a bad leg, twice. He's just a flat out better player than Caldwell. So saying they have his replacement on the roster is pretty disingenuous.
6.) Winston - occasional liability in pass protection, but if Butler is better, why didn't he beat out Winston for the job? Either he's not as good or Kubiak wasn't playing the better player. You decide which of those options you like best, I suppose. I hope he gets better than Winston this season, at any rate.
7.) Ryans - Everyone knew it was going to take 2 years to come back from that injury. He started playing his best football toward the end of last year, so they traded him away.
8.) Vickers, Allen, Dreessen, etc. - All of these guys filled roles that kept other players off the field. Casey didn't supplant Vickers as a blocker or Dreessen as a TE. Graham didn't supplant Dreessen as a TE. KJax couldn't keep Allen off the field. Brandon Harris never saw the field, despite being a 2nd round pick. McManis and his random contemporaries couldn't break through either. So again, either these players were the best options to help the team win, or the coaches were making bad decisions.
Any of these moves can be rationalized. Taken as a whole, however, they weaken the team. They may not weaken the business side of things, but that's not going to help the W-L column unless they use that money to bring real replacements in. There's still a draft left to go and they'll undoubtedly get a couple impact players. Let's hope it's enough. I have hope for Sharpton and Kareem Jackson, so that's a positive. Brooks Reed is going to be a very good player. But like I said above, the moves when taken as a whole are hard to rationalize away.
Also, while I have a ton of faith in Wade Phillips to put a top notch defense out there no matter what, Smithiak has earned no such trust from me. They've had way too many WTF moments in personnel for me to blindly trust that they know the best course of action.
But hey, I hope you sunshiners are right, since I rather enjoyed the first good season immensely. I'm just a little irritated that they seem intent on blasting my optimism since the season ended. And deep down, a little part of me knew they would. So no, the sky isn't falling, but it's hard to tell if those clouds rolling in are just an afternoon shower or a full blown hurricane. We'll see.