For you these are "your" only choices. I'm not going to list other choices but you know there are more possibilities than that.
To the other posters that question McNair's commitment to winning:
Do you really think McNair tells his people ok you can sign some players but you can only spend "X" amount? Do you think McNair can scout a player for this team's need? McNair is a businessman, he pays people to make the football decisions and I highly doubt he goes against their judgment unless something is blatantly out of the ordinary. Look at this:
http://www.houstontexans.com/team/FrontOffice.asp at spots 4 and 5 under executive mgmnt and spots 1 and 2 under football operations...those are your decision makers as far as players are concerned. Even though he won't let his decision makers just spend all of his money I'm sure if they want someone/something he will oblige.
1. My speculation is that he DOES put a cap on what people can spend on players, and even on coaches.
2. Unless, that is, he has a special someone he wants to really roll out the red carpet for (such as Carr's $8 million season of wastefulness, and Dunta's $10 million year of wastefulness). We could have spent that $10 million on a free agent. But nooooo.....Dunta held some sort of sentimental value to the owner.
This guy makes some curious decisions to me. In almost all other scenarios, we see disciplined spending and what seems to be great job by Rick Smith of putting the right value on contracts in accordance to the player, his value, and the cap aspects related to the contracts.
But then we see two instances where a couple of players, in their respective moments of time in their careers, were not worth the lavish one-year extensions they received.
So someone (maybe the guy who writes the actual checks???) made the executive decision(s) to pay these guys big money for questionable results.
I think Bob McNair has more to do with this team than just making canned statements and sitting in his booth during games. I think, to some degree, he's in there in the decision-making process on certain things. To what extent? Not sure. But I think he alone was responsible for the Carr and Dunta red-carpet-treatment.
I can't reconcile, in my mind, that Kubiak, Bush, and/or Rick Smith thought Dunta deserved the money for the injury he was coming off of and for the attitude he rolled out during the off-season. I see Kubiak/Smith telling Dunta to take flying leap if they had their way. The reason I think this is because DeMeco and OD didn't get red-carpet-treatments last off-season. And out of Dunta, DeMeco, and OD, I see Kubiak/Smith desiring to give that sort of money to 'Meco or OD. Not Dunta.
McNair wants other NFL "superstars" out there to see that he takes care of the Texans "superstars," because it's a P.R. stunt to draw them here. I argue that we can sit here and point fingers at what moves are McNair's and what moves are coaching moves made by the coaches.
And I don't buy the idea that Rick Smith grabs players and stuffs them onto Kubiak's roster without consulting Kubiak. That's a whole other conversation, though.
:
and in the words of Disney "Get you head in the Game".
