GP
Go Texans!
For me to buy into this "plausible" line of thinking, what's the connection? We know what the Kubiak-Sherman Connection is. We know what the Kubiak-Gibbs connection is. What is the McNair-Sherman/McNair-Gibbs connection? No doubt in my mind, Kubiak brought them in.
If it was McNair...... why wouldn't he have just hired Sherman, or a more experienced HC to begin with?
It it were McNair.... why is Kubiak still here, and not Sherman? From what I understand, A&M would have preferred Kubiak.
Well, then let's look at it and see:
Sherman had just been ridden out of Green Bay, correct? Why would you want to hire a coach coming off what easily appeared to be a fading NFL HC career? Isn't it pretty standard business, unless you're one of those elitist NFL coaches, to go down a notch (assume a lesser role somewhere) when you've just been fired from being a HC somewhere? Not many NFL HCs can go from a dying ember to another HC gig right away.
If so, Sherman was available as a coordinator (heck, they even gave him the Assistant Head Coach title, correct?)...McNair might have felt that an old A&M colleague would work OK with Kubiak...and it afforded a veteran voice for the rookie head coach (Kubiak) to have some support for a year or so.
A&M came calling, but Gary had just started the NFL HC job that he had obviously been wanting for for a long, long time. And then there's Sherman, who isn't tied to the Texans because he was probably never anything more than training wheels in the first place...or a good Plan B if the Kubiak experiment went badly all of a sudden. I don't doubt that A&M preferred Kubiak over Sherman, just as I don't doubt that McNair preferred Kubiak over Sherman. But Kubiak didn't go for it. So the bridesmaid got it.
Even if Kubiak was the one who brought Sherman in, it still could have been McNair who said "Look, you are going to need a veteran assistant. Do you have any preferences?" There might have been a list prepared by McNair and the Texans FO, and Sherman was a choice on it. It might have been ONLY Sherman. Who knows?
The telling thing, to me, is that his style of run game was trying to be fused with the ZBS. It wasn't working, and the bigger question is "Why was he even dabbling in the run game anyways?" If it was Kubiak's team, would Kubiak really want to go the Green Bay route with the run game as opposed to what he knew better (the ZBS)?
I think Sherman left on good terms. He wanted to be a HC, he's an A&M guy, and the Aggies didn't get their first pick in Kubiak. Two years in a row, Sherman was at the right spot at the right time it seems.