Or maybe his biggest failure as GM was letting his two best edge rushers walk in consecutive years (likely because he already had "his" guys as high draft picks on the roster).

This is my biggest problem with a GM change. Every new GM likes to usher out the old guard because he gets no credit for the team winning with the previous GM's players. So guys get pushed out for guys that the new GM drafted. You end up bleeding away talent and replacing positions that did not need to be replaced. And then when you don't hit on the draft picks used to replace those guys...

There was no way they could afford to give Mario a new contract, plain and simple. And Barwin is hardly tearing it up in the sack department at Philly with only 4 at this point and the season now 75% completed.

They could have not paid schaub or foster. They could have never signed Joseph or Manning. They knew Mario was coming due and prioritized elsewhere, counting on Wade's system and Smith's draft picks to create outside pass rush. But any NFL team can keep any individual player if they want to badly enough. We obviously didn't, for better or worse.

They didn't screw up the Mario situation when he became a free agent but 2 years before. As best I can recall, 2 years before the end of his deal, Harrison became the highest paid defender with a deal around 50 or 60 million. They should have went to Mario then, tore up his rookie deal and gave him a new deal for slightly more than Harrison. Now, I don't know he would have taken it, but generally players don't walk away from new deals that are given 2 years early and make them the highest paid players at their position.

They could have made this work.

OK for the sake of argument I'll agree that the Texans could have crafted thru a series of hypothetical moves a scenario where they had a large enough cap credit that would have permitted them to resign Mario for the kind of money the market would ultimately paid him when he hit FA, however I think Smith would have made a much bigger mistake committing that much to retain Mario.
Now I can certainly fault Smith (but not as much as Kubiak) for the timing of Scaubs contract extention, and the same goes to a lesser degree for the second contract they gave Cushing, but I commend Smith for the discipline he demonstrated in managing the situation with Mario. And while I have mixed feelings about the Texans decision to release Barwin, he's having another just so-so season @ Philly in sack stats, though he is proving to be a valuable member to their defense in other ways.

Yep. They chose to spend on other players and positions. I can't say with any certainty that paying Mario results in more wins this year, like I said, it was a choice they made for better or worse. But I can say they voluntarily let a really good edge rusher walk and have been completely terrible at that position ever since.

Part of Mario's problem was that he was a #1 overall draft pick in the years prior to the new rookie wage scale and his salary/contract payout was already astronomical. I doubt there was anyone within the organization who really wanted Mario to go, but when you factor in his salary level at that the time vs. his production (and injury issues), there was no way the Texans could justify signing him to another monster deal. Had he been drafted #1 post-rookie wage scale, I firmly believe he would've gotten a second contract from the Texans.

As for the Joseph or Manning signings, I don't see how anyone can question those. They both were good deals and good players at the time and those signings greatly upgraded two positions in serious need of upgrade. It's easy in hindsight to look back and say they should have done this or that, but other than Coach Reed, I don't recall anyone on this board having a big problem with any of the FA moves Smith has made over the years at the time they occurred.

Looking back, the Carr deal was bad (can't recall if Smith was here then or not), the Ahman Green deal was bad (think that was Casserly), the Reed deal was bad (and thus letting Quinn walk), the last Schaub deal was bad, the Foster deal is looking bad, the Cushing deal might turn out bad... Ugh!

Oh no, Carr was the teams first pick ever and Smith at that time was years from joining the Texans organization.
The biggest problem I see during Smiths tenure was the re-up of Schaub, and that decision had to be primarily Kubiaks. Coach Reed was Smiths mistake,
but it wasn't that an expensive of a screw-up. So yea I think Smith has established a pretty solid record here, though one glaring mistake for sure was Sam Montgomery. Who's idea was that ?

Yeah, I knew Smith wasn't here when Carr was drafted. I just wasn't sure if he was here when they gave him the extension. I know Kubiak was here, though, and that was the basis of why I thought Smith might have been here too. I think Smith came the year after the Carr extension.

I think it was an option excercised, not an extension.

Either way, OOPS....

Re: the manning and Joseph extensions, I wasn't questioning those in my post (or even the foster and schaub ones). Debating the merit of past contracts was not my intent. I was simply pointing out we made many big money moves that were a part of us prioritizing other positions over edge rusher. We chose to fill some holes with extensions, some with FAs, and some with draft picks. In that whole process we judged that we could let a known quantity in Mario (and Barwin) walk, and replace enough of his production with a draft pick. We could have let Foster walk, tried to replace him with a draft pick and failed just as miserably. We could have bet on 2nd rounder Brandon Harris instead of 2nd rounder Reed, and never signed Joseph and that would have been a fail.

Basically we screwed up the OLB position in every possible way and our reward is watching brooks reed run at the OT 50 times a game to setup a weak spin move that never works.

Painful. The lack of success at either OLB position is made even more painful knowing that this defense has in J.J. Watt someone who may be the best interior DL of his generation. Sorta like having an Andre Johnson and only giving him David Carr and Matt Schaub to pass him the football.

Given how little Reed and Mercilus have produced, seems like we'd have no special ties to keeping the 3-4 if someone wanted to change it next year.

Given the fact that the team has no linebackers at all who a) don't suck or b) can stay on the fng field I would be all in favor of a scheme that reduces the number of required linebackers.

I would also be interested in any scheme which reduces the necessary number of competent members of the defensive secondary.

When I'm 80 years old I'm going to watch the Hall of Fame weekend and I'm going to see Andre and JJ there in their jackets, old and gray and who knows, maybe even fat. They'll be welcoming the new guys, guys who are kids now, toddlers maybe even. And they'll be laughing with each other about how f'd up their franchise was and how wildly mismanaged and what a waste the whole thing was. And when I see that I'm going to throw my goddamn walker right through the window.