Rumors
 

Anybody catching all the smoke coming off of Kirby lately?

http://www.battleredblog.com/2017/1/...g-to-part-ways

Smith unhappy with OB? OB unhappy with Smith? OB going (gone)?

If it is true, and the local team mouthpiece strongly denies that it is, is it really that much of a loss? He's stuck on "his" system that he knows from NE. Only problem......Brady is not walking thru the door any time soon. He seems to be unwilling to permanently put an OC in place that will shape an O around the roster he has. He did it a few times last year when they were in QB purgatory, but from what he saw of his $37MM QB in camp, he kept trying to hammer a square peg in a round hole.

I find him entertaining, mainly because he is brutally honest with the slapdick local media and doesn't always give canned response. BUT, as a HC, meh....

This is the speculation I'm leaning to (again, total speculation):

OB has been approached to remove Godsey after the season is over because somebody has got to take the fall for the putrid offense. OB is refusing to dismiss his buddy. An ultimatum was issued: either he goes or you both go.

Totally unsubstantiated but it is kind of fun to speculate..... ;)

I like O'Brien, or at least I am still trying hard to like him, but he has done some fireable things.

The whole going for it on fourth down in the second quarter of a meaningless week 17 game with a QB sneak... not bright. Would O'Brien have called that same play with Tom Brady instead of Tom Savage? I'm guessing no.

Conspiracy theorists... Savage, now tagged as being injury prone, was he put purposefully into harm's way? Hmmm :confused::p

By BOB? BOB was the one who wanted to start Savage all along, apparently. He had BO forced on him by an incompetent GM and a dickbrained owner. Of course BOB calling a sneak for Savage was about as bright as letting Colt McCoy run a quarterback keeper into the teeth of an Alabama defense. And the results were similar.

I have no problem believing that BOB has deep issues with Rick Smith and may very well want out. RS is an idiot and a tool and is unfireable. RS has the owner's total confidence. The owner is an idiot and a tool and together he and the GM apparently can do quite a bit of damage. Like sign Ed Reed while releasing Glover Quin, put Savage on the IR after a six week injury, commit $70MM to a guy with five NFL starts, etc.

Before BOB came along we all knew that the decision making hierarchy inside the organization was a mess. It seems to have become worse. People like BOB, people from the northeast, people who went to Ivy League schools, even if they were there to play football, most people like that think that hayseeds like McNeck, even if they are billionaires, are idiots. And they're right. Parts of the US and Texas in particular feature some impressive concentrations of powerful stupidity. I can imagine that BOB wants out. Ironically, winning Saturday will make his escape path that much more complicated. Each hour that passes will signal the door to new coaching opportunities closing more and more. Who knows if there will be any head coaching vacancies left in a week.

But it would be hilarious if BOB bailed, took the last one open and left McNeck and his waterboy holding the bag.

Since the Glazer thing I've assumed that BOB is the one leaking all of this. The quotes from Zierlein have me reconsidering. It could well be coming from the waterboy instead. Most likely I think is they're both leaking, but the waterboy wouldn't be telling everyone he forced BO on BOB.

The two things I do know for a fact is 1) Pancakes is as clueless as always and 2) this bullshit should not be happening before a playoff game and that it is speaks volumes to the incompetence of ownership.

IF Coach Foulmouth leaves and Romeo Crennel stays, I think the sum difference for the Texans is zero. Foulmouth was supposed to be the offensive genius from the Belichick tree. The offense stinks. If he leaves, the worst that will happen with the offense is that it will still stink.

Crennel has been the one in charge of the defense - the one aspect out of three (offense and special teams the others) - that is carrying the other two. True, O'Brien brought Crennel with him and he might take him if he leaves but nonetheless, there's a Super Bowl-winning D-Coord that is suddenly looking for work and might just be thrilled to come back to Houston if the position is open.

As for the rest of your diatribe laced with outright bigotry and nonsense (Rick Smith is Virginia-born, Pennsylvania-raised, Indiana-educated and Colorado-trained), he has hit and missed at the GM Wheel-of-fortune at about the same rate as the rest of the NFL's GMs and what he has to show for it is a perennial .500 team. Not what the fans want but a hell of a lot better than some NFL fanbases have.

Should he be in charge of the team's personnel decisions? That's debatable. Is he better than Chatty Casserly? I'd probably swallow hard and say yes. Osweiler has a chance this week to take the Texans as far as they've ever gone. That might seem to justify the "upgrade" from Brian Hoyer in games that truly matter. Nobody thinks they will beat the Patriots should they win but the Texans have never had a QB capable of that, not Carr nor Schaub.

O'Brien was the same reckless get that Osweiler was. For a "conservative" owner, his biggest mistakes seems to be impulsive fixes that might have been better in retrospect had they waited for somebody better instead of being in an overheated hurry to get the one guy they coveted.

: popcorn emoji :

I can't even decipher this Bob. Chuck may be on a crazy rant but at least it's coherent enough to know what his particular brand of crazy is. I have no idea what point you are aiming at here.

Do you think McNair is doing a good job? Do you think he's doing as good as most? Do you think Smith is good? Average? Do you think if Brock wins a playoff game it was a good signing? Do you think O'Brien is the main problem?

These are actual questions not veiled insults. I just can't tell what point you were making or if the whole thing was about Chuck and not the Texans.

I'm more than capable of a crazy rant but the above is neither a rant nor is it crazy. Most of you have probably been following the events referred to by Arky's original post. BOB and RS have reached a point of extreme professional tension. After he was hired BOB wanted to get RS out of the way and bring in an OC of his choosing. BO was not a QB BOB wanted; he was forced on him (and, presumably, was forced to play him). BOB and the team may be looking for a way to separate themselves after the season. (I've been hearing rumblings about this for at least a month now.) Other NFL FO types ascribe the leaks to RS.

These aren't the fevered dreams of your friend chuck. It's all been reported by people with decent to good track records at getting this stuff right. Is any of it true? Who the hell knows. As I said, I have no trouble believing any of it and I don't know why anyone else would. None of it seems at all far fetched. We've all watched BO make Brian Hoyer look like Joe Montana. If an organization is going to force such an incompetent player on a head coach, such an incompetent quarterback, unless that head coach literally had no other options who wouldn't want out?

Of course if any of this is true and BOB does leave one way or another it will be extremely difficult for the Texans to hire anyone good, or at least anyone who has other options. The Texans will be competing with the Browns and the Niners as teams of last resort.

Any new coach will obviously want his own coordinators so I consider it very unlikely that RAC would survive a coaching change. Of course McNeck could do something surprising like promote Vrabel to HC and stipulate that the defensive coaching staff should remain largely intact. But again, a guy like Vrabel will have many other options and will he want to work for a guy who forced a shit QB on a HC and then ran that coach off once everyone figured out that the QB was shit? Even the Niners aren't at that level of organizational chaos. That makes the Colts look like the Packers.

And finally, it would be irresponsible not to highlight this little nugget:

Osweiler has a chance this week to take the Texans as far as they've ever gone.

That's a good one. BO will be carrying the team forward on his bird-like shoulders. Sure. If he stumbles Chris Clark can lead the charge.

You had some great points but your rant about the northeast and Texas was all fevered dreams and crazy. There are plenty of smart people in the northeast and plenty of dumb ones. The boys in Southie are no more cultured and educated than the rednecks in rural Texas. And McNair may be a football dumby, but he's got more business success than 99.999% of the world. And his dumb football decisions always make him money (mostly because it's impossible not to make money in the NFL). So you can bash the team and the decisions and Smith and McNair, but this has nothing to do with regional culture. Half the franchises in the NFL are just as poorly run as ours. It's because NFL ownership is not a meritocracy.

And Bob's continued love affair with Osweiller is hilarious and indefensible.

He was a Bronco.

And if you want to think that the average Ivy League or coastal elite sort thinks that behind the dull gaze of the average, slack-jawed Texaneck lies an awe-inspiring hidden genius, well, you go right ahead. I wouldn't want to inspire any precipitation on THAT mermaid parade.

I doubt that the South End is home to all that many Ivy League degrees. You'd probably want to go the other way on the Red Line. You know, back in what seems like a past life I myself was doing some coursework at a nearby Ivy League institution. After the semester a friend of mine and I crashed for a week or so at the South End apartment of a fellow named Lumpy. Looking back on it I do not believe that Lumpy was a fellow student. If I were pressed I would guess that my friend knew Lumpy's girlfriend but I'm afraid the details are lost to the fog of time.

Anyhoo, educated northerners think that the average yokel south of the Manson-Nixon line is an idiot. If you want to ascribe that to a Dostoevskian fever dream then you have at it. If you want to discuss whether BOB is an educated northerner, we can certainly do that because as you may recall I have called his intelligence into question more than once.

I wasn't questioning what northeners think of southerners. I was born and raised in Massachusetts. I'm plenty aware of it.

I'm questioning where you declare them right due to the "impressive collection of stupidity" found here in particular. I don't disagree about the stupidity found here, I disagree with the idea it's in more plenty here. You will find no shortage of stupid and smart anywhere you go.

And more importantly, none of that has anything to do with the Texans front office. BOB was happy to take a job working for the well travelled Rick Smith, and he was happy to take paychecks from the redneck Bob McNair. The current trouble has nothing to do with culture or regionalism. It has to do with football and million dollar paychecks. Blame has to go somewhere for the Osweiller debacle, and BOB wants no part of it. He also doesn't want another year of being forced to build around an embarrassment of a QB he never wanted.

So if BOB can skip out ahead of the lynch mob and leave Rick Smith rightly holding the bag, good for BOB.

Ooh, I don't know. I once spent some time in the northeast on one of my treks.... I was out in rural Pennsylvania, Vermont, upstate New York..... Met some good people but there's a certain demeanor to some of the locals..... I believe they euphemistically call it "yankee reserve". To me it, was more like "rude and snarly", eheh. Order some pancakes for breakfast from the snarly chick, go to the gas station and pay for my gas to the rude dude.... On my return trip, I stopped at a McDonald's in Tennessee and the little chickadee at the drive-thru gave me my order, smiled and said "Thang cue". It was then I knew I was home free..... Gimme the south, thank you.

My original point, since obscured, was simply that I imagine BOB thinks Bob is a meddlesome idiot. Which he is.

If BOB and Smith can't coexist then Smith needs to go. I must admit, though, that I thought Smith should've been shown the door at the same time as Kubiak. I agree that if BOB goes then there's no way any coach with options or long-term career aspirations comes here and we'll be looking at the Dave Campos of the world. BOB hasn't been perfect but I think he's gotten as much out of this roster as almost anyone could, particularly given the injuries.

I do disagree with the idea that the QB sneak was an unforgiveable risk. Because it's so quick and in such a tight area nobody should have had the time or room to get the momentum to put a big hit on him, unlike a zone read, bootleg, or even a straight dropback.

Arky, that reminds me of a story about my grandfather. He was born and raised in North Carolina but spent most his of adult life in Pittsburgh. One time he was down here visiting us and a grocery store cashier told him to have a nice day. He was sure that she was being sarcastic because he just wasn't used to that...

Does it say something about the Texans that a Bob-Chuck message board spat gets more comments than just about anything the team has done this year?

I think it's that way everywhere, right now. Radio, other message boards, etc... Everybody has something to say on the subject...

I've been seeing some real whopper theories and plenty of people agreeing with them..... Get Kyle Shanahan, promote RAC, make Vrabel HC, the list is endless....

McClain (if you believe him) was relaying (on the radio) that all is well on Kirby that OB and RS were yukking it up before the Titan game..... So who knows, there might not be anything to all of this.. could have been something small that got blown out of proportion. As fans, we control nothing....we watch, we wait, we comment....

McClain might as well work for the team. He would never report anything the Texans didn't want reported because his employment depends on access.

You'd be an idiot to believe anything he says.

It shouldn't be like this. Despite being an idiot he has, as BOB would say, a lot of juice. Before the Texans came along to ruin all of our lives Pancakes was the NFL reporter for what passes as the local newspaper. And unless I am very mistaken for the first few years of the Texans' existence he was not in fact the beat reporter; he remained the NFL at-large guy. Then the paper reigned him in, or, possibly, demoted him, and he became a Texans beat reporter.

It pains me to say it but he knows something about football and his rolodex is incredibly impressive. If he wanted to he could be a real journalist and maintain his access to the team. Plenty of real journalists push back against the people and entities they cover and find themselves continuing to cover their beat well. But, of course, he doesn't want to, and the media culture in Houston is such that consumers do not demand it.

This is not a chuck-Bob spat, though. I mean, sure, I dangled a worm and he took the bait. Big deal. It's easy to make him dance, especially after all these years. (He did call me a bigot. That was cool. Getting called a bigot by Bob makes me tingly all over.) As Arky points out this story is everywhere. And whatever our differences Bob and I aren't even disagreeing about the main points in the story line, at least not as far as I can tell. As barrett mentioned, the central thrusts of Bob's narratives can be challenging to unpack.

But you have to admit, this is fun, right? (It reminds me of the 1993 Oilers in a way. Team Turmoil. Of course the '93 Oilers had a quarterback.) The Texans are lining up for the firing squad. We all know it. If they get by Oakland (and if they don't that will be hilarious and the aftermath great fun to witness) they will be summarily executed by New England. My guess is that Belichick will show no mercy at all. And none will be warranted. At least now we have something entertaining to talk about. And it might even be real.

I agree with all of this. It's clear to me, though, that Rick Smith is GM For Life. He should print his business cards in bronze.

Where to start? One thing I pointed out is that Rick Smith is anything but a redneck. Here I am defending the black guy that Chuck refers to as a tool and an idiot but that's because Chuck has a blinding, seething hatred of any businessman not from California or the Northeast. He thinks the rest are like Big Enos and Little Enos from Smokey and the Bandit.

From there, I pivoted to a salient point. The Texans got Bill O'Brien because he was somehow applauded for mediocre results at Ped State and had never been an NFL head coach. Still they rolled out the red carpet for O'Brien and gave him almost whatever he wanted.

They later signed Brock Osweiler and the way they went about it is the exact same way they went about acquiring their head coach. "We had to sign him NOW before another team got him." Osweiler, like O'Brien, didn't have enough NFL experience to be given such a huge reputation but at least Smith and McNair were consistent. They're impulse shoppers who gotta have what they want no matter the cost.

I think O'Brien wanted desperately to be out of the shadow of Joe Paterno in Happy Valley. Osweiler wanted desperately to be out of the shadow of Peyton Manning in Dove Valley and here came the Texans to generously overspend on both of them.

Was it stupid not to consult O'Brien before signing Osweiler? Naturally. Was that Osweiler's fault? No. He was told to come here and be the savior. He hasn't lived up to it but it doesn't mean he can't. Alex Smith, anyone? I didn't love the guy in Houston or in Denver. He comes across at times as a nerd and a crybaby. But he does have the tools to be a top-half NFL quarterback if he is developed properly. One season is not enough time to take him down to the dumpster.

And I'll agree that Northeasterners have an arrogance and rudeness that is very offputting. And their women are ugly. And they talk funny. That doesn't mean their opinions are superior or correct.

Who the hell said he's a redneck? RIF, neck.

I'm afraid your parochial reference does not resonate with me. Sorry about that.

You're criticizing the team's reckless impulses while you criticize me for criticizing the team's reckless impulses.

ALMOST. Apparently he also wanted a competent GM. And who knows, maybe a QB.

I'm sure this is of imperative operational importance to you in your world, Baubles.

You must be trolling us all. There is no way you believe this stuff.

You think he was brought in to be a savior? He was paid $18 million to takeover a playoff team who had just suffered through Brian Hoyer. There was no expectation on him. I remember countless people posting preseason "He can't be worse than what we had last year." It was the cushiest starting gig ever. Throw to a 1500 yard WR who made Brandon Weeden and TJ Yates look good, and score 20 PPG and win the easiest division in football. And he managed to ruin a WR the worst QBs in football couldn't ruin. He managed to lose a job that his contract guaranteed him. And he managed to be the worst of the 8 QBs we have had start a game in the past 3 years. And you want to say he hasn't gotten enough time yet? You want to say he can be a top half QB? You're going deep into the bizarre here Bob. He's just a bad player and a worse signing.

But he was a Bronco.

Oh, come on. He at least has the broke clock thing working for him. I think he and I are about the same age and when he starts rambling about childhood, sports, growing up in Texas in 60's and the names he drops, I know exactly what he is talking about. Difference was, I grew up in Houston (Oiler fan), he grew up in Waco (Cowboy fan). I think I've heard and read him enough to know when he's BS'ing and when he's not.

Yep, started out as the Houston Aeros reporter in the 70s then, (foot firmly in door), moved on to Oiler coverage. When the Oilers left, he became the NFL guy. I believe it was Chronicle cutbacks and the arrival of the Texans that grounded him (no more flying around the country every weekend for you, meester).
No kiddin', I started to bring that up earlier in the thread. That there have been a few teams in the history of sports that are outwardly a wreck, that go out and win despite all the obstacles. The Billy Martin Yankees come to mind, the Chuck Finley A's.....there' more.... Could our boys finally be showing some personality and identity? Might be too late..... Today's athletes are programmed behind the scenes (hello, Hard Knocks) and don't really talk to the media the way they use to.....

Should the Texans get by Oakland, there only hope (1% chance?) against New England is that defense. I'd like to see them cover the spread, at least - but yep, it might be a slaughter. Obviously, they've got to get by Oakland, first...

Far lesser teams have succeeded using the "us against the world" mantra to pull off the unthinkable. There could be some method behind all this madness.

Oh, and just for you, Chuckster, a clip of Big Enos and Little Enos. This is what I imagine you think all Texas businessmen are like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIgGZA4qQoc

I can just see them now offering a contract to Osweiler. "What you need is a REAL challenge!"

A surprising new name has been added to the Rams’ coaching wish list: Mike Vrabel.
Vrabel, the Texans’ linebackers coach, will interview with the Rams next week, Albert Breer of TheMMQB.com reports.
Vrabel is best known to football fans for his 14-year career as a linebacker for the Steelers, Patriots and Chiefs. After retiring as a player he spent three years on the coaching staff at Ohio State, and then spent the last three years on the Texans’ staff.
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com...ching-vacancy/