Quote:
Originally Posted by Keith
I think the point missed here is that the Texans now have MORE than a typical number of players that are deserving of what they are paid (or to your point, what they ought to be paid soon).
I mean, have the Texans had such an abundance of talent in which we could easily rattle off their best 12 players before? The Texans have one of the deepest rosters in the entire league now. "Next man up" wasn't just a cool saying last season.
A healthy cap is NOT one of the fruits of your labors. In fact, making difficult cap-related decisions is such a fruit of these labors (or instead maybe a vegetable in this analogy). Good, nay great, teams have had to say goodbye to their talent bearing these fruits.
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We've probably taken this about as far as it needs to go, but I'll just add that I agree with almost everything you say here, but that it misses the point I was trying to make. The Texans do have a fair amount of talent now and do have a bunch of guys that will expect to get paid in the near future. I also agree that good teams with lots of talent will ultimately get poached by other teams and eventually tough cap decisions will have to be made. I dispute none of this. The question is when this happens. I see no reason why we should be in this situation now, although I acknowledge that if we continue to be successful, it will be a situation that will arise in the coming years.
As you mentioned the Colts and the Patriots, these are teams that maintained ridiculously high levels of success for the better part of a decade. We've had one good year. If this offseason followed our 3rd 12+ win season, then, yeah, hanging onto guys after that type of sustained success is difficult. However, I think that being cap-strapped and unable to retain virtually any of your free agents in the very first offseason after your very first decent season in team history is a little early for that ship to be sailing. Maybe the Colts and the Patriots started hemorrhaging their best offensive linemen and their best pass rushers to free agency because they lacked cap space after their very first winning season, but I doubt it. That's the only point I was trying to make.