Tom Savage formally named starting QB

[Pastor Dillon]

15 minutes ago, mse326 said:

Now this is just dumb. Did you actually watch him in Denver? He wasn't that good there either. He showed little flashes so a couple teams were going on possible potential.

How is this dumb? Kubiak was able to take Brock and do what he needed to do to win. Kubiak consistently got guys to play beyond thier abilities. He turned matt schaub into a pro bowler. BOB has gotten guys to play worse.  His system is so complicated that no one can run it and it shows. We've got a top notch WR, a very solid RB, we've invested a couple 2nd round picks on the O-Line, we had a Pro Bowl LT that no one can find. We took 2 WRs high last year. We went out and signed a starting RG. We developed the number 1 D in football without the best player in football and we still couldn't win more than 9 games because BOB can't coach. We've had what 7 or 8 starting QBs in his 3 years and he couldn't make any of them a net positive? That's a major system problem. 

I'm willing to give him a chance to change my mind however. There is no doubt Savage is his guy. He drafted him in his first draft. He's been in the system for 3 full seasons and he was annointed the starter over our 1st rounder despite having very little experience and having never thrown a TD. This is his last chance to show his "QB Guru" credintials.  He's out of excuses, he's hitched his wagon to Savage and it's time to put up or shut up. 

And if we get rid of BOB smith needs to be out the door with him 

[amazingandre]

I think OB is a good head coach, but a terrible OC. The team is  underperforming on offense every season and his complicated system isn't catching on. I think hiring a legit OC would go a long ways for this team

And I am not buying that any of those QBs were forced on OB. He had a say in all of them and he was fine with them. Stop with this notion that Brock was forced onto OB.

[Texansfan713]

11 hours ago, EliteTexan80 said:

Explain.

Surely. First im not taking a shot at any Texans fan here, but he isn't as good as YALL make him out to be.

 

First off, the guy was the offense coordinator for the Patriots coaching Tom Brady.  You cant tell me O'Brien was the reason Brady threw for over 5,000 that season under O'Brien. Being the Patriots OC is one of the easiest jobs in the league. 

Next he goes to Penn St.  I posted this in the old site a few months ago. I understand the situations he inherited at PSU, but even then he wasnt that great. He had gone like 10-2 or 9-3 given the situations there I would have been "oh snap he really did something at PSU". He went 15-9 there and 10-6 in conference play. One of his worst loses there was losing to Ohio in his first career coaching game at PSU.  I know he recruited Hackenberg and he had a good freshman and sophmore year but his 2 seasons at PSU wasnt "that great" as people make it out to be.

Then he comes to Houston. I'll give him this, he hired RAC and quite frankly RAC is the reason he has a job here right now. Texans are won 9 games all of O'Brien's 3 seasons here because of 2 things.  1. RAC obviously and 2. being in the AFC South and facing a cupcake schedule. I can legit argue that if we didnt have RAC as DC we would be below .500 all 3 of those years.  

Plus I never got the "O'Brien is an offensive guru" title people gave him. I know he has worked with several QB's here in Houston including Osweiler being terrible but our offense has gotten significantly worse every season under O'Brien. PLus i legit fall asleep when watching the Texans play offense. I never did that under Capers and Kubiak. 

[Texansfan713]

1 hour ago, amazingandre said:

I think OB is a good head coach, but a terrible OC. The team is  underperforming on offense every season and his complicated system isn't catching on. I think hiring a legit OC would go a long ways for this team

And I am not buying that any of those QBs were forced on OB. He had a say in all of them and he was fine with them. Stop with this notion that Brock was forced onto OB.

Well he had a chance to after firing Godsey and he wanted to be arrogant and not hire one when it was pretty good choices to choose from. That's on him if this offense sucks again this season. 

 

Maybe Brock wasnt forced on him. I heard 2 different sides of the coin on Brock, but Mallett, Hoyer and Fitzpatrick surely was, especially the former 2. He wanted Savage as well. Remember the rumor during the draft that he was considering taking Savage round 2? 

[mse326]

1 hour ago, Pastor Dillon said:

How is this dumb? Kubiak was able to take Brock and do what he needed to do to win. Kubiak consistently got guys to play beyond thier abilities. He turned matt schaub into a pro bowler. BOB has gotten guys to play worse.  His system is so complicated that no one can run it and it shows. We've got a top notch WR, a very solid RB, we've invested a couple 2nd round picks on the O-Line, we had a Pro Bowl LT that no one can find. We took 2 WRs high last year. We went out and signed a starting RG. We developed the number 1 D in football without the best player in football and we still couldn't win more than 9 games because BOB can't coach. We've had what 7 or 8 starting QBs in his 3 years and he couldn't make any of them a net positive? That's a major system problem. 

I'm willing to give him a chance to change my mind however. There is no doubt Savage is his guy. He drafted him in his first draft. He's been in the system for 3 full seasons and he was annointed the starter over our 1st rounder despite having very little experience and having never thrown a TD. This is his last chance to show his "QB Guru" credintials.  He's out of excuses, he's hitched his wagon to Savage and it's time to put up or shut up. 

And if we get rid of BOB smith needs to be out the door with him 

1. Denver won because they had an all time great defense. We don't

2. Fitzpatrick was a net positive for us under BOB. Had his 2nd best year in his career with us.

3. Who cares if you fall asleep. Being interesting is meaningless

4. Savage wasn't annointed starter. There was a competition. Savage may have been given the inside track for starter, but it was by no means a given. Watson hasn't shown nearly enough to prove he's ready.

[ET80]

14 minutes ago, Texansfan713 said:

 

14 minutes ago, Texansfan713 said:

Surely. First im not taking a shot at any Texans fan here, but he isn't as good as YALL make him out to be.

I don't think anyone here is trying to make him out as some cornerstone HC. He's average at best, not denying this. This being said, there are countless guys at the pro and college level who wouldn't do as well.

14 minutes ago, Texansfan713 said:

I understand the situations he inherited at PSU, but even then he wasnt that great. He had gone like 10-2 or 9-3 given the situations there I would have been "oh snap he really did something at PSU". He went 15-9 there and 10-6 in conference play. One of his worst loses there was losing to Ohio in his first career coaching game at PSU.  I know he recruited Hackenberg and he had a good freshman and sophmore year but his 2 seasons at PSU wasnt "that great" as people make it out to be.

That situation was the biggest sports scandal in history - far bigger than any pay for play scandal, grade inflation scandal, you name it. It took a largely domestic sport and put the team on the international mind. This was beyond ESPN and Sports Illustrated, this was headline news for CNN, Reuters, Al Jazeera. That's a spotlight that is pretty rare for the sport.

While he should be judged for the lack of on-field results, the off-the-field results are more indicative of a person who can operate under intense scrutiny.

15 minutes ago, Texansfan713 said:

Then he comes to Houston. I'll give him this, he hired RAC and quite frankly RAC is the reason he has a job here right now. Texans are won 9 games all of O'Brien's 3 seasons here because of 2 things.  1. RAC obviously and 2. being in the AFC South and facing a cupcake schedule. I can legit argue that if we didnt have RAC as DC we would be below .500 all 3 of those years

Not going to deny this - but how many seasons did we waste with Kubiak because he wouldn't hire a competent coordinator? It literally took about five season before management stepped in and said "Ok, your golf buddies and CSU alumni aren't going to cut it anymore, we're bringing in Wade." Part of being a good HC? Delegating what needs to be delegated. It's not like RAC had a sterling reputation at the time, he'd been out of coaching for two years.

18 minutes ago, Texansfan713 said:

Plus I never got the "O'Brien is an offensive guru" title people gave him. I know he has worked with several QB's here in Houston including Osweiler being terrible but our offense has gotten significantly worse every season under O'Brien. PLus i legit fall asleep when watching the Texans play offense. I never did that under Capers and Kubiak. 

Two thoughts on this:

- As I've said before, I couldn't care less on how exciting an offense looks. My entertainment is strictly tied to winning and losing. The days of Schaub throwing for 300+ in a 38-24 loss taught me that the only number that counts is the W/L record.

- It's more than just the QB play. This team had a poor OL, a declining AJ, no TE play worthy of note, an emerging target in Hopkins, a declining Arian Foster for 10 games over two seasons, a ton of Alfred "Blind" Blue, Akeem Hunt and Jonathan Grimes. Even if they QB situation was dialed in with an average starter, the supporting cast wasn't really that good. 

Now if you wanted to pin THAT on O'Brien, I'd partially agree. I'd also state that a big part of that blame goes to Cal's golfing buddy.

[ET80]

2 hours ago, Pastor Dillon said:

Kubiak was able to take Brock and do what he needed to do to win

Ok. Let's not forget that Denver defense, which was one of the All Time great defenses in league history. That did much more than Brock and Kubiak could muster up.

If Kubiak was such a QB mentor, why didn't Paxton Lynch get the starting gig as a rookie and develop in any sort of way?

2 hours ago, Pastor Dillon said:

He turned matt schaub into a pro bowler. BOB has gotten guys to play worse.

Ryan Fitzpatrick and Brian Hoyer would disagree. 

2 hours ago, Pastor Dillon said:

We've got a top notch WR, a very solid RB, we've invested a couple 2nd round picks on the O-Line, we had a Pro Bowl LT that no one can find. We took 2 WRs high last year. We went out and signed a starting RG. We developed the number 1 D in football without the best player in football and we still couldn't win more than 9 games because BOB can't coach. We've had what 7 or 8 starting QBs in his 3 years and he couldn't make any of them a net positive? That's a major system problem. 

You're basing your argument on a single season in many respects. Solid RB? In what world is a stable of Alfred Blue, Jonathan Grimes and Akeem Hunt "solid"? He didn't have Arian Foster for more than 12 games, he didn't have Lamar Miller until last year. So if you look at each season for what it is, there was a year of elite running from Foster (and the offense looked good that first year) and a year of Lamar Miller being miscasted as an every down back (with a year where the O looked like a mess). Then we had the year in between, where the run game was a mess, and we moved the ball at a solid clip. 

The OL misses at both G spots? If you want to blame OB for that, you're missing out on the real culprit. On the WRs - the book is still out on both. Can't scout for collarbone injury propensity.

One last thing before I go - can we PLEASE stop calling this the #1 defense? By yardage it was, but you don't win/lose games by how much yardage you get. You win/lose games by scoring points, and the Texans defense was ranked 11th in this respect. It's not as bad as the 11 would indicate, but it's not as good as the #1 people like to trot out.

 

[UKTexans]

1 hour ago, EliteTexan80 said:

but how many seasons did we waste with Kubiak because he wouldn't hire a competent coordinator?

Not really an argument in BOBs favour. 

[CWood21]

3 hours ago, Pastor Dillon said:

As ET pointed out, I guess to help my arguement?, we've have won 27 games in 3 years thanks largely to winning 15 division games against the worst division maybe ever. He's basically stat padded because of that while going underwater against the rest of the league.

Ok, so now the argument is you're punishing him because he won the games he was supposed to?  When you're winning 9 games and/or making the playoffs, that means you're pick is going to be in the late teens or early 20s.  That's far enough outside that you're not realistically going to be able to draft your franchise QB without it costing a fortune (just ask the Rams how that has gone).  And the number of franchise QBs that have switched teams in the last year three years is how long?  Not very long.  When the most expensive QBs signed the last few years are Mike Glennon, Brock Osweiler, and Brian Hoyer, you're not going to get much from those three.

[ET80]

1 minute ago, texans_uk said:

Not really an argument in BOBs favour. 

I guess my point is - we hung on to Kubiak for close to eight years. With less results in those years before we forced a DC. BOB doesn't get that same rope, despite doing more in less time?

[UKTexans]

Just now, EliteTexan80 said:

I guess my point is - we hung on to Kubiak for close to eight years. With less results in those years before we forced a DC. BOB doesn't get that same rope, despite doing more in less time?

Absolutely not. That's a terrible business decision. It's not like after all that patience he led us to the SB either. 

[ET80]

1 minute ago, texans_uk said:

Absolutely not. That's a terrible business decision. It's not like after all that patience he led us to the SB either. 

If you placed O'Brien and Kubiak's resume next to one another, it's clear one has done more in his first three years. Poor business decision was to not fire Kubiak for matching what O'Brien did; I agree, Kubiak should have been fired much earlier. This being said, what has OB done that deserves to be fired?

[UKTexans]

1 minute ago, EliteTexan80 said:

This being said, what has OB done that deserves to be fired?

I already said I'm in the middle with him, although I'd lean to glass half empty, but to answer your query:

• Failed to develop a QB
• Progressively worse offensive output
• Failed to compete outside an historically weak division
• Let our OL fall into a state of disrepair
• Failed to properly address the special teams

[Pastor Dillon]

I'm not punishing BOB for beating up a bad division, I'm just simply not rewarding him for it. There is a difference. 

[Texansfan713]

30 minutes ago, EliteTexan80 said:

If you placed O'Brien and Kubiak's resume next to one another, it's clear one has done more in his first three years. Poor business decision was to not fire Kubiak for matching what O'Brien did; I agree, Kubiak should have been fired much earlier. This being said, what has OB done that deserves to be fired?

Cant disagree with that, but like I said earlier you have to compare the situations. Look at the roster turnover when Kubiak took over as HC compared to Bill O'Brien. Kubiak's first offseason here. I wish I could find a site that shows the free agent/trade additions from 06 compared to O'Brien's first year here. I think the fact that we havent improved offensively nor record wise under O'Brien are reasons he should be considered to get canned.