After Richard Justice’s fawning column yesterday on new Texans’ receiver Eric Moulds, Chronicle columnist John McClain gets into the cheerleading act today as he states the following regarding Texans placekicker Kris Brown in his daily report on the Texans’ practice:

Despite the uncertainties in the return game, Marciano has no concern about three members of his special teams ó kicker Kris Brown, punter Chad Stanley and long snapper Bryan Pittman. All are solid veterans whose consistency helps a coach sleep better.
“I don’t know what I’d do without those guys,” Marciano said.

McClain might have a point about Stanley and Pittman, but it’s ludicrous to characterize Brown as a consistently good kicker. Last season, Brown blew at least a couple of games by missing quite makeable field goals and only two kickers in the entire NFL (Ryan Longwell and Paul Edinger) made a lower percentage of field goal attempts between 30 – 39 yards than Brown. And just to show that last season was not an aberration, Brown has been in the lower third of NFL kickers in overall accuracy for the past five consecutive seasons.
Thus, rather than “a solid veteran whose consistency helps a coach sleep better” and who draws $1.2 million in base salary, Brown actually ought to be fighting for his job during training camp. But the Chronicle never has let objective criteria get in the way of cheerleading for the Texans in the optimistic glow of the pre-season.

As regular as the sun rising, the Chronicle sports staff reverts to hometown cheerleaders during each pre-season training camp of the Houston Texans, chloroforming readers with puff pieces such as this Richard Justice column on new Texans wide-receiver, Eric Moulds.
For the first three seasons of the Texans, the training camp stories all lapped up the optimistic theme that the team was making steady progress behind the well-coordinated plan of owner Bob McNair, GM Charlie Casserly and head coach Dom Capers that had led the expansion team to the brink of being a playoff contender. Unfortunately, that theme fell rather flat last season as the bottom fell out for the Texans during a horrifying 2-14 season. It was rather comical to watch as Chronicle sportswriters John McClain and Justice went from fawning praise of the Texans during the pre-season to acerbic criticism just several weeks later during that awful season.
Given last year’s disastrous season, the Chronicle’s overall theme this pre-season is a bit different — the team has overhauled management and personnel, and the new, better-organized coaching staff and the new players who the Texans have brought in are moving the Texans in the right direction again. Maybe so, but there is no meaningful analysis in Justice’s column on Moulds that would lead an objective observor to conclude that the receiver is a significant upgrade over the seemingly serviceable Jabar Gaffney, the former Texans receiver who Moulds replaced.
Compare Justice’s fawning piece on Moulds with the following pre-season analysis by the folks at Football Prospectus, who base their evaluations of players primarily on objective criteria rather than subjective considerations:

Moulds has been an average receiver at best for several years now; even back in 2003, teammates such as Bobby Shaw outranked him in DPAR (“points above replacement-level player”). But the national media still considers Moulds an elite talent because the Bills throw him 150 passes per year, and he still has one or two 9-catch, 120-yard games each season, usually when the Bills are being beaten handily. The new Bills brain trust finally figured out that Moulds’ best years were behind him, and they did everythign but throw his cleats into a trash dumpster in their effort to get rid of him this spring. Moulds is a top candidate to fall off the map in 2006.

In short, based on objective criteria, Moulds’ decline in productivity has been masked by the fact that his former team threw to him frequently, albeit ineffectively. Thus, objective analysis suggests that the Texans overpaid for Moulds and that he will not be any better than a replacement-level player. Justice’s column might make you feel better about Moulds for awhile, but my sense is that most serious followers of the Texans and the NFL prefer the cold, hard facts to the type of subjective blather that the Chronicle regularly fees us during the Texans’ pre-season camp.
By the way, for current information on the Texans, check out the Chronicle’s new blog, Stephanie Stradley’s Texans Chick. Stephanie is an unabashed Texans’ fan, so she is unfailingly optimistic about the team and its players. However, she does pass along quite a bit interesting information and analysis on the Texans and its players that is not available from the Chronicle’s other sources. I recommend giving Stephanie’s blog a look.

Chronicle reporter Megan Manfull opens her article on the latest development in Texanville with the following paragraph:

Spencer, an offensive tackle out of Pittsburgh, will receive a $610,000 signing bonus on a four-year contract that voids to three years. He is slated to make $275,000 this season, $360,000 in 2007 and $440,000 in 2008. The deal is expected to be finalized today.

I have my limitations as a lawyer, so can someone explain to me what “a four-year contract that voids to three years” means? By the way, my understanding is that Spencer has not yet dispensed formally with his first name, which is Charles.
Manfull also reports that the Texans — who begin their pre-season camp next week — have signed all of their draft choices except University of Miami offensive tackle Eric Winston (3rd round, 66th player chosen in 2006 NFL draft). Winston’s agent is Drew Rosenhaus, which may explain why the once highly-touted Winston was still available for the Texans to pick up in the 3rd round of the draft.
Update: Ted Frank, who knows a bad regulation when he sees it, writes to explain the “four voiding to three” jibberish: “A four-year contract that voids to three years is a four-year contract where the fourth year can (and almost certainly will) be unilaterally voided by the player. The effect is to fool the salary cap by allowing the team to divvy the signing bonus over four years, rather than the three years that is the economic reality of the contract.”

In this previous post, I speculated that former Houston Texans head coach and current Miami Dolphins defensive coordinator Dom Capers will be particularly incentivized to have his Dolphins defensive unit ready for the Dolphins’ game with the Texans this coming October.
Well, the following blurb in this MiamiHerald.com article indicates that Texans owner Bob McNair has reason to have his troops reciprocate with some spirited play in the upcoming game:

Dom Capers won’t have the defensive coordinator title, but that essentially is his job. ”Maybe some day he’ll be that, but not this year,” coach Nick Saban said. Miami is saving a bundle by withholding that title. Now Houston, which fired him as head coach, must pay Capers $2 million in 2006, and Miami only $300,000.

Former Houston plaintiff’s attorney Marty Akins — who was the University of Texas’ wishbone quarterback from 1973-75, has a rather interesting new job.
He’s been named the golf coach at Huston-Tillotson University in Austin. Akins has also taken a position on the HTU faculty in the business school.
By the way, that’s former UT Heisman Trophy winner and Houston Oiler great Earl Campbell taking the handoff from Akins in the accompanying photograph. Campbell was a wishbone fullback at UT before being converted to an I formation tailback in his senior season when UT ditched the wishbone formation in 1977 under then new coach Fred Akers. The rest is history.