Kevin Whited over at blogHouston.net is one of the most insightful local bloggers on matters relating to football. In this post, he observes that John McClain — the Chronicle’s main beat writer on the National Football League for many years — is a rarity among Houston media types in now suggesting that Houston Texans owner Bob McNair ought to fire General Manager Charlie Casserly along with Texans Head Coach Dom Capers for the Texans’ miserable 0-6 start to the 2005 season. Kevin notes that Mr. McClain’s criticism of Mr. Casserly is unusual in comparison to the normally fawning treatment that most local sports media types give to the personable and media-savvy Texans General Manager.

Kevin makes a valid point, but what I would like to know is Mr. McClain’s explanation for his sudden turnabout — as late as the pre-season this year, he was also one of the local media types who was fawning over Mr. Casserly and the Texans. For example, check out the following from Mr. McClain’s July 24, 2005 column entitled “Playoffs on minds of Texans: Players to put gear for start of camp:”

For the first time in the four-year history of the franchise, the Texans enter training camp as a playoff contender.
While it probably is unfair to expect them to win the AFC South when they never have defeated Indianapolis, it is not too much for fans to expect them to contend for a wild-card berth after the Texans swept Jacksonville and Tennessee last year on the way to a 7-9 record.

This particular article is not unusual. Mr. McClain wrote dozens of similar articles over the past four years in which he breathlessly extolled the virtues of Mr. Casserly and the Texans’ front office as he trumpeted the Texans’ party line that the team was becoming an NFL playoff contender. Not until the Texans began this season with one of the most devastatingly bad string of performances in recent NFL memory has Mr. McClain began to make the rather obvious point that the Texans do not have enough frontline NFL-quality players and that the players that they do have are not performing well. Ergo the criticism of Mr. Casserly and Coach Capers.
However, what I want to know is this — how has Mr. Casserly bamboozled experts such as Mr. McClain for all this time? The Texans did not become this bad overnight, although the team did show steady improvement during its first three seasons. Where is Mr. McClain’s admission that he and other “experts” at the Chronicle were wrong in gobbling up Mr. Casserly’s blather over the past several years that the team was being built “the right way.” Rather than taking the easy way out, I would like to read an article by Mr. McClain that is based on thorough research that details the personnel choices of Mr. Casserly, compares those choices to alternatives that were available at the time of such choices, and analyzes why the choices that were made have come together to make the Texans the laughingstock of the NFL.
That type of article is much more difficult to prepare than one that simply observes that Mr. Casserly and Coach Capers ought to be fired. However, it is a much more honest approach to the Texans and one that will contribute something constructive to an otherwise desultory season for Houston’s long-suffering supporters of professional football.