Chronicle sportswriter Richard Justice says some of the darndest things. Take the following quotes from today’s column on the current state of the hapless Houston Texans:
“The Texans are respectable. They’re coming close. They’ve got four 2-7 teams left on their schedule. They almost won in Jacksonville, and they made a run at the Indianapolis Colts before losing 31-17 Sunday.”
The Texans are respectable? In nine games this season, the Texans have been in only three games that they had a reasonable chance to win, albeit two of those have been in the last three games. As for making “a run” against the Colts, when the Texans closed to 21-14 in the third quarter, Peyton Manning and the Colts offense reeled off a five play, 75 yard march for a touchdown that made the Texans defense look as if it would have a difficult time stopping a hard-chargin’ marching band. If that’s respectable, then I would hate to see what Justice considers just plain bad.
“The Texans are a better offensive team since [offensive coordinator Joe] Pendry took over [for the fired Chris Palmer]. David Carr looks like he’s on his way to becoming a first-rate quarterback. He’s quicker and more accurate in his throws, less likely to take a sack.”
H’mm. The Texans are a better offensive team since Pendry took over? The Texans are averaging 215.9 yards per game, which is 31st among the 32 NFL teams, and 13.9 points per game, which is 30th. Last season under Offensive Coordinator Palmer, pretty much the same Texans offensive personnel generated 320.5 yards per game (19th in the league) and 19.3 points per game (21st in the league). Meanwhile, last season, Carr was sacked a total of 49 times during the entire 16 game season, while he has already been sacked 46 times this season in only nine games, 33 of which have been while Pendry has been offensive coordinator. At the same time, Carr continues to have passes batted down at the line of scrimmage due to his sidearm delivery, gets flushed easily from the pocket, and continues to be poor at picking up secondary receivers. That’s improvement?
“McNair has made mistakes, too. After spending more than $700 million on the franchise, he gave Capers a limited budget to hire a coaching staff.”
Justice has been floating this theory in several of his recent columns, but he has not done any analysis of how the Texans’ assistant coaching salaries stack up against the salaries of other NFL staffs. Without such an objective analysis, this criticism looks like Justice is passing along the sour grapes of either the head coach or the general manager.
Just what is the deal with Chronicle sportswriters shooting from the hip?