Given the largely meaningless nature of NFL pre-season football, I’m holding off on posting my annual pre-season blog post on the Texans until the first regular season game is close at hand. But given the Chronicle’s blanket coverage of the Texans’ training camp, it’s a bit hard to overlook the cheerleading doozies that the Chronicle writers generate almost daily about their hometown heroes.
With the exception of a couple of comments such as this one last week, Chronicle NFL columnist John McClain has generally been more careful this pre-season than he was last pre-season when he was predicting that the Texans were primed to make a playoff run. However, McClain simply cannot contain his cheerleading for the Texans at times, such as the following comment about Texans guard Chester Pitts, who is competing for a job in the area of one of the Texans’ traditionally weakest areas, the offensive line:

“It seems strange that Pitts is having to compete for a starting job, considering he’s never missed a play in four seasons while moving between left tackle and left guard.”

Pitts has been a member of the Texans offensive line that has been the worst pass-blocking line in the NFL for the past four seasons. Last season, Football Prospectus attributed 40 of the quarterback sacks that QB David Carr endured directly to blown blocks of the offensive line, which was the highest number in the NFL among offensive lines. Pitts had six of those blown blocks for sacks, which was the second-most on the line (Todd Wade, who is no longer with the team, was the leader with eight). Pitts has also been one of the most-penalized offensive linemen in the NFL during his four years in the league.
Thus, from my vantage point, it does not seem strange at all that Pitts is competing for a starting job. In fact, it reflects progress that he is.