That was the question that one of my sons asked me incredulously yesterday. With the Texans generating no positive buzz in their hometown, not many folks really care much about watching or talking about the Texans. Thus, casual fans such as my son are surprised that the team is still playing.
The game today against the Colts will likely be one of the final chapters of the David Carr saga in Houston. The Texans made a mistake in using the franchise’s first draft choice and the first overall draft pick in the 2002 NFL Draft on Carr at a time in which the team should have been stockpiling draft picks and players to build depth at all positions. The Texans compounded that mistake by not building a competent offensive line to protect Carr, which resulted in Carr being hit more than a punching bag by opposing defenses. As a result, Carr never developed the pocket presence or recognition skills in reading opposing defenses to succeed as an NFL quarterback. With his development in those areas stunted, he is no longer the Texans QB of the future and frankly, needs to go to a team that has a competent offensive line so that he can attempt to salvage his NFL career.
Carr’s defenders often point out that his NFL passing rating is really not all that bad, currently 13th among the 32 starting NFL QB’s. However, as with batting average in baseball, the NFL passing rating is a highly misleading standard to evaluate QB’s. As noted several times earlier, the folks over at the Wages of Wins have developed a far superior statistical model for for evaluating QB’s and, based on that standard, the bottom has really fallen out of Carr’s season. After meandering around 20th among the 32 starting NFL QB’s for most of the season, Carr has slid to 29th among the 32 starting NFL QB’s for the season, including individual week rankings of 31st and 34th (a couple of backups also played that week) over two of the past three weeks.
As noted earlier, Carr is a fine young man, so it’s too bad that it has not worked out for him in Houston. However, Saints QB Drew Brees is one of the top-ranked QB’s in the NFL this season and he is essentially a contemporary of Carr (Brees is in his sixth season, Carr is in his fifth) who was placed in a similarly difficult position with his initial team as Carr was here. The bottom line is that Brees developed while Carr has not. In the dog-eat-dog world of the NFL, that lack of development will be what buys Carr a ticket out of Houston.