Rejoice! The seemingly unending National League Football pre-season is over!
It’s Year Six for the Houston Texans and the fourth annual preview of the Texans since this blog began back in 2004 (previous previews are here). Thankfully, this past off-season for the Texans was not as eventful as the off-season after Year Four:

After unexpectedly finishing the 2006 season with a couple of wins, the Texans are riding a wave of optimism into the 2007 season. Unfortunately, most of those optimists forget that the team looked deader than a doornail in the game before those final two wins;
After changing the management model of the football team during the off-season after the 2005 season, Texans owner Bob McNair and second-year coach Gary Kubiak changed the marquee player of the franchise, which was followed by the typical potshots that occur after such changes;
Does the Michael Vick affair provide some hope for the Texans’ draft strategy?; and
Texans owner Bob McNair — one of the truly good guys among NFL owners — was rated much more highly than his team.

So, is the optimism for the 2007 Texans justified? Well, in addressing that question, it’s helpful to review briefly the Texans’ tumultuous first five seasons. As noted in the pre-season review before last season, the Texans were the toast of the town for their first three seasons of existence in which the team and the local media trumpeted the party line that the organization was building a playoff contender “the right way” — i.e., through prudent drafting and development of young players while eschewing the temptation of short-term rewards provided by over-priced veterans who were on the downside of their careers. The progressively better won-loss records in the first three seasons (4-12, 5-11, and 7-9) — plus the drafting of young stars such as WR Andre Johnson, RB Dominack Davis and CB Dunta Robinson — seemed to indicate that the Texans’ plan was working.
Unfortunately, those progessively better won-loss records during the first three seasons camouflaged some big problems, such as the fact that the Texans entered each of their first four seasons with the same two core problems — the Texans’ offensive line could not protect the quarterback and the Texans’ defensive front could not apply adequate pressure on the opposing team’s QB. Although former Texans GM Charlie Casserly tried (remember the Texans’ flirtation with LT’s Tony Boselli and then Orlando Pace?), the Texans were never able to address those problem areas effectively. Ultimately, both Casserly and original Texans head coach Dom Capers were fired after the disastrous Year Four for their failure to solve those two core problems.

That miserable Year Four prompted McNair to blow up his management model and surprisingly hire Kubiak, who promptly made a whopper of a blunder in his first significant personnel decision as Texans’ coach — the decision to retain David Carr as the Texans QB. Inasmuch as a rank amateur such as me expressed doubts about Carr way back before Year Three, Kubiak’s decision to make a go of it with Carr was as bad as any of the dubious personnel decisions of the Casserly era. Not only did the Texans blow an $8 million option bonus paid to Carr after the 2005 season, Kubiak’s decision to retain Carr effectively negated an opportunity to dangle the No. 1 pick in the 2006 NFL draft in a trade that probably would have allowed the Texans to receive some much-needed value plus still draft one of the star QB’s in that draft, Matt Leinart, Jay Cutler, or Vince Young, the Houston and UT icon who won the 2006 NFL offensive Rookie of the Year Award and become the first rookie quarterback to play in the NFL Pro Bowl. Kubiak quickly soured on Carr during the early stages of Year Five, resulting in the Texans having one of the worst offenses in the NFL last season and arguably overpaying for new QB Matt Schaub over the past off-season.
But at least Kubiak is willing to admit his mistakes and take risks in making changes to improve his team. Over his first two seasons at the helm of the Texans, the offensive-minded Kubiak has continued a trend that started during the final two years of the Casserly-Capers regime of emphasizing development of the Texans’ defensive unit. If high draft picks CB Robinson, MLB DeMeco Ryans, DE Mario Williams and DT Amobi Okoye develop as charted, the Texans will have four Pro Bowl-level starters on their defensive unit within a couple of seasons of further seasoning. If the Texans can elevate the performance level of the personnel surrounding those potential stars, it’s not unreasonable to expect that the Texans could have a dominating NFL defense by about the 2009 season, give or take a season.
Nonetheless, the same level of optimism is not as reasonable for Kubiak’s area of expertise, the offense. Outside of the Schaub decision, almost every move that the Texans have made with regard to the offense reflects mediocrity. Although the conventional wisdom was that it would take at least a season for the Texans to adjust to Kubiak and offensive coordinator Mike Sherman’s offense, the Texans go into the 2007 season with seven different starters on offense than what the team trotted out for the 2006 opener, including new starters at QB, running back, left tackle (again!) and wide receiver.
An example of the dubious decision-making regarding offensive personnel is the signing of RB Ahman Green, formerly of Green Bay. Green was a great running back in his prime with the Pack, but he has averaged less than four yards per carry for the past two seasons. Inasmuch as the Texans agreed to pay Green $23 million over four years ($8 million guaranteed in the first season), the chances that the 30-year old Green will be worth the value of this contract this season are tenuous, at best. The chances of him still being worth the contract a couple of years from now are so speculative as to be off the charts. Similarly, the Texans’ problems at wide receiver behind Johnson are partially attributable to Kubiak prematurely giving up on an acceptable no. 2 WR, who is now flourishing with the Patriots.
Moreover, although Schaub has looked good in pre-season, his backup duty in Atlanta — a poor game against the Saints in 2004, a great game against the Patriots in 2005 and decent performance in mop-up duty during 2006 — is not dispositive proof that he is destined to become a high-caliber NFL QB. Staub has thrown only 161 passes during his NFL career, which is simply not a large enough sample size to predict much in terms of future performance. Schaub looks the part of a big-time QB, but so did Carr. Schaub will probably be better than Carr (it’s unimaginable that he could be worse), but it’s premature to anoint him just yet as the second coming of Warren Moon. Remember Rob Johnson?
Meanwhile, what about those two chronic problems that the Texans have faced each pre-season? Well, in terms of protecting the passer, it remains unclear whether the Texans have improved much from the 2006 unit. Staub appears to have better pocket presence than Carr, whose lack of same contributed to the incredible 272 sacks that he took over his five seasons in Houston. However, the Texans continue to rely on longtime linemen such as Chester Pitts, Seth McKinney and Fred Weary, none of whom have distinguished themselves as top flight offensive linemen. Add to that mediocrity the fact that the Texans still have not found a dominant left tackle and it becomes apparent quickly that Staub and Green better be prepared to take more than a few hard licks this season.
In terms of pressuring the passer, the Texans still have not solved the problem, but it appears that they are getting closer. Williams and Anthony Weaver were actually quite good last season against the run and in improving the pass rush, and first round draft choice Okoye should bolster the generally horrible defensive tackle play that the Texans endured for most of last season. MLB Ryans is also a first-rate talent, so the Texans are starting to accumulate the critical mass of talent up front that is necessary to generate an effective pass rush in the NFL. My question is whether that talent is sufficiently developed to create consistent havoc this season?
Thus, my bottom line is that the Texans offense will probably be slightly better than the defense this season, but that both units will still likely be below-league average in terms of performance. My sense is that the defense will soon overtake the offense in terms of becoming an above-league average unit in terms of performance, but that shift is more likely to occur next season and in following seasons as the talent around the nucleus of Ryans, Williams, Robinson and Okoye improves. As a result, I am placing the over-under on Texans wins this season at 7, which is one more than last season’s correct pre-season over-under prediction and one game better than last season’s 6-10 record.
The Texans first game will be reviewed in next Monday’s 2007 Weekly local football review. Meanwhile, the blooming of the sports blogosphere has finally reached the point this season that there really is no reason to endure the superficial cheerleading of the mainstream media in obtaining information about the Texans. The following blogs provide superior analysis of the Texans to most anything that you will find in the mainstream media:

Stephanie Stradley, who used to blog as the Chronicle’s Texans Chick, now provides an excellent blog on the Texans over at AOL Fanhouse;
Although not a blog, Warren DeLuca and the other writers at Houston Pro Football.com provide first-rate commentary on the Texans;
DGDB&D (for “Da Good, Da Bad & DeMeco”) is a clever new blog that characterizes itself as “a seemingly harmless Texans blog”;
Matt Loede chimes in with another new blog entitled Texans Gab;
Battle Red Blog is the blog on the Texans from the SB Nation family of blogs; and
Longtime Chronicle NFL columnist John McClain’s blog is here, although McClain increasingly tends to wander off on to topics other than the Texans.