In mid-December of last year, with two games to play in the 2006 NFL season, the Texans looked deader than a doornail and not like a particularly well-coached team. The Texans closed the season by upsetting the Colts and beating a bad Browns team to finish with a 6-10 record.
After wins against a bad Chiefs team and a decent Carolina team to open the 2007 season, one of the Texans’ leading cheerleaders — Chronicle columnist John McClain — is acting as if the Texans game today with the Colts is a playoff game. In this breathless piece, McClain is ready to anoint Texans head coach Gary Kubiak as the next Vince Lombardi or Bill Walsh:

In 2000 and 2005, I sat in Denver coach Mike Shanahan’s office at the team’s practice facility and the subject of conversation was the same each time.
I asked Shanahan what he thought about his offensive coordinator as a head coaching candidate. On both occasions, Shanahan responded like a Washington power broker pushing a candidate for national office.
“I’m telling you, Gary’s going to make a great head coach, and teams that pass him up are going to regret it,” Shanahan said of Gary Kubiak. “I know what I’m talking about. I’ve watched him at every level. I’ve been around him since 1984.” [. . .]
“Gary communicates well with his players and coaches. He knows how to get a point across. He’s demanding. He’s tough when he needs to be. Players want to play for him because they respect him. If a team has an opening, and they don’t go after Gary, they’re making a big mistake.”
Shanahan was right.
Texans owner Bob McNair passed up Kubiak as the franchise’s first coach. He didn’t want to make that mistake again.
McNair hired Kubiak for Sundays like this one. And Kubiak came back home for weekends like this.

See Richard Justice’s equally breathless column about the Texans here. This reminds me of the similar columns that McClain and Justice often wrote about Texans GM Charlie Casserly and head coach Dom Capers before the Texans’ disastrous 2-14 record in Year 4 of the franchise. Maybe McClain is right about Kubiak. I hope he is. But at least make him earn the accolades first.