This past Sunday’s edition of the Chronicle marked the beginning of what is arguably the most mind-numbing portion of the sporting year — the five-week period of media coverage of football practice prior to the start of the National Football League season in the second week of September.
Putting aside for a moment his delusions that the Stros actually have a legitimate chance of making the National League playoffs this season when 3/5th’s of their starting rotation are well-below NL-average pitchers, the Chron’s Richard Justice dusts off his Texans’ cheerleading garb and lays this piece of fluff on us:
At least we’ve gotten beyond the basic issues that smothered the Texans for so long. There should be few questions about the coach or general manager. Gary Kubiak and Rick Smith have done their jobs well.
They inherited a 2-14 mess three years ago and rebuilt it breathtakingly fast. To go from 2-14 to 8-8 in two off-seasons is an amazing accomplishment.
Of course, this is the same Richard Justice who was saying the following just last October (2008):
Wouldn’t you love Bob McNair to start holding people accountable? Wouldn’t you love it if he acted like he cares as much as all those people who write the newspaper and phone the talk shows?
Do you think he understands he’s why this football team stinks? In the end, he’s the guy in charge and every stinking loss starts with him. [. . .]
Coaching isn’t just drawing up a running play that works. Coaching is instilling the right mindset in a team.
It’s getting players to understand what’s important. Don’t think for a moment the Texans don’t care. They do.
Rosenfels cares. Chester Pitts and Ephraim Salaam and DeMeco Ryans and Johnson care.
Those mistakes aren’t a statement about how much they care. They’re a reflection that somewhere along the way, this organization has gotten way off track.
If it was one game, or one series of mistakes, that would be one thing. This is year after year of mistakes, of figuring out different ways to write the same ending.
In fact, what Justice is saying about the Texans now is quite similar to what he was saying about the Texans under the Casserly-Capers regime immediately before the disastrous 2-14 season in 2004:
The Texans have made good use of their honeymoon. They’ve drafted wisely and spent shrewdly on free agents. They’ve assembled a front office admired around the NFL. Their players seem to be quality people. [. . .]
The danger for them is that their greatest strength could become their greatest weakness. They’ve done so many things right and have built such a model operation that it’s impossible not to put expectations on a fast track. [. . .]
So far, it’s impossible not to be impressed with what the Texans have done. They are run as efficiently as any sports franchise I’ve ever been around.
Just before the start of training camp, Casserly gathered his employees and thanked them for all their hard work. Then he went down the list of different departments and explained some little thing each had done that made the team – and the organization – better.
That’s the kind of thing the people who run sports franchises almost never do, and it left every person who was mentioned proud to be associated with the Texans.[. . .]
Capers believes it’s vital to emphasize doing things right because "if you ever slip, you can never get it back."
So far, the Texans haven’t slipped in any significant way.
Meanwhile, the blogosphere continues to bail the Chronicle out. Stephanie Stradley, who pens the Texans Chick blog for the Chronicle, has just completed a series of blog posts (the first one is here and the final one with links to the other four posts is here) that provides more astute analysis of good information on the Texans than anything that I’ve ever read by the Chronicle sports staff. Another Chron blogger, Lance Zierlein, also does a better job of analyzing the NFL than any of the Chron sportswriters.
Given Stradley’s competence in regard to professional football, guess what Justice thinks of her?
It’s going to be a long NFL pre-season.