- 2 days ago
Seth and Sean get to work assessing what the biggest "what if" is in the Texans' history.
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00:00Clayton Anderson, HTX Sports, he's a good Twitter follow,
00:04at Clay underscore HTX Sports.
00:07And there was a tweet somebody put up,
00:10who's the biggest what-if player in your team's history?
00:13And Clayton retweeted it and said, I have a few.
00:17So he lists them as players.
00:19The question is, who's the biggest what-if player?
00:21But I just generalized it and said just the biggest what-ifs.
00:24I agree with his number one for the Texans, Seth.
00:27If Matt Schaub doesn't get hurt in the 2011 season,
00:31I think the Texans, I certainly think they've made an AFC title game,
00:35and they might have made it to a Super Bowl by now if he doesn't get hurt.
00:39I mean, they made it to a competitive divisional round game on the road in Baltimore
00:46with rookie T.J. Yates at quarterback that season.
00:50I think they still had a chance in that game, except they moved away from,
00:53I think later Arian Foster would explain that he had an injury,
00:56but they moved away from the run game when the run game was actually working.
00:59They were certain, but with Matt Schaub in there,
01:02it wouldn't have been as big a factor, obviously.
01:04Right, right.
01:04I think that's probably the first thing that, for long-time Texans fans,
01:08I'm guessing that's probably the biggest if that pops up.
01:11That's when it felt like it was most within reach,
01:14and everything was just, you were firing on all cylinders,
01:17and just that one simple thing of an injury to your quarterback,
01:22which is a big thing that can disrupt all of that.
01:24Well, it was huge, and keep in mind, T.J. was the third-string quarterback.
01:28Matt Leinert was on that team and came in the week after Matt Schaub got hurt.
01:33They were in Jacksonville the following week,
01:35and then Leinert breaks his collarbone, I think, the first half of that game.
01:38So Leinert, which is unfortunate, that's probably one of the biggest what-ifs
01:43in Matt Leinert's career or life, is if, man,
01:46what if I don't get hurt in that Jacksonville game?
01:49I mean, Matt Leinert had the keys at that point to one of the best offenses in football,
01:54and certainly one of the best built offenses in football.
01:57You had Andre Johnson and Kevin Walter as your wide receivers.
02:00You had Owen Daniels at tight end.
02:02You had an offensive line that was durable, played together for a few years already,
02:07very good players, perfect players for what Kubiak wanted to do.
02:11And you had Arian Foster, who I think peak Arian Foster, which it was in 2011,
02:17was a top three or four running back in football at that time.
02:20Peak Arian Foster is one of the best running backs I've ever seen play.
02:23He just couldn't stay healthy.
02:26And, boy, that's –
02:27You think for Leinert, just personally, if he comes in there and just pulls off a few good –
02:31like just man the ship, look good, you're in a great circumstance,
02:35he might have gotten an opportunity somewhere else to be a starter.
02:38Yeah, he might have been able to Nick Foles his way to a deep playoff run.
02:41Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
02:42Yeah, I mean, that was a well –
02:43T.J. Yates, again, T.J. Yates, a fifth-round rookie,
02:47got them to a point where an interception he threw into the end zone
02:52at the end of that Baltimore game is how that game ended, 20-13.
02:55Yeah.
02:56You know, so – and that was not a – you know, that wasn't a peak-level Patriots.
02:59See, I think the Patriots ended up going to the Super Bowl out of the AFC that year,
03:03but that wasn't a – that was a post-Randy Moss Patriots team.
03:06That wasn't a great Patriots team.
03:07So, yeah, that for me is the biggest what-if
03:11and the different tentacles of different players.
03:13How does Matt Schaub's – if Matt Schaub stays healthy,
03:16how does his legacy change if he's with that team?
03:19Because he was never – he was good again in 2012,
03:23but it fell off a cliff pretty quickly for him in 2012.
03:25And I don't know how much of that had to do with whatever went on with his foot.
03:29But number two Clayton has here is with Deshaun Watson,
03:33what if the Texans weren't in turmoil as an organization before his trade request in 2021?
03:41That's a great – okay, so with all of that, then, you know,
03:46obviously the question is, yeah, what if in 2020 they – or in 2000 – okay.
03:53Okay, so if the Texans are – he's saying if they were really good in 2020.
03:58Yeah, yeah, they were – yeah, they weren't in turmoil, right.
04:00That – yeah, in – you know what, in my mind,
04:03I always associate a trade request with 2020 because it happened immediately after that season.
04:07Yeah.
04:08But if they'd actually been a good team, but then later the allegations would emerge.
04:15Yeah.
04:16That – how do the – like, okay, it's easy to be – it's easy to take the moral high
04:20ground
04:21when everything's a disaster already anyway.
04:24What's the – what's the response and how do you operate if things are actually going really well on a
04:29football team?
04:30Yeah, because he was good in 2020.
04:32Yeah, he doesn't request – because you went – you went and did the dateline on this whole thing.
04:37Yeah, I kind of – because in my mind, I – look at my feeling on a lot of the
04:41Deshaun Watson allegations
04:43and what might have changed in Deshaun Watson's life was that, man, it started with COVID.
04:49And so I went to fact check myself this morning.
04:52And of the – of the couple of dozen allegations where they've disclosed the dates –
05:00Yeah.
05:01There's only one that happened before March of 2020, the dates of the allegations.
05:07Okay.
05:07Not when they made the allegations, but the date – sorry, the dates of the incidents.
05:11The incidents, right.
05:11In the allegations.
05:12So whether they made the allegation in 2020 or 2021 or 2022, the incidents, all of them except one,
05:20were from March of 2020 when the COVID shutdown started and beyond.
05:25And, like, it feels like whatever he was doing seemed to really, really start and accelerate then.
05:35There was one allegation from 2019.
05:37Every other one, the incidents were all 2020 or later.
05:40Yeah.
05:40That, I don't know.
05:41There's something that – something changed with the COVID shutdowns with Deshaun.
05:46And so we've got to keep in mind the timeline of all that.
05:49So the COVID shutdown happens, and that's when these alleged incidents are all occurring.
05:54Yeah.
05:54And in September of 2020 is when he gets the big contract.
05:58So we're six months into the pandemic.
06:00He gets the big contract.
06:01They go on to have a terrible season.
06:03Bill O'Brien gets fired four games in.
06:06But Deshaun individually has a phenomenal season.
06:09He leads the league in passing yards.
06:10You know, J.J. comes up to him at the end of the last game and says, we wasted a
06:14year of your prime.
06:15I mean, Deshaun – when Deshaun made the trade request official in January, right around the time David Cully was
06:21announced as the new head coach,
06:23this city was on Deshaun's side in that whole thing.
06:26Like, they were like, I get it.
06:28This is an organization that's in turmoil.
06:30But had they not been in turmoil, had they been a good organization, does Deshaun – and Deshaun doesn't request
06:36a trade, and yet all those incidents come out.
06:39That would have been fascinating to see.
06:41And honestly, looking at the list of alleged incidents, like, other than the one in fall of 2019, it's just
06:50the – it's the frequency and the different locations and the different people where he,
06:54at the very least, we know for sure, like, it's verified, yeah, he was having a different massage therapist at
06:59this different place or whatever.
07:01Yeah.
07:01I mean, it's just so – it's so much to see this all laid out.
07:05Because I had – it's been a long time since I looked at – I had always been looking at
07:08the allegations and the plaintiffs and everything.
07:10But to see it laid out by incident, just the frequency of different massages he was having by different people
07:17in different places from March through December and January of – March of 2020 and January of 2021 is incredible.
07:26These are the ones that came forward.
07:28Right, right, yeah, yes, yes, yes.
07:31These aren't the only ones, I would imagine, you know?
07:34Yeah.
07:34Yeah, it's crazy.
07:35So Deshaun Watson, he has his number two.
07:37Number three, J.J. Watt.
07:38This is a pretty simple one.
07:39And what if – what if he doesn't suffer multiple years' worth of season-ending injuries in his prime in
07:45Houston?
07:45That's always an interesting one for me with J.J.
07:48because people will cite his regimen as a reason for two things.
07:55One, a big reason he won three Defensive Player of the Year awards in four years and put up numbers,
08:00ungodly numbers, in terms of sacks and TFLs.
08:04It's also, a lot of people think, the cause for why his body started breaking down.
08:08Yeah, it's just like how extreme his workouts were and everything else, you know, and maybe the injuries he played
08:15through, you know, how that screws up the whole anatomical change.
08:19Yeah.
08:19That's a – yeah, and that's one thing that you can never, you know, you can never go back and
08:22do that experiment again.
08:24If J.J. had, like, been more joint-friendly and conservative in his workouts in the offseason, would he still
08:29have been the same player?
08:30Who knows?
08:31Yeah.
08:32Has he ever commented on that?
08:33I don't know if anybody –
08:35I believe so.
08:36Yeah.
08:38If we ever talk to him, we'll have to ask him about that.
08:40Yeah.
08:40Well, I think that – I'm trying to remember – I think in conversations with T.J. and Derek that
08:47I think that was a little bit of – I think that's when he spoke about it publicly.
08:50Yeah.
08:51I'm trying to think of, like, when he's publicly spoken about it.
08:53Yeah, yeah.
08:54I'm pretty sure he spoke about just – yeah, having – like, the conversation with T.J. about, like, hey,
08:58all right, man, there's – there's – you got to – so you got to kind of be sure you're
09:02– you're not going –
09:03In my mind, what I always try to remind myself or tell guys is, like, okay, are you doing this
09:07for your career or your ego?
09:10Right.
09:10You know, like, it's certain there's comes a point in the weight room where, all right, like, more weight doesn't
09:15actually make me a better football player, but it sure does help me say I benched 550 pounds.
09:20Oh, yeah, yeah.
09:21Pull up.
09:22Yeah, for sure.
09:24Okay, Derwin says, what if we had done in intervention with Deshaun when the video of him and Mia Khalifa
09:29was posted early in his career?
09:31Yeah, where he was – looked like he was playing basketball, like doorstop basketball with Mia Khalifa, the adult film
09:38actress.
09:39Right, right.
09:39That's all they were doing was just playing a little Nerf hoop in her living room on the videos.
09:44Nothing to see here.
09:45Nothing to see there, yeah.
09:46No, why would he need an intervention, Derwin?
09:48What are you talking about?
09:48Did he not have good form on his Nerf jump shot?
09:51Remember, Mia Khalifa was doing that thing where she would kind of enter people's DMs and then expose, like, hey,
09:58look at this guy who's DMing me or whatever, yeah.
10:01She did it with a lot of – wasn't she doing it like – she was doing it with sports
10:04radio people.
10:05Was she?
10:05Because I think a few guys, yes.
10:07Oh, crap.
10:08I'm just joking.
10:12I was like, whenever any woman I don't know tries to, like, comes into my DMs with anything other than
10:19strictly sports content, that is a – that's an instant block for me.
10:25Auto-delete and block.
10:26Yeah, I'm like, I'm not – nope, nothing, not even a polite – sorry, I don't know if this is
10:31what you're looking for.
10:32You and me both.
10:32You and me both, brother.
10:34What if – okay, a lot of Texan fans have this one, I think.
10:37What if – we're doing the biggest what ifs in Texans history.
10:40What if Kubiak would have agreed to go after Peyton Manning instead of extending Matt Schaub?
10:45Oh, that's a big – that's a huge one.
10:47It's a big one, man.
10:48Yeah.
10:48That's a big one.
10:49Yep, yep.
10:50I give Kubiak a pass on that just because I think people forget that Peyton Manning at that point still
10:55could barely throw a football.
10:56Couldn't feel his fingers, right?
10:58And he's coming off of a major neck injury, yeah.
11:00Yeah.
11:00And I just – I get – I get where Kubiak was coming from on that one.
11:06Yeah, in hindsight, it looks idiotic, but there was – there was still a lot of questions whether Peyton Manning
11:13would ever – not just be a good football player,
11:15but whether he's even going to make it through a season.
11:17Yeah, I don't remember getting super upset about it at the time, so I have a hard time getting upset
11:20about it, you know, 10 years later.
11:22Upset to where I blame people for things.
11:25I wonder if people in – how do people in Indianapolis feel about that now where – because Andrew Luck
11:30ended up being a really good NFL quarterback,
11:31but he also quit football and never got them a Super Bowl.
11:35Do you think they're still – do you think they were mad at Ursa while he was still alive about
11:40that or more mad at Ballard for driving Andrew Luck out of football?
11:44Well, it's – oh, yeah, okay, yeah, because Grigson was the one that was there.
11:49Like, Grigson would have been the GM that was part of the whole decision-making to move on from Peyton
11:53and then go with Andrew Luck.
11:56But you're right, Ballard was the one who couldn't keep Andrew Luck healthy.
12:00Yeah.
12:00You know, he – even though I feel like they've had a good offensive line, I don't know.
12:04Andrew Luck –
12:04Well, a lot of it with Luck was that he had coordinators and then Luck himself was just –
12:09Stylistically.
12:10Luck, as smart as he was, was kind of dumb about holding on to the ball too long.
12:14Yep.
12:14Yeah, it was like – there was that part of Luck's game where it was like, all right – and
12:18this is what happens really – it's really annoying with the book smart people.
12:22This is how Ryan Fitzpatrick was early in his career.
12:24Yeah.
12:24There's a point where you've got to say, listen, man, you're not as smart as you think you are.
12:27Yeah.
12:27Like, okay, these other guys, these defensive backs you're playing against, they understand that you think you're smarter than they
12:33are.
12:34Right.
12:34And they're gaming you for it.
12:35And Fitzpatrick figured out that's what they were doing.
12:37I think with Luck, there was a little bit of just him being – him being a little too brazen
12:41and just – and doing dumb things by hanging on to the ball too long.
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