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Houston Texans have no choice but to roll dice with Ryan Mallett?

By Kevin Parvizi

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Last offseason, the Houston Texans finally became the team to take the New England Patriots bait, trading for backup quarterback Ryan Mallett after he was displaced as Tom Brady‘s top clipboard-holder upon the drafting of Jimmy Garoppolo. A conditional sixth-round pick was enough for Rick Smith to pry Mallett away from Foxboro after the Patriots previously tried to sell high on the strong-armed QB, and Mallett did end up starting a couple of games before hitting the injured reserve with a pectoral injury.

Veteran quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick could be released after being a game manager who was propped up by elite weapons, so the Texans are left with Mallett and second-year project Tom Savage as the two quarterbacks on their roster. If they wanted to play it safe, they would re-sign Fitzpatrick or replace him with a different veteran QB who can function as a game manager.

According to Texans official site beat writer Drew Dougherty, Mallett will likely be the team’s starting quarterback in Week 1, and he won’t lack options around him with elite RB Arian Foster, a deep crop of tight ends that look ripe for a bounce-back, and the standout WR duo of DeAndre Hopkins and Andre Johnson.

Mallett doesn’t have the most impressive body of work through two NFL starts, failed to make an impression in the preseason during his time with the Patriots, and is a huge unknown who has decision-making and pocket awareness issues. These are all red flags, but Mallett knows the offense and has excellent tools.

It would make sense for the Texans to keep a more stable, experienced backup as a Plan B, but the Texans don’t have a choice but to roll with Mallett, and it’s hard to see them not re-signing him after making the move to trade for him last offseason.

We all know that the Texans hurt themselves by not taking a quarterback last year when given two opportunities to snag someone, but you can’t completely fault them for wanting to build at other positions and not being sold on what they saw. In a way, it’s unfortunate that they weren’t bad enough last season, because it prevents them from taking Marcus Mariota or Jameis Winston. They could snag a lesser QB like Brett Hundley, but if they aren’t sold on any of those quarterbacks, they won’t take that QB.

Outside of Mariota and Winston, no quarterback in this class can legitimately start as a rookie anyway, so even if the Texans want to add a better project than Savage, they’ll still be left with Mallett, Fitzpatrick, or someone else as their best option. As we saw last season, the Texans are good enough at every other position to the point where a poor game manager like Fitzpatrick can have some success. The issue is that Fitzpatrick isn’t good enough to lead this team to the playoffs, and they can’t be stuck in perpetual mediocrity.

Last year’s draft saw Teddy Bridgewater and Derek Carr plummet in stock, and the knocks against Bridgewater were ticky-tack at best. In order to land a top quarterback, a team generally has to pick high in the draft, though you can pick up a top QB like Bridgewater later on in the first if there are enough strong options at the position in that year’s draft class.

That isn’t the case in 2015 with just Winston and Mariota as sure-fire first-round prospects, even if players like Bryce Petty and Hundley are in the discussion. The Texans can’t feasibly start a rookie in 2015, so their best options are the top two quarterbacks on their roster.

Nov 23, 2014; Houston, TX, USA; Houston Texans quarterback Ryan Mallett (15) throws in the pocket against the Cincinnati Bengals at NRG Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Matthew Emmons-USA TODAY Sports

Everybody already knows who Fitzpatrick is at this stage of his career, and his mildly effective 2014 season is about the most you’ll get from him as a starter. He’s an ideal backup who can function as a stopgap for a team looking to snag a high pick in the following draft in order to nab a legit franchise QB, but the problem is that the Texans (with J.J. Watt, Kareem Jackson, and the aforementioned players on offense) were too good to snag that sort of a pick.

Mallett is a complete unknown at this point, and I’m not even going to try to project how he’ll play next season. But that’s the point of starting him. Bill O’Brien and the Houston Texans barely spent anything on him in that trade last offseason, but they acquired him for a reason.

They need to see what they have in him, because if he’s good, they might win more games than they did last season. If he sucks, they might lose more games than they did last season, which would put them in a better position to snag a new QB.

It’s incredibly difficult to find a franchise quarterback, especially in an offseason filled with low-quality options in free agency and just two top options in the draft (there were- at the time of the draft- four such players last year).

The Texans can’t afford to waste money on someone who won’t help them or a first-round pick on someone they don’t like (since you can set yourself years backwards by trying to develop the wrong guy after making a big investment) at the expense of missing out on someone who can help them elsewhere and make life easier for their real franchise QB.

The Texans can bench Mallett in-season with ease, assuming they add a safer veteran passer in free agency, and it will be interesting to see if they address the position at some point in the draft. But like Dougherty, I believe we’ll see Mallett starting in Week 1, and it will be interesting to see how long of a leash they give him. That depends on factors inside the organization such as owner satisfaction, but I’m assuming the Texans are on the same page when it comes to the team-building process.

Next: Texans must keep K-Jax

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