While other NFL teams got significantly better through free agency, the Houston Texans let solid players leave, slowly bleeding talent in the stolid wait for a quarterback.
NFL Spin Zone’s own Randy Gurzi may be right when calling for the Houston Texans to stop playing chicken and simply trade for quarterback Tony Romo. Across the NFL everyone waits to see if the Texans will ultimately make that move and bring in the quarterback with Super Bowl aspirations.
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That move may be the only thing that could save 2017 free agency for the Texans. Barring the (once thought inevitable) release of Romo by the Cowboys, the Texans are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Despite making one of the better moves in free agency by trading away dead-weight quarterback Brock Osweiler, the Texans have done little else. That move was even made with an eye on freeing up cap space for a player like Romo. Yet the wait continues and, as noted by Aaron Wilson of the Houston Chronicle, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones wants the most compensation he can get for his four-time Pro Bowl quarterback. Meanwhile, the Texans are left in the lurch.
While the Texans wait on Romo, the rest of the NFL—especially the AFC South—is getting better. The Texans are the only team not to have signed an outside free agent thus far.
The range of Texans signings to this point has been disappointing. Bringing back specialists Shane Lechler and Nick Novak are the headliners for a small group of re-signings that, with the exception of one, all took place before the new league year opened on March 9. Since then, the Texans have signed nobody from outside. Not one player. Meanwhile, the rest of the NFL has cannibalized some of the more promising talent on the team.
2016’s 13-game starting safety Quintin Demps is now with the Chicago Bears. 11-game starting cornerback A.J. Bouye signed with the Jacksonville Jaguars, bolstering a division rival against the quarterback-less Texans. Five-game starting linebacker John Simon is now with the division rival Indianapolis Colts. The Texans also lost guard Oday Aboushi and fullback Soma Vainuku.
And all the Texans have managed to do to stop the bleeding is re-sign tight end Ryan Griffin (the second-most productive tight end on the team). And the waiting continues.
For want of a quarterback, the Texans have been willing to let other parts of the team literally fall by the wayside and, worse, move into positions to hurt the Texans. Bouye and Simon are going to see the Texans twice this coming season and both helped craft the legendary Houston defense. Both can prey on a team like the Texans that doesn’t have a competent quarterback.
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Houston painted itself into a corner with the Osweiler deal the year before. They bet on the unproven quarterback to be everything they could hope for and the that turned out to be a bad bet. Instead, they’re stuck in tough situation, waiting in vain for a lifetime Cowboys quarterback to be set free. And that breakup will only happen on the whim of the Cowboys, which, as stated by ESPN’s Kevin Seifert, “Put simply, they don’t need to.”
And still the Houston Texans bleed.