What To Do At FB?

Bet you thought that fullback wasn't "sexy" enough for me to evaluate.  Well, like the girl that gets more attractive with every beer, the idea of doing it got more intriguing with each passing minute.  Plus, I'll be damned if I'm going to miss an opportunity to again link to Jon Abbate's story.  So here's Part IV of the "What To Do" series...

Your Houston Texans currently boast the following gentlemen at fullback:

1.  Vonta Leach
   
2.  Jameel Cook
   
3.  Jon Abbate

I have to be candid here.  During the 2006-07 season, Jameel Cook made me question the existence of a kind and benevolent creator with his wretched habit of coughing up the ball like Doc Holliday coughed up blood.  That, coupled with Vonta Leach's emergence, has relegated Cook to becoming almost exclusively a special teams player.  In defense of Cook, he seems like he's almost always the first one down the field on kickoffs; the dude is a helluva gunner.  Unfortunately, in today's NFL, where the salary cap is king and injuries limit the number of specialists a team can have, it's tremendously tough to reconcile paying more than a million cap dollars for someone whose role has morphed into almost strictly a special teams contributor, particularly when cheap alternatives (e.g., a healthy Jon Abbate) abound.  Special teams talent or not, I do not think Jameel Cook is a Texan come September.

That would leave Houston with two (2) FBs, one of whom (Abbate) would likely be tapped to fill Cook's role on coverage teams.  And there's always the possibility that one of the RBs who gets squeezed out of that rotation gets bumped to FB.  Perhaps a bulked up Chris Taylor?

In the final analysis, I think the Texans are in good shape at FB.  Not that it's typically a draft focus for any team, but I do not see a scenario where Smithiak goes FB in April or even in the free agent market.  Now if we could just convince Kubes to stop lining Vonta Leach up out wide, we'd be in business.