If you're a big enough football fan to read this blog regularly, you probably watched the championship games yesterday. If you're like me, you were just hoping for entertaining games unless you had an axe to grind with one or two of the teams left. It was extremely hard to get invested in what was going on, because I could not, at the end of the day, care less who won. Of course the media writers for the Houston Texans spent most of the weekend making connections and comparisons to the remaining four teams. We as a fan base are not alone in this; if you start reading the media from the other 27 markets that have eliminated teams, I'll bet you see similar articles.
I tend to dive head-first into the draft season at this time of year because of not having a horse in the race, but this year is especially bad. I get it that the Texans sucked last year. I get it that Kubiak probably should have been fired. I get it that you think the Texans are a fatally flawed because of Rick Smith, Bob McNair or whomever. In the end, sports and the media that covers it is an entertainment business. I don't know about you, but while the aforementioned messages might be right, I find it incredibly boring by this point. Let's see what draft fodder I can find to distract myself and possibly you as well, after the jump.
I've chosen to ignore most of the Houston mainstream media today because of the same trend that I spoke of above. If you really feel like reading such ridiculous, seething sarcasm towards the Texans from Richard Justice that is so useless it shouldn't classify as journalism, have at it. Unfortunately, he's not in any danger of losing his job, but all the same I won't link it and give him hits. One Chronicle article I had to link, however, was Jerome Solomon's take that Houston could take Atlanta as the worst sports town. For one thing, I like Solomon, but otherwise I had to laugh because it's almost as if Jerome was trying to get Kerns to finally step off the edge. Mike, I don't suggest clicking on this link.
This last Saturday, the annual East-West Shrine Game was held. A few prospects certainly helped their stock for the draft in April, and Alan Burge has a list of the ten players that did so the most in his opinion. Burge also gave his case for Mike Mayock as the best draft analyst in the business to coincide with Mayock listing his top five prospects at each position. For further information on Mayock's top fives, I'll have something up in a few hours with my thoughts on his rankings.
This week Mobile, Alabama will become the epicenter of draft talk, as players will practice for and eventually play in the Senior Bowl on Saturday. Ryan McCrystal from Draft Ace Blog breaks down the five most interesting position battles going into this week. SB Nation's own Mocking Dan details his five most thought-provoking story lines as well as the ten most intriguing players invited to the game.
Mock drafts are starting to pick up in their frequency, and will continue to do so until reaching a crescendo in late April. Here's one from Draft Breakdown, and another from Draft Ace. It's interesting to note that both have Bowers at 1, but both also have Cam Newton going third to Buffalo. Daniel Charles also breaks down a mock he saw from Draft Tek complete with rationale why the mock is wrong for the Texans.
Finally, Will Shepherd discusses why the Texans shouldn't be considered out of the race to land unrestricted free agent corner Nnamdi Asomugha.