David Carr: "You Really Need The Perfect [Situation] If You're Going To Succeed As A [Franchise] Quarterback"

ESPN's Jeffri Chadiha penned a ditty about the difficulty in finding and developing franchise quarterbacks. Naturally, when one is researching the subject of franchise quarterbacks, it follows that the author would ask David Carr what he thinks.

Wait a second...that doesn't follow at all. Well, at least Chadiha didn't ask Charley Casserly to contribute his ideas on the subject without any trace of irony.

Wait, he did?

Somewhere, Akili Smith stares at a phone that doesn't ring and curses the name of Jeffri Chadiha. Then he probably gets back to watching "The Steve Wilkos Show."

Anyway, back to the first "franchise quarterback" your Houston Texans ever had. I realize I cannot take anything Zoolander says without immediately reacting with scorn. I accept that. Nevertheless:

"You really need the perfect [situation] if you're going to succeed as a [franchise] quarterback," said Carr, who is now a backup with the New York Giants. "You need a good offensive line, weapons around you and a playcaller who knows what you do well. If you have success early, you get time. If you don't, then your time is limited."

So in order to succeed as a franchise quarterback, Carr postulates that said quarterback must have (1) a good offensive line; (2) talent at the skill positions; and (3) a coordinator/playcaller who tailors the offense to the QB's strengths. Oh, that's all? No concubines fanning you with palm fronds? I hope NFL teams are taking note of Dr. Carr's spartan commandments for success as a quarterback in the NFL. GMs of the NFL, should you not have these three (3) little things in place when you acquire your quarterback, the inevitable failure of that QB is your own fault. You didn't give him what he needed to succeed.

Carr expands upon the rough time he had in Houston:

Carr went through his own misery during five years in Houston. Along with being constantly battered behind a lousy offensive line, he watched his support dwindle the more the Texans kept losing. The clock started ticking on Carr when offensive coordinator Chris Palmer approached him at halftime of an early-season loss to Pittsburgh in 2005 and said he'd likely be fired. By the end of that season, head coach Dom Capers had been dumped as well, with Casserly being ushered out a few months later.

Such a mass exodus is the major indication that a franchise is preparing to jettison its quarterback.

"They had fired the whole staff by my fourth season," said Carr. "Everybody was gone so they were running out of people to blame. That's the progression. First it's the coordinator. Then it's the head coach. And finally it's the quarterback."

Most quarterbacks who have been through that experience will acknowledge that it doesn't lead to improved play.

"At that point, you start pressing to make more plays," Carr continued. "You weren't chosen by the guy who's the head coach and it's one of those deals where you find yourself feeling like you need to have success immediately. You do start putting more stress on yourself."

There's so much wrong with that preceding passage that I could spend another 5,000 words dissecting it. In lieu of that and the surefire aneurysm it would give me, I just want all of us to soak in the notion that David Carr--a man who was given five seasons in Houston to demonstrate that he should be a starting QB in the NFL and then another opportunity the year after that to start in Carolina--seems to be suggesting he was unfairly scapegoated for the Houston Texans' struggles from 2002-2006, presumably as evidenced by his release in March of 2007.

That just happened.

Let's turn to Charley Casserly to tie it all together and bring it home, shall we?

"It really comes down to when the player stops improving," said NFL Network analyst Charley Casserly, who was a general manager for both the Washington Redskins and Houston Texans. "That's a hard thing to judge because there's a lot of thought that goes into picking these guys. You have a body of work that was assembled to make the selection, and egos do get involved. But if you get to the second and third year and you're still seeing the same mistakes, that's when you get concerned."

In light of what we saw in Houston during the Casserly Era, I love that last sentence so much that I want to slow dance with it while Sade plays in the background. Charley Casserly just said you get concerned when you get to the second and third year and you're still seeing the same mistakes. The guy who drafted David Carr and continued to sell him as a franchise QB until he was run out of town after YEAR FIVE said that. I feel lightheaded.

I'm off to write some sensitive poetry about how much I love Matt Schaub. Yours in the Comments.