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It's early May. The NFL Draft has come and gone. Training camp is still a couple months away. What shall fans and analysts do during the interim? Why, wildly speculate what their team's offseason performance means for the following season, of course!
It is with that warning that I bring you Jason La Canfora's latest, in which the scribe predicts what'll happen for six (6) NFL quarterbacks and the teams that have chosen to employ them in 2016. Here's what he wrote about your Houston Texans and their new signal-caller, Brock Osweiler.
Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. The Texans play a pretty big-boy schedule this year -- tends to happen the year after you win the division -- and expectations are high.
This can't be a situation like a year ago with the coach having the quickest QB hook in the history of the NFL. This is Brock's team. He's the guy (even if the head coach sounded ambivalent at best about that prospect in the intro press conference and never even met the kid before the owner had stuffed $40 million into the QB's pocket).
So, yeah, fair to say I am less than convinced this is the answer to the Texans' lingering QB problem. Coach Bill O'Brien will have to stick with him, but after drafting more weapons on offense there won't be any excuses here. While Houston's defense made strides in the second half of last season, this isn't the 2015 Broncos defense.
Playing in the AFC South would generally make things much easier for Osweiler, only that division might actually be halfway decent this year, too.
My crystal ball says: There will be some tears and disappointment here. And I have a hunch that this ends up being only a two-year, $38 million deal that leaves a fair amount of carnage in its wake.
It's perfectly fine to be skeptical of Osweiler. It's not like there aren't plenty of legitimate questions about whether he will successfully make the leap to franchise quarterback. Evidently, La Canfora subscribes to the school of thought that Osweiler's time in Houston will not be particularly fruitful or lengthy.
To say Bill O'Brien was "ambivalent at best" at Osweiler's introductory press conference, however, is fairly far removed from what I recall seeing. Not that O'Brien's calling for Canton to start casting the bust for his new quarterback, but I never got the impression O'Brien wasn't fully on board with the move. What say you about that assessment? Or La Canfora's dismissal of the Texans' defense? Or his dramatic decree that tears, disappointment, and carnage are in store for the fan base over the next two years?