Nick Caserio and “Competition”

Earlier today, Mrs. bfd and I were unwrapping a new mattress. Exciting! Or not.

I started pulling the tape off the plastic packaging, and she ran to get a knife to cut the tape off. In the end, it was a dead tie, but we both laughed about how competitive even that was (after 27 years of marriage!).

This lovely moment is something Nick Caserio would have salivated over. Caserio’s strategy to improve the Houston Texans was to increase competition. As Rivers McCown recently wrote, “Competition is what happens when you lack established talent and aren’t interested in creating it,” cutting plastic packaging or not.

It’s almost as if Nick Caserio has never been around professional athletes or he didn’t respect them enough to understand them. I do not say this lightly.

After all these years, I have seen two Texans who didn’t compete consistently. They are Brooks Reed and Tim “Curtains” Dobbins. That’s it. That’s my list.

Everybody else has competed on (basically) every snap. Simply put, you cannot reach the elite level of the NFL without being an immensely intensive competitor. It’s really not possible.

Just because Caserio is creating a scenario of competition is meaningless, empty, and stupid. No 28 year old linebacker on his fifth team is suddenly going to become better because of competition.

But what Caserio DID do was sign a bunch of players with a 60 rating in Madden and expect that competition will make them better football players. It won’t. All of these fringe guys have been giving their all for years. Coming to Houston changes nothing.

Creating competition is no better as a strategy than finding tough, smart, and dependable players. Ultimately, talent is the difference between the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The Texans lost both their best offensive and defensive player this offseason. The team needs talent, not competition.