The Pecan Park Eagle

Yesterday, the Houston Texans surrendered their 2014 Super Bowl dreams via the 41-28 final score whipping they took in the Divisional Round of the AFC/NFL Playoffs in Foxboro, Massachusetts at the hands of the eternally pesky and vastly superior New England Patriots. Since I’m a baseball guy, football only grabs my “center field attention” this time of year, but having read and listened to all the football pundits. I have learned by their examples that ignorance should not deter anyone from speaking out on why football teams win and lose. What follows briefly is what I think happened to the Texans, anyway, … in baseball terms.

Why the Texans Lost (in baseball terms) …

1) The E.R.A. Factor. To be a successful quarterback in the NFL, a guy has to have what we call in baseball an E.R.A. Only in football, E.R.A. doesn’t stand for “earned run average.” It stands for “earnest running ability.” QB Matt Schaub of the Texans has an E.R.A. of 1.00. On a scale of 1 to 10, with “10” being best, young Colin Kaepernick of the San Francisco 49ers has a football QB E.R.A. of something close to 9.00.

2) The Branch Rickey Factor. Baseball wise man Branch Rickey used to say that the best time to change out a good player was not the season after he’s had his best year, but the year before he reaches his peak. It’s too late for the Texans to apply that baseball philosophy to QB Matt Schaub. The Texans need to either give Taxi Squad QB Case Keenum a shot next year, or else, trade or draft for a younger QB prospect with a high football E.R.A. It’s too late to think that the aging, immobile Mr. Schaub is going to get better over time. Surrounding Schaub with better talent next year, as some local TV pundits suggested Sunday night, is the equivalent of saying “since Matt can’t win with good players around him, we need to surround him with great players.”

How about acquiring or using a great QB prospect and then work to surrounding him with other great players?

3) The Superstition Mountain Snake-Killing Formula. Developed by the esteemed Dr. Richard Farrell at the Apache Junction, Arizona baseball spring training camp of the Houston Colt .45s over half a century ago, this formula has proved effective in baseball for the literal and figurative elimination of snakes in the grass, clubhouse, or boardroom in 99.99 per cent of every case studied since 1962. It should work equally well in football as it has in baseball.

The Texans first need to find the body of the snake that stands in their way of getting to the Super Bowl. The trick is to make sure that they have identified the real snake in the first place. Once identified, it is important to then locate the head of the snake and to figuratively cut it off before the team, the fans, and the City of Houston are bitten again by the “wait until next year (again)” smiling-while-sighing syndrome.

Take your time in the off-season, Texans, but proceed in the search for your snake in rigorous due diligence. My football-ignorant, but intuitive guess is that the head of this snake is most probably located higher up and even physically away from the literal body and neck of Mr. Matt Schaub.

The snake may not even be a specific person. Sometimes the snake is an attitude that clouds objective player evaluation – or a way of doing business that fails to bring out the best in everyone. Rule everything out, but then find the rascal and kill it. The City of Houston needs to recover from the more general disappointment it has experienced way too many times over the years with it’s snake-bitten sports teams – and that old rascal found all our backsides again on Sunday.

Those are my three strikes. – I’m out.