The hardest thing to acquire in the NFL is an elite quarterback. There are only a handful of truly franchise-changing quarterbacks in the league at a time. If a team gets one, they have to do everything in their power to maximize their window to win a championship with said quarterback.
The Texans didn’t seem to get that message. In fact, the Texans don’t even seem to want their franchise quarterback. At this time, Deshaun Watson and the Texans seem destined for a split due to Houston’s failure to follow through on promises to keep Watson involved on the head coach and general manager search.
According to ESPN’s Sarah Barshop , it’s gotten to the point where the Texans are considering what their team will look like without Watson. They would undoubtedly get a massive bounty of picks for Watson, but it’s utterly embarrassing that they got to this point.
All signs point to the source of this tension being Jack Easterby, a pastor that ended up grabbing power within the organization, which is just incredible. Texans great Andre Johnson even spoke up about Easterby, saying that the Texans are known for wasting careers and things have gotten worse since Easterby was brought into the fold.
(Johnson hadn’t sent a non-ad tweet prior to that since April of 2019; he’s not exactly noted for spouting hot takes.)
The owner of a football team is choosing an unpopular pastor-turned-executive over a young, truly elite quarterback. On what planet does this make sense? The only plausible reason as to why Easterby is still with the Texans is because owner Cal McNair sees some level of common ground. McNair has apparently decided that this is where he’s going to plant his flag.
But McNair, whose late father infamously said the NFL couldn’t have “the inmates running the prison,” clearly does not understand the power dynamic here. Watson has far more of it than the owner seems to realize.
This is a historical level of incompetence playing out in real time.
It started with Bill O’Brien going all in on the 2019 Texans team that blew a three touchdown lead to the Chiefs in a quarter of playoff football. They didn’t have the resources to upgrade their team in a meaningful manner the following offseason, traded away Deandre Hopkins and got stuck with a weak roster for the 2020 season.
Through all of that, Watson had the best season of his career. He threw 33 touchdowns to just seven interceptions, led the league in yards per attempt (8.9), and somehow orchestrated the top-ranked offense in terms of yards per play (6.4). Even with Watson’s dominant season, the Texans were only able to pull of four wins.
But of course they don’t even own their own first-round draft pick, having traded it away in a desperate move to get Laremy Tunsil when they lacked other viable starters at left tackle prior to the 2019 season.
There’s no need to mince words about where the Texans are right now: this is one of the worst teams in the league. The Texans didn’t have much going in their favor as they attempted to find a new head coach this offseason, but they could at least show off Watson as a reason to make the job enticing. Now, they aren’t even guaranteed to have Watson.
This is a team that doesn’t have a real direction yet and is down so bad that they might end up trading Watson to the Miami Dolphins — in exchange for that third-overall pick in the 2021 NFL Draft they sent away back in 2109.
If this relationship is fractured beyond repair and Watson gets traded, never ever forget the weird choices that the Texans made to get to this point. And never stop roasting them for it.
