The Houston Texans are tanking.
Maybe they wouldn’t have a chance to win these games anyway, but either way, the team has made a conscious effort to lose games. It is the reality of the modern “trust the process” method of roster construction in sports, and the Texans are full-bore tanking to land a quarterback in the next draft.
What is frustrating, though, is the messaging behind the obvious decisions being made behind closed doors. Texans fans might feel better if the team outright told them about the strategy, but instead, they’re given a line by Houston’s head coach following every loss about how he is trying his hardest to coach his team to victory and it isn’t working.
In the Texans’ postgame press conference on Sunday things seemed to hit a tipping point. A reporter asked Lovie Smith why the team wasn’t better against Washington following the 23-10 loss, and the coach was at the end of his rope.
“I’m not going to tell you that, all right? What do you expect me to say right now? We just got beat,” Smith explained with evident annoyance. “Now, if there was something that we should have done right away, we would have done that right away. We’re working with our football team. We’re searching for answers is what we’re doing. We’ll keep working on different combinations.”
The part that Smith left out is that, at this point in their season, winning accomplishes nothing for the team that signs his paychecks. They’d be doing themselves a disservice by playing competitive football and taking any chance in squandering their shot at a first-overall pick that could turn into their next franchise quarterback.
This isn’t rocket science; it is just a harsh reality. Smith won’t be “working on different combinations” and he isn’t really “searching for answers” beyond figuring out new and creative ways to lose. His decision to give Dameon Pierce 10 carries and no more speaks for itself.
At this point, the only thing Texans fans will get out of the 2022 season is more despair, and as long as the team gets another chance to land a franchise quarterback, they’re quite all right with any bad blood that may create between themselves and the Houston faithful.
