Relying on a rookie cornerback is bad news

Of course, when you start a rookie cornerback, it's not exactly a glamorous statement about the rest of your secondary. Logically, this point makes a lot of sense to me. The new Texans jerseys don't have a lot of established talent in the back four and may very well run into problems because of it.

However, anecdotally, it's hard to look at Rick Smith's evaluations in the draft and not come away thinking that there is something about Kareem Jackson that can defy this. Cushing and Ryans football jerseystarted and were good from day one. Williams was decent in his first year, then hit the switch in year two. Glover Quin stepped in and was credible last year, as was Brice McCain as a nickel/dime cornerback. If you want to give partial credit, Amobi Okoye was pretty solid too in his rookie year. There is definitely a reason why the Texans ranked number one in FO's young talent list, after all. Rick Smith can pick 'em.

I don't think there will be much of, if any, drop off from Dunta Robinson leaving. The Texans probably would've been better off actually nabbing a Leigh Bodden or a good free safety and breaking in Jackson slowly, but the laws of free agency prohibited those sort of moves this year. The expiration of the collective bargaining agreement left a lot of guys that would've hit the market as restricted free agents, driving up demand and overpricing the guys that did. As mad as I was that the Texans passed on their chance to get a nose tackle with that #20 pick, I can't help but think that Jackson will do better than some are expecting. I'm certainly more worried about Eugene Wilson than I am him, at any rate. If he mimics Quin's year, he's a hit compared to Robinson.

Concern Level: 5

FO brings out it's justifications early in the chapter by pointing out some statistics about teams that won nine or more games after three years of .500 or worse. It usually isn't a sign of a breakout: the next year after that "break out", the teams combined to have a winning percentage of .511, or in laymans terms, about 8.2 wins. They compare the Texans to the Seattle Seahawks of 1999, who after winning seven, eight, and eight games prior to winning nine, went 6-10 in 2000. That team had Jon Kitna doing a surprisingly good job replacing Warren Moon, and an old but surprisingly effective Ricky Watters, but their best receiver was Derrick Mayes. While they drafted Shaun Alexander and Darrell Jackson to supplement the offensive core, Kitna missed four games, fell apart when he did play (apparently completing 55% of your passes in your rookie year is a bad sign for your future), and the offense went from scoring the 12th most points to the 19th most. Meanwhile, the defense watched Chad Brown, Michael Sinclair, Willie Williams, and Cortez Kennedy hit the age wall and start declining in effectiveness, and lost Phillip Daniels to the Redskins football jerseys in free agency. There were some good young pieces in Shawn Springs and Anthony Simmons, but they went from allowing the eighth fewest points in the NFL to the sixth most.

I don't think the Texans fit into that comparison. Schaub is better than Kitna, the age of the defense proves that they shouldn't bottom out like that, and the skill position players are much better. I'd compare them, instead, to the 2008 Cardinals. After being a bottom feeder since David Boston's youth, the Cardinals climbed from 5-11 to 8-8 to 9-7, making the Super Bowl after really picking up steam at the end of the year, but only getting to the playoffs because of a weak division.

The 2008 Cardinals had a injury prone but elite QB (Kurt Warner jersey), an ineffective run game that used a high pick on a running back (Chris Wells), an array of skilled pass-catchers (Larry Fitzgerald, Anquan Boldin, Steve Breaston, Early Doucet), a mediocre offensive line that had problems in the run game, and a defense anchored by some in-prime studs (Darnell Dockett, Calais Campbell, Karlos Dansby, Adrian Wilson) that were able to drag the talent around them to "okay". Sound familiar at all? Those Cardinals, according to FO's 2009 Almanac, had the third toughest projected schedule in the NFL last year.