Saturday notes
Sep 6, 2008 Kickoff, Winstonsaurus
Eric Winston has signed a contract extension that will leave him with us for another 5 years (presumably). It includes $10 million in guaranteed money, and purportedly makes him one of the three highest-paid right tackles in the league. I gotta say, I think that’s a pretty fair deal. Score another one for the Smithiak.
Update: Battle Red Blog and Houston Diehards have commented on this as well. Marroncita @ BRB called Winston a franchise right tackle. I wonder, is there a such thing as a “franchise” right tackle? I’ve always thought “franchise” was just some ephemerous attribute that you applied to a player that you plan on building your franchise around. On the list of positions to build a team around, I’m not sure right tackle is in the top 5. But then again, we’ve seen teams use the franchise tag on back-up tackles (Bengals on Stacy Andrews, 2007), and we could easy have envisioned the franchise tag one day being applied to Winston. So I suppose the term can be applied that way. It still struck me as a little odd, though. Maybe we can now get our franchise tight end locked up, eh? 
Slaton will play tomorrow.
Football Outsiders has adjusted their win projection for the Texans based on the absence of Salaam and Weary. 8-8, they say. The Giants (no Strahan, no Umenyiora) and the Jets (add Favre) also get notable projection adjustments. One thing to keep in mind is that they are assuming that Duane Brown will be your run of the mill #26th-overall rookie left tackle. This illustrates how little difference there is between a 9-7 and an 8-8 team in the league and how important offensive line continuity is, not how crappy Duane Brown is supposed to be. I’d say that the playoffs are still a good possibility.
In other news, my girlfriend got me a picture frame for my birthday, and then placed the latest ESPN: The Magazine in it. You know, the one with Mario on it. Cool, eh?
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September 6th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Happy Birthday!!!!
Another cover worth framing is the new one at the front of this week’s Houston Press. The article isn’t worth anything, but the cover is a rip of the Obama iconic poster–it’s one of Gary Kubiak with the word HOPE. It’s awesome.
By the way, in absolutely tangential semi-Texans news, I have re-started my Chronicle blog: http://blogs.chron.com/texanschick/ . Hope to send many hat tips and links to various peeps in the Texans blogospheres and to be one of many who rep the team honorably.
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September 6th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Happy birthday!
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@Steph: W.T.F?
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September 7th, 2008 at 12:22 am
@socctty – Happy birthday!
@Steph – It’s about time the Chronicle started paying attention to the Texans. But hopefully the Chron doesn’t require you to write about the Cowboys and Vince three times a week.
Winston – An important position taken care of. They may have overpaid a bit, but that’s a position they won’t have to fill
Salaam & Weary – Both are obviously competent, but would probably be considered pretty average. But I can’t see how their absence from the starting lineup costs the Texans a game. Brisiel took over after Weary’s injury last year, and they didn’t miss a beat. I doubt that they would have selected Brown and stuck him in the lineup if Salaam was so valuable.
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September 7th, 2008 at 1:34 am
@kozanack: I beg to disagree that they overpaid. The way I see it, he’s probably a top five right tackle. So why pay him top-three money? Because by the middle of his contract, he’ll be the seventh or eight highest paid right tackle.
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This fact is what doomed the Seahawks in the year they let Steve Hutchinson go to the Vikings. It was a 7 year, $49 mil deal; they balked. He was (and is) the best left guard in the game (probably should have gotten the MVP award when Shaun Alexander did) but they passed on it. It would have made him the highest-paid left guard in the game by a significant margin. A year later, guys like Derrick Dockery and Leonard Davis (a bust at left tackle and right tackle for the Cards that never played left guard) got the same contract on the free agency market. Meanwhile, the Seahawks’ running game was so horrible that Shaun Alexander made the transition from league MVP to unsigned free agent in a span of two years.
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You don’t pay this year’s market price. You pay next year’s.
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September 7th, 2008 at 1:40 am
@kozanack: Oh, forgot to comment on Weary/Salaam.
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FO has found a significant correlation between offensive line continuity and pass/run block success. This merely reflects that. As Brisiel and Brown have little history, it’s hard to guage their impact. RE: Brisiel, the logic goes that if he was better than Weary, he would have been playing over Weary. A certain amount of faith is invested in the coaching and scouting staffs regarding this aspect.
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Now, of course Brisiel and Brown can do well, better than their predecessors even. But there just isn’t any reason to assume that they will.
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FO has found that a young line that is allowed to “grow up” together ends up doing pretty well in the long run, though. So this isn’t exactly a horrible decision. This sort of logic is why they have Tampa Bay doing pretty well this year (and why I made the leap of faith to draft Earnest Graham as my RB2 and Jeff Garcia as my QB2 on my fantasy team!)
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Brown could end up pulling a Joe Thomas, but you don’t assume that he will. That being said, I expect him to do pretty well. However, from what we can interpret, the plan was to let Salaam and Brown battle it out in camp, with a bias towards Salaam’s experience. Salaam was injured virtually all training camp, so Brown won the job by default. There is the distinct possibility that Salaam ends the season as the starting left tackle. Hopefully it doesn’t come down to that, though.
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September 7th, 2008 at 4:00 am
@socctty: That’s a very good write-up regarding the cashing in of Caveman. And I completely agree. It feels good to have the Tackle spots locked up for a good few years.
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Now, does anyone know a good DB? No? Damn.
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September 7th, 2008 at 4:05 am
@ MATT — Warning: Thread-jack in progress.
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I believe that this link shows what you mentioned the other day regarding how Brett Favre is single-handedly destroying America.
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http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/25561/distribution_map_week_1.jpg
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September 7th, 2008 at 10:58 am
That is the awesomest picture added to an article. Ever.