From a simmer to a boil…
Nov 30, 2008 Fire Richard Smith
More gasoline for the “Fire Richard Smith!”, uh, fire. The guy is fucking done after this! Key quotes:
- “…the story of the Texans’ 2008 season might be a philosophical decision that, in the end (and the middle and the beginning), ruined what was supposed to be a promising year.”
- “A Texans defender told me he has walked out of dozens of defensive team meetings over the past couple of seasons shaking his head.”
- “Kubiak said concerns about making mistakes made his defense too plain.”
I’m a politics nut so one of the first things that popped into my mind after reading this was, “did Kubiak tell this player to say a few things to the press in order to undermine Smith?” This article paints Kubiak as a guy taking charge of the situation and asserting his status as the head coach. I’d even venture to say that the author goes out of his way to do that. I have no reason to believe that it actually went down like that, with Kubiak taking Smith’s knees out, but it’s certainly possible. Really though, that’s not the main story here. The main story is that Smith is all but done now! Woohoo!
P.S.: Anyone seen any articles by this Solomon guy before? He’s got a blog at chron.com, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen an article authored by him published. You would think a story like this would get one of the “big guns” at the Chronicle writing it (Justice or Pancakes). Now, if I was a player, I certainly wouldn’t leak a story to Richard Justice.
P.P.S: Totally forgot to make a guess on who the player is! Let’s see… he probably gets a fair amount of playing time (meaning that the author is more likely to invest time in speaking to the guy in order to get the story in the first place). He’s not a rookie or a free-agent signing, since the author references the player shaking his head “the past couple of seasons”. He’s probably currently healthy, or at least was healthy prior to the Cleveland game, since he was sitting in on meetings. And he’s probably not a cornerback, since cornerbacks (especially THESE cornerbacks) wouldn’t be fond of being left in single coverage. And maybe it’s a player who has seen his production drop this year, who is eager to find a boogeyman to blame (although this is a valid one). I say it’s either Morlon Greenwood or Anthony Weaver. Maybe a lineman wouldn’t care as much about blitzing, though…
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November 30th, 2008 at 8:27 am
That’s actually a pretty good article from the Chron. But I feel like I’ve heard it all somewhere before….. Matt did you ghostwrite that for Soloman?
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Soloman is one of the main columnists now, so it’s not surprising he got this one. I didn’t like him at first, but he’s actually growing on me some. He tends not to pull punches which I respect, as long as he backs it up.
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November 30th, 2008 at 8:36 am
Solomon has been a topic around here before.
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November 30th, 2008 at 9:57 am
I like Solomon, but until they shit-can Dickie, Solomon will never get much promotion as one of the main columnists for the Chron.
(Solomon has issues with Rafer Alston, too, which is why I like the guy.)
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November 30th, 2008 at 11:18 am
I give Solomon credit. He posted here before when most of us gang-tackled him, and he handled it great. He also seems to get it right more often than Dickie and Pancakes do.
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So credit where it’s due, Mr. Solomon. Well done.
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November 30th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
If that unnamed Texans player isn’t Dunta Robinson, I’ll eat my hat.
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November 30th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Unnamed Texans player has to be Dunta. He used to be on Jerome’s radio show when Jerome had a radio show–I was supposed to visit one of the remotes…and then Dunta got hurt. Boo.
FWIW, there’s been this sort of grumbling about the DC for a while.