Kickoff
Jul 24, 2008 Chris Taylor gets you stoned, Kickoff, Super Mario
Super quick as I have another busy day at the bill-payin’ job and Arkansas still hasn’t entered the Industrial, much less Digital, Age. Mostly, this’ll be a link hurl. (h/t to Eric for his always lovely and much appreciated assistance)
Steve Slaton: Some dude we know wrote a nice article on our newest running back.
USA Today loves them some Mario: Second best defensive end? I can live with that. I still think Jared Allen is a bit erratic, but he deserves the #1 seed until next year. If only Mario wasn’t such a damn bust. Oh, but I do love that Elvin Bethea got some votes on the all-time side.
Bob McNair #7: Michael Silver at Yahoo! ranks the owners, and ours comes in at #7. A winning season or two should have him soaring up that list.
Finally: Am I missing something here?
Yeah, pretty excited about Colvin. Scared about Frenchy. Chris Taylor? Free agent? Chris Taylor??? I think this just shows that the comicle still has an irrational man-crush on Taylor. Yeah, I like the dude, too, but goodness.
Leg hugs to all!
The Houston Comicle - Still an accountability free zone
Jun 2, 2008 2008 Season, Andre Johnson, Bloggerating, Chris Taylor gets you stoned, Dancing With the 'Tards, Jacoby Jones is slighty less unheralded, Pancakes McTard, Winstonsaurus
And I’m not even talking about this.
For a while now, we’ve had to put up with the Comicle’s incessant clamoring over Chris Taylor, which has been, not surprisingly, led by Pancakes himself. After all, he is the King of the ‘Tards.
But, something funny happened on the way to OTAs. Here’s Eric Winston:
Well, I tell you what, there’s a big battle going on there. You can really tell that all those guys really want to play and they all have really good skill. And that’s good, because you want a lot of guys at that position because you never know what can happen. Sometimes, you have four there and everyone stays healthy and a guy doesn’t get to play. Then, when you’re a little thin there, then all of a sudden a rash of injuries hit. So you’ve always got to be prepared, because in our system it’s such a vital point to have a guy that can really go at that part, and with Ahman (Green) looking healthy, Chris Brown coming in and (being) just real familiar with the zone scheme, and you’ve got Steve Slaton just carrying on what he’s done from West Virginia. So I think we’ve got three different kind of backs but, at the same time, three very exciting backs.
What? No mention of Chris Taylor??? Didn’t Winston ask permission from Pancakes to leave him off???
I was just as excited as anyone after Taylor’s performance the last game of the 2006 season. However, it’s 1. not realistic that he was the reason the Texans didn’t take a RB in the 1st round, and 2. he’s not likely in the picture to play a significant role even if he makes the game day roster in the first place.
I’m not saying it’s the best decision. But, as long as Ahman Green is healthy and we are on the hook for his 2008 salary, he’s staying (we have to pay him one way or the other, so it’s almost a why the hell not? kinda thing). Chris Brown looks like he’ll get plenty of carries. Then, what do we do? Drop Slaton? At best, Taylor is #4 on the depth chart, and, even then, he’ll still have to beat Darius Walker for a spot.
That their rampant speculation is so far off base isn’t surprising, and it’s part of the problem of being an insider: the Texans staff simply don’t have to tell the truth to the Comicle writers, and they gain little, if anything, by doing so. As an outsider, there is a certain reliance that the insiders aren’t complete dumbasses and, well, we know how that’s looking. But the Comicle will never have to pay a mea culpa as long as they aren’t held accountable for their poor reporting.
(For the record, if I screw up badly at my job, my company will be in the headlines. I have to deal with accountability every day)
Chris Taylor!? YAY! The savior of the Texans running game? Not so much.
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From the Texans’ All Access celebration:
“First of all, I’d like to thank all you guys for coming out. We’re really excited about this season coming up. All the guys are excited. You know, we finished 8-8 last year. If you are worried about my knee, my knee is doing fine.” - Andre Johnson
Again, I warn of reading too much into this and remind you to ask yourself, “What do you really expect him to say?” It’s good news, but let’s see how he looks in camp and, most importantly, in the pre-season.
———————
One last nugget for the day, courtesy of rotoworld.com:
Jacoby Jones has been running with the Texans’ first-team offense with Andre Johnson (arthroscopic knee surgery) sidelined.
I couldn’t be more thrilled. As exciting as Apostrophe Davis was for us last year, the fact is he’s 29 and coming off his best year since 2002, if not ever. In other words, we have seen his ceiling as a wide receiver. But, damnz, what a badass 4th WR to have (especially if Andre misses time), and what an awesome weapon to have in the return game. I still have my man-crush on Jacoby thanks to TPL from battleredblog.com, and Jacoby was awesomely impressive in the pre-season last year. He just seemed to lose his confidence after being tackled by a punter, getting injured in the process.
As we get closer to the season, Matt and I - with all of you pitching in awesome wisdom - will flesh out our team. I will tell you that I am super-excited about WR heading into 2008.
“really high” on Chris Taylor
Mar 12, 2008 2008 Draft, 2008 Season, Alex Gibbs, Chris Taylor gets you stoned, Dancing With the 'Tards, Fluff, Ron Dayne likes pie, Self-Referential Stuff
So, what I want to know is, do you crush Chris Taylor and snort him? Or do you roll him and smoke him? Just curious.
Pancakes has a column up discussing his take on why the Texans won’t draft a RB in the first round. If you can get around the poor grammar and writing style (”really high?”), it’s basically because of Alex Gibbs and Chris Taylor. You know, thinking about the column, this is about the highest level of technical football I’ve seen him write. Then, of course, he spends most of the column self-fluffing. OK, enough bashing.
That the coaching staff is “really high” on Taylor isn’t really new news unto itself. They have been for a while, and Kubiak specifically wanted Taylor. I believe a healthy Taylor is why “Three Pies and a Cloud of Meringue” Dayne has not been re-signed (obviously a drastic blow to the Houston area House of Pies franchise). However, Taylor’s 4.54 40-yard isn’t exactly top-of-the-line, and that’s before his reconstructive knee surgery.
Pancakes also mentions a LT, but unless one of the more elite prospects amazingly slides to us, I don’t think Kubes takes a LT in the first round.
That said, and with another influence from Matt’s post yesterday, my current hypothesis is that we go DE in Round 1, RB/CB/LT in Round 3, CB/LT/RB in Round 4, and DT in the 5th (assuming we don’t trade up or down in the first). The Texans may be getting really stoned on Chris Taylor, but he’s not the long-term answer here, and I still think we take a RB on the earlier side.
In other self-fluffing news (if I could, I’d never leave the house), I just started reading _God Save the Fan_ by Deadspin’s Will Leitch. Already an entertaining read, and it’s yet another reason why I think our best “news” and information is coming from the blogosphere these days.
Edit: Matt mentions the possibility of taking Aqib Talib in the first, which is obviously a possibility, as well.
