Clowney,
Manziel and the Houston Texans
Let
me begin by stating flat out that I’m not a football fan. In fact, until my
wife of almost fourteen years redeveloped an interest in the sport thanks to
her best friend, I don’t think I’d ever watched an NFL game from start to end
other than being in the room at a relative’s home on Thanksgiving where a game
was being played. Naturally, since we live in the Houston area our friend was a
big Texans fan so my wife became a fan, or was until they began demonstrating
just how terrible they really are. Her other favorite team is the Chicago Bears
since she was born and grew up in Chicago before coming to Houston as a young
woman. Every Sunday afternoon and sometimes on Monday and Thursday evenings we
had the Texans on the TV, and the Bears if their game was being broadcast on
one of the cable channels on our network.
As
far as college football goes, I had zero interest in it other than caring
slightly about who won the Navy games when my son was a midshipman at
Annapolis. I paid no attention at all to the various college teams around Texas
where I live now, or Tennessee where I grew up. That is, I didn’t until Texas
Monthly featured a young Texas-born and raised quarterback from Texas A&M
named Johnny Manziel who had become famous in the sports world as “Johnny
Football” because of the things he did on the field. The article also dealt
with his off-the-field life; his partying, his (minor) brushes with the law,
his hanging out with other sports figures and rock stars and his dating models.
The Twitter Universe was buzzing over his tweet that he’d be happy when he left
the town of College Station that he made after the city gave him a parking
ticket for parking in the spot where he always parked. At the time, a cloud was
hanging over him because a sports memorabilia dealer was claiming that Manziel
had been paid for signing autographs. What intrigued me most about the young
man was his enthusiasm for sports in general (he played baseball before he
became a quarterback) and his competitive nature.
Intrigued
by the article, I decided to watch the next game to see what all of the fuss
was about. The opening game for the 2014 season was against Rice, an
academically highly-rated university here in Houston. Johnny was forced to sit
out the first half as punishment for the autograph deal (which was never
proven) and the game was back and forth with Rice holding their own – until
Manziel entered the game at the beginning of the second half. It only took him
a few minutes to turn the game around as he started throwing touchdown passes.
He also stirred up the referees – and his coach – by making his famous “dollar
sign” which some took to be a reference to the autograph signing although he
has been making the same sign throughout his college career, as do other
A&M players, students and administrators. Later in the game he made
comments to some of the Rice players which the referee saw as taunts, although
some Rice players commented after the game that he was complimenting them. He
got a penalty for “unsportsmanlike conduct” (which in college football seems to
be anything the referee doesn’t like; in a later game Texan’s running back Trey
Williams ran a spectacular 100-yard touchdown but the referees charged him with
unsportsman like conduct because he dived over the goal line and took it away) for
pointing at the score board and was benched – but only after having passed for
three touchdowns and giving the Aggies a 20-point lead. It was like that all
year. Each week I was excited to tune in to the Aggie game just to see what
Johnny would do, and I was rarely disappointed. The exception was the
A&M-LSU game, but I suspect that the A&M players, or some of them, were
sick. Manziel was playing after suffering three injuries earlier in the year,
one to a knee, one to this throwing arm and one to the thumb on that same hand.
Other than that single exception, Johnny played well even in the other two
games the Aggies lost. Yes, the Alabama Crimson Tide won but it was hardly a
roll-over. If the game had gone on for another minute, A&M would have tied
the game and might have won in overtime.
While
Manziel was cleaning ‘em up for A&M – and becoming the most-watched single
player in football history – the Houston Texans were continuing a spiral that
started when they met the New England Patriots in the 2012 season. Yes, they
won a couple of games at the beginning of the season but Texan fans’ hopes of
going to the playoffs died quickly as the Houston team set a record – for the
most successive losses in NFL history. They were even beat – twice – by the
Jacksonville Jaguars who are just as bad as the Texans. The Houston’s hated
rivals, the Tennessee Titans which they beat early in the season, came back to
beat them in their second game. Surprisingly, the Texans won all but one of
their preseason games and their first two season games. Unfortunately, it was
the remaining fourteen games that did them in. What’s so ironic is that the
Texan’s defense was rated as one of the best in the NFL; it’s their offense
that sucks. The team is unable to score points. Oh, sure, they’d score a few
times in every game – and even managed to hold their own against the Patriots,
but when the final buzzer sounded, they were always behind. Fans relegated
themselves to saying “there’s always next year.”
The
Texans needed a savior, and it was becoming obvious that such a savior was just
up the road about 70 miles or so at College Station. The Texans’ most dire need
was for a competent quarterback. Veteran Matt Shaub did okay in his first two
games but then the fans started turning against him after the Texans lost a
couple of games – it was going to get worse. Coach Gary Kubiak benched Shaub
and started playing a young man named Case Keenum who looked good in the first
half of nearly every game, but was unable to lead the team to score in the
second – the Texans have yet to win a single game with him on the field. It
finally got to the point that team owner Bob McNair fired Kubiak before the
season ended (apparently because Kubiak pulled Keenum and put Shaub in a game)
and after the season ended the Texans traded Shaub to the Oakland Raiders in a
move that may very well come back to haunt them. A huge groundswell developed
in Houston for the Texans, who had “won” the first round pick in the 2014 draft
by being so bad, to pick Manziel, assuming he declared himself eligible for the
draft rather than spending another year at College Station. He did, but when it
came time for the Texans to make their pick, instead of choosing Manziel – or
any other quarterback, which they desperately need (and still do even after the
draft where they picked a mediocre one) they picked another defensive lineman
that they don’t need simply because he had been rated highest for the draft.
Jaedevon
Clowney played three seasons with the South Carolina Gamecocks in Columbia, SC,
the same school of which Texans owner Bob McNair is an alumni. He was highly
rated as an NFL prospect from the get-go, because he is big and has a
reputation for making a lot of tackles – or he did until the 2013 playing
season when he didn’t play that well and sat out several games due to illness
and injury. Although the Gamecocks 2013 record was 11-2, Clowney played in both
games that they lost and they won 9 of the 11 wins without him. Moreover, he
was only credited with three quarterback sacks in the entire season. Still,
Clowney was the highest-rated player eligible for the 2014 draft which,
according to an interview of former Houston offensive coach Wade Philips, led
Texans owner Bob McNair to select him as the team’s number one pick. Philips
said that during his interview for the coaching job that went to Penn State
coach Bill O’Brien, he urged McNair to draft Manziel because he was just what
the team needed. McNair responded that he’d like to draft Clowney as their
number one pick, then draft a quarterback later. That is what they ultimately
did, although they quarterback they picked was far from one of the highest
rated in the draft.
Johnny
Manziel is criticized for his off-field antics but Clowney has done his share
of questionable acts. He’s had several speeding tickets, including one in which
he was clocked at 110 MPH and another when he was ticketed for driving 30 MPH
over the limit (he told the arresting officer he was late to catch the bus to a
bowl game.) He is followed by an entourage that some have called “bad” although
his step-father claimed they are “good boys”. (The night after he arrived in
Houston after being drafted, he was spotted and videoed in a strip joint with
his entourage throwing money up in the air. The video was uploaded to a web
site but was later removed, but not before it was seen by many.) Clowney was
once arrested because his appearance matched that of a burglary suspect, but
was let go. While Manziel is often assailed by critics because he comes from a
wealthy family with a dubious past, Clowney is not criticized because his
father served time in jail for robbery. (Manziel’s family wealth is in the
hands of his paternal grandparents – his own parents are middle-class. The
Manziel family, who are descendants of an immigrant from what is now Syria,
require each child to make their own way. Manziel’s father manages an auto
dealership and his mother sold real estate while they were living in Kerrville
where Manziel’s sports career got its start.) Granted, what Clowney’s father
did has no bearing on him personally but neither does what Manziel’s
great-grandfather and great-uncle did have any bearing on him.
Some
Manziel critics claim that the A&M-LSU game is an indication of what he’ll
face in the NFL. However, they fail to consider that he had suffered an injury
to his right hand in the previous game with Mississippi State when he caught
another player’s helmet. He had also injured his right arm in the Auburn game a
week before and sat out part of the game as a result. The LSU game was played
on a wet field in drizzling rain, which compounded his problems of holding the
football – and his receivers being able to catch it. Naturally, the loss was
blamed on LSU’s defense but Manziel’s previous injuries to his throwing arm
were a factor. There is even some question as to whether Manziel should have
sat out the game. In fact, Manziel’s performance at LSU was no worse than that
of NFL legend Peyton Manning’s in the 2014 Super Bowl where the Seattle
Seahawks made him look, not just bad but terrible.
I
really hadn’t paid much attention to the Texans’ record until recently, but it
turns out that except for a few years during the time the team was coached by
Gary Kubiak, they’ve been losers. During their career, their win-loss record is
79-113. Since the team first played in 2002, there have only been three winning
seasons and two years when they went 8-8, all under Kubiak with Matt Shaub as
quarterback. Their 2-14 record for 2013 is tied with their 2005 record. Texans
fans got their hopes up after the 2012 season that their team would win the
playoffs and go to the Super Bowl, but those hopes died quickly when the team
started losing, losing and losing some more.
As
it turned out, Johnny Manziel went to the Cleveland Browns, one of the three
teams – counting the Texans – that needed him most. It remains to be seen what
he’ll do for them, but there’s one thing for certain – we’ll never know what he’d
have done for the loser Texans.