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.