Texans All-Time Top 5 QBs: Pick-Six Burgers and Overripe Fruit

David Carr gets sacked, Matt Schaub gets picked off and Deshaun Watson gets out while the getting's good.

I somehow managed to write 3,000 words about Texans quarterbacks. Genius, madness or overuse of block quotes? You decide. 

1. Matt Schaub

Schaub backed up Michael Vick for the Falcons from 2004-06. He threw three touchdown passes in a duel with Tom Brady in 2005, and he performed well in preseason games, raising his profile across the NFL. The Texans, weary of running the battered remnants of David Carr onto the field week after week, traded second- and third-round picks for Schaub, whom the Falcons could safely part ways with in 2007, knowing absolutely nothing out-of-the-ordinary was about to surface and derail Vick’s career.

Schaub battled injuries in 2007 and 2008 but began to click with wide receiver Andre Johnson in the latter season. He led the NFL in passing yards in 2009. He guided the Texans to a 7-3 start in 2011 before suffering a Lisfranc injury; fifth-round rookie T.J. Yates would ultimately take the Texans to their first playoff appearance.

Both Schaub and Johnson were limited in 2012 OTAs, but Schaub was medically cleared in the summer, and the pair would lead the Texans to a 12-4 record and another trip to the second round of the playoffs. Schaub threw for 527 yards and five touchdowns in an overtime victory against the Jaguars, tying the second-highest total in NFL history. Johnson caught 14 of those passes for 273 of those yards, including a game-winning screen-and-go touchdown.

The Texans beat the Bengals 19-13 in the 2012 playoffs, though Schaub threw a pick-6 for the only Bengals touchdown.

A pick-6, you say?

You know what’s coming, right?

Schaub started the 2013 season with an interception on his very first attempt. He threw a pick-6 in the fourth quarter of a Week 2 game against the Titans, though he later threw a game-winning overtime touchdown to DeAndre Hopkins. He threw another pick-6 in a loss to the Ravens in Week 3.

In Week 4, Schaub threw a fourth-quarter interception that Richard Sherman returned 56 yards for a touchdown, setting up a Texans overtime loss to the Seahawks. Sherman and others said that the Seahawks defense had practiced defending play-action rollouts during the week, knowing what Kubiak liked to call and what Schaub could be counted upon to do. “We had practiced exactly that,” Pete Carroll said after the game. “So it was really cool that it happened.”

Then came a much-publicized, utterly-incompetent Schaub jersey burning (NSFW):

Schaub was not done. He threw three interceptions, including a fourth Pick-6, in a meltdown against the 49ers. Watch a montage of Schaub’s interceptions and you can see how confidently defenders baited him and jumped in front of his receivers. The NFL had both Schaub and Kubiak completely figured out.

Schaub was benched at the end of the 49ers loss and disappeared for several weeks; he would end the season trading starts with undrafted rookie Case Keenum. Kubiak suffered a mini-stroke on the sideline not long after benching Schaub, then get fired late in the year. The fact that 2013 is only the third- or fourth-weirdest season in Texans history is a testament to a very strange quarter-century in Houston. 

The interceptions, novelty burgers and jersey burnings turned Schaub into a punchline in 2013, retroactively negating his previous accomplishments in many minds. Houston fans never really warmed to Schaub. He was a product of Kubiak’s system, both in success and failure, and he benefited greatly from Johnson’s presence.

You may even find it surprising to see Schaub at the top of this very humble list. I’ll explain why he’s here – for at least another year or so – in the next segment. 

Note: the “Matt Schaub Special” sign appeared outside of Skeeters Grill in Houston. The burger offer was soon labeled a “hoax” by the local culinary community, which is not quite true. There really was a sign in front of the eatery. If your local coffee shop has a sign which reads, “Unattended children will be given a free latte and a kitten,” that’s not a “hoax,” but a “joke.” Thank you for listening.

2. Deshaun Watson

Schaub over Watson was a difficult choice: the lesser of two evils, or perhaps a lesser over an evil. The choice was not a concession to political cowokeness; sliding individuals around an all-time football list on a Substack would represent a rather shabby form of activism. Instead, I ran the numbers, then went with my gut.

Watson finished the 2020 season with a league-leading 4,823 passing yards, 33 touchdowns, and seven interceptions. His season was, by all major statistical measures, the best in franchise history, leading in passing touchdowns, passing yards and passer rating. – Watson’s Wikipedia page.

Sorry, Wikipedia: Schaub’s 2009 DVOA of 29.3% and DYAR of 1624 were significantly higher than Watson’s figures of 20.2% and 1234 in 2020. In addition to the best figure, Schaub possesses the fourth, seventh, eighth and ninth-best DYAR figures in Texans history. Watson possesses the fifth, sixth and seventh-best figures in team history, as well as the second. The analytics say Schaub was better.

Schaub threw for 8,682 more yards and 20 more touchdowns for the Texans than Watson. He also threw more interceptions, as you might have guessed. Watson had a better passer rating in Houston, though Schaub’s career had a decline phase and Watson’s Texans career ended abruptly. The Texans were 46-42 under Schaub and 28-25 under Watson. Each quarterback led the Texans to only one playoff victory. 

Watson led the Texans through a tumultuous time before himself becoming the primary source of tumult. Bill O’Brien was/is barking mad, but the case against O’Brien’s late regime is sometimes overblown. Watson had DeAndre Hopkins to throw to for most of his Texans career and J.J. Watt leading the defense; Laremy Tunsil was his left tackle for several years.

Oh, and Schaub played for Gary Kubiak: a fine coach, but not Vince Lombardi, and someone whose predictable scheme led directly to Schaub’s downfall. 

Watson, you might not recall, was making trade demands and holding out of OTAs when reports of his serial sexual misconduct surfaced. He was briefly a cause celebre before the allegations, with some influencers rooting for Watson to stick it to the inept Texans and strike some ill-defined blow for players’ rights by forcing a trade. I feel like Watson’s reputation became overblown at that point, as will happen for a quarterback with great stats on a team that rarely plays on national television. The conversation around Watson soon changed, of course, but hiding his football ability in a mystery box only enhanced his on-field reputation.

Watson was not suspended by the NFL in 2021. Instead, the Texans quietly deactivated him every week. It was a win for everyone involved: Watson got paid for nothing, the Texans avoided PR nightmares, and folks like me didn’t have to write about weekly touchdowns as if Watson was a perfectly agreeable citizen. But Watson could have played for the Texans in 2021. At least Schaub was out there trying his hardest in 2013. 

Nothing about Watson’s record with the Texans suggested that he was worth a $250-milion guaranteed contract; that was a case of dumb billionaires getting into a bidding war for a secret treasure chest. Nothing about his two seasons in Cleveland suggests that he was an all-time great toiling away for a dysfunctional Texans organization.

If their careers took place in the 1980s instead of recently, and if controversies surrounding one of them and the late-career collapse of the other were faded memories, there would be little question that Schaub was the more historically important Texans quarterback. Watson’s case for being “better” boils down to being more exciting and succeeding under somewhat tougher circumstances, for a shorter period of time, before making himself unavailable. 

If that argument convinces you, fine. We’re about two years from the conversation being moot, anyway.

3. C.J. Stroud

Stroud’s rookie season was the third-best passing season in Texans history per DYAR. I am completely comfortable placing him here. If he repeats last year’s accomplishments in 2024, he moves up to second. If he exceeds them, he will probably move up to first.

4. David Carr

History says Carr will finish the season as bruised as overripe fruit. – Jere Longman, New York Times, August 27, 2002.

Carr was sacked a record 76 times for the expansion Texans in 2002. Follow this link for a supercut of every darn one of them. You will find what you expect to find: a dreadful offensive line, a rookie with no sense of when to get rid of the ball (plus a lumbering gait) and a scheme that does no one any favors.  

It wasn’t supposed to be that way. The Texans signed Tony Boselli and Ryan Young to be their offensive tackles in 2002, but both required preseason surgery. (Boselli, at the end of his stellar-but-brief career, was a longshot acquisition by a team with money to burn.) Rookie Chester Pitts started every game at left tackle and slowly grew into a good player, but he was little help to Carr at the start of 2002. Right tackle and the guard spots were manned by a revolving cast of rookies and backups. Carr even suffered a knee injury in the final preseason game, yet still started the opener. 

Tony Banks was Carr’s backup in 2002. Banks later claimed that coaches told him to “ease up in practices” so Carr could claim the starting job. Be that as it may, watch the video in the link above and you will see the Chargers, Colts and Eagles dumping Carr over and over again in the fourth quarters of blowouts. Banks should have been mopping up those games, if not starting, when it became clear that Carr could neither move the offense nor defend himself.

As brilliant as it was, with three Super Bowl victories, [Troy] Aikman's career in Dallas was cut short by a series of concussions that started with the pounding he took during a brutal rookie season. Houston Coach Dom Capers appears to have no such reservations about Carr. He has essentially handed Carr the starting job, saying he wants to go with the quarterback who will give the Texans the best chance to win. Carr, too, believes the way to learn is by doing, not by watching. –Longman, ibid. 

My most enduring Carr memory comes from 2002. With two seconds left, trailing the Jaguars 20-17, Capers ordered a quarterback sneak at the goal line instead of a field goal. Carr reached across the pile and just crossed the plane for a touchdown before a defender swatted the ball away.

"When you're six inches away from the goal line you can't give that up," Carr said after the game, per Mark Babineck of the Associated Press. "I'd rather take my shot right there. It was a great call by the coaching staff, and I am glad that I just got up with the touchdown."

I was watching the early-afternoon games in a South Jersey sports bar when Carr scored that touchdown. Jaguars-Texans was on a little television in a quiet corner of the dining room. But when the Texans reached the goal line, and when it became clear the Texans were going for it (a VERY bold strategy 20 years ago), all the football junkies at the bar migrated to that corner to watch Carr’s sneak, then reacted as if the Eagles had just beaten the Cowboys. It was a moment that exemplified the magic of football: its ability to galvanize fans and make us care about bad teams we had no rooting/wagering interest in. It was also easy to imagine that Carr was about to turn the corner and become a star at that moment. 

Of course, that did not happen. 

Carr endured a league-high 49 sacks in 2004 and 68 in 2005. Capers and coordinator Chris Palmer retained their jobs for most of that span, with Palmer getting fired during the 2005 season.

Gary Kubiak replaced Capers in 2006. Carr’s completion rate increased to a league-leading 68.3%. His sack rate dropped to 8.5%, which was still very high. But Carr led the NFL with 16 fumbles. Kubiak benched Carr in favor of Sage Rosenfels in one October game, but then stuck with Carr for the rest of a 6-10 season (the best season in Texans history to that point). 

“I think he’s done some real good things for a guy that’s going through this system for the first time,” Kubiak said after the benching, per Thayer Evans of the New York Times. “How far did I expect him to go at this point? A long way, because the quicker he grows up and the quicker he becomes a great player, then the faster this football team can become a good, solid football team.”

Evans’ Times article has several outside experts like Gil Brandt musing on what was wrong with Carr. None of them managed to land on he was sacked 208 times in his first four seasons, for heaven’s sake. Kubiak was also still talking about Carr “growing up” in the quarterback’s fifth season, as if maturity were somehow Carr’s issue. 

The Texans released Carr one day after signing Matt Schaub in March of 2007. Carr ranks 75th on the all-time sack list. He was sacked more than Aikman, Tony Romo, Kurt Warner, Steve McNair, Jim McMahon, and countless other quarterbacks with long, noteworthy careers.

Carr left Fresno State with an athletic profile every bit as good as, say, Matthew Stafford’s would be a few years later. His career might have turned out differently if the Texans didn’t go out of their way to break him the moment he came out of the box.

5. Sage Rosenfels

Rosenfels, a former fourth-round pick and backup for the Dolphins, was excellent in relief of Matt Schaub in 2007. He went 3-1 as a starter, played well off the bench a few times and ranked 15th in the NFL in DVOA despite limited action.

Rosenfels was again called upon to make spot starts in 2008, but he threw four interceptions in a loss to the Ravens. The following week, this happened:

When people talk about the traits that make up a good quarterback, they often talk about things like "poise" and "clutch ability" and whatnot.

Most of that stuff is B.S., and the truth is that being a good quarterback is mostly about the ability to throw a football accurately. But there is at least a little something to the whole "poise" thing, and today Texans quarterback Sage Rosenfels showed why has the poise of, well, a career bench warmer.

The Texans were beating the Colts 27-17 with less than four minutes left in the fourth quarter today, and all they had to do was run time off the clock. On a third-and-8, Rosenfels rolled out, picked up a few yards, and then -- instead of putting both hands on the ball and making sure it couldn't be stripped -- inexplicably attempted to leap over two defenders, dangling the ball at his side. He fumbled, and Colts linebacker Gary Brackett picked it up and raced for a touchdown.

Then the Texans got the ball back up 27-24. Again, the key was protecting the ball and taking time off the clock. Instead, Rosenfels held the ball out with one hand as he tried to make something happen with his feet. Colts defensive end Robert Mathis caught him, knocked the ball loose and jumped on it.

Peyton Manning then threw a touchdown pass to Reggie Wayne, and the Colts went up 31-27. Rosenfels had fumbled twice in just over a minute and handed the Colts 14 points. He then got one more chance, and threw an ugly interception. The Colts won, 31-27. – Author unknown, CBS 4 Washington.

Here’s the inexplicable leap:

I’m fascinated by that unattributed game story above; it sounds more like early Bleacher Report, with some gratuitous invective hurled at the unassuming Rosenfels and some word-choice redundancy, than something published by a local television affiliate. The mid-to-late 2000s were a strange time for Internet sports journalism; if they hadn’t been, I’d be preparing a math lesson instead of typing this. (Eagle-eyed 2DZ editor J.W. noticed that the article the quote comes from was copyrighted by AOL Fanhouse, which explains the tone, though not the fact that it was republished without authorship.)

“One time my first year there I was talking to David Carr about this, and David had just come from Cal’s office, I think, to discuss something,” said Rosenfels, who went 6-4 as a starter in Houston from 2006-08. “I’m not sure what it was. And I hadn’t really met Cal at this point.

“I was like, ‘What’s Cal like?’

“He’s like, ‘Well, I walk into his office and he’s sitting on the floor. There’s no desk or anything and there’s this huge TV on the wall, and he’s playing video games.’

“I was like, ‘What?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah.’

“And I was like, ‘Well, I don’t know.’ And that was like my only really behind-the-curtain Cal McNair story other than he was a really nice guy and was kind of his dad’s right-hand guy sort of, and shake hands after the game.” – Rosenfels on Texans owner Cal McNair, from Mike Silver’s podcast. 

Rosenfels’ story above explains rather succinctly how the world’s corniest youth pastor gained control of the Texans organization for a few years. McNair later denied the story; I feel certain that Carr was exaggerating, and that McNair at least owns a gaming chair.

6. Ryan Fitzpatrick

Bill O’Brien spent years at the start of his tenure rummaging through journeyman quarterbacks and pet-project veterans; it’s as if he knew ownership was checked out and he could do what he wanted. Fitzpatrick was the first of those veterans, and probably the best.

7. Brian Hoyer

No Belichick Buddy like O’Brien could resist a Hoyer cameo. Hoyer was just 30 when he joined the Texans as a mentor for Ryan Mallett, who had the professionalism of a preschooler who missed his nap. On the other hand, Hoyer was fresh from mentoring Johnny Manziel and may have thought Mallett was a top MBA candidate. Anyway, Hoyer threw 19 touchdowns and seven interceptions in 2005, leading the Texans to the playoffs, where he threw four interceptions in a 30-0 loss to the Chiefs.

8. T.J. Yates

Yates led the Texans to two playoff-important victories and a playoff win highlighted by three Andy Dalton interceptions in 2011.

9. Davis Mills

A bad quarterback who started for an utterly dysfunctional organization for two years. I don’t think Mills was/is that much worse than Kenny Pickett, but it can be hard to evaluate a quarterback when the organization he plays for is being run from behind the seasons by Rasputin the Mad Monk.

10. Brock Osweiler

Case Keenum would probably be the more popular choice here, but Osweiler, while bad, started for a full season and was the quarterback of record for a playoff win. The Texans went 0-8 in Keenum’s lone extended starting stint, and Keenum became more relevant when he left Houston.

Osweiler arrived bundled with a $72-million contract thanks to his success in relief of Peyton Manning for the 2015 Broncos, and the Texans actually gave the Browns a second-round pick to haul Osweiler’s contract away, so naturally perceptions of how awful Osweiler was on the field are a bit magnified. Look, we’re below the Hoyer Line here, people: let’s not quibble about the details.

Some Housecleaning

Greetings, readers! Your humble proprietor is waist deep in writing chapters for The Publication Formerly Known As Football Outsiders Almanac, which will be on sale come July! I am also dealing with some grad-dad stuff. So the Colts Top 5 will run on Tuesday, May 28th. I will resume twice-per-week publication as soon as possible, and will cover some NFL current events come mandatory minicamp, when quasi-news is happening and the idiot kickers have stopped giving Archie Bunker speeches.

Folks seeking a dose of football history from yours truly during Memorial Day weekend can check out this chestnut about post-WWII football from Bleacher Report. I don’t remember writing it, and I am sure they published it very grudgingly! (Actually, I think they specially requested this piece; they just weren’t expecting 4,000-ish words, though they should have.)

Finally, Walkthrough, the most-respected, least-respectable Monday-morning NFL column on the Internet will return in all it’s ragged glory on July 29th. It will be for paid subscribers only. Why not climb aboard now?