NFL: The Lesson Of Brock Osweiler

A New York writer friend of mine, Damon Salvadore, has oft voiced his displeasure at the current state of movie scripts.

- Stephen Coganator

To him, they are a constant repetition of the same plot lines that are twisted up into sequels, relaunches, caricatures, or given a change of scenery.

“How many ‘Fast and Furious’ are we going to get?” was essentially one of his Facebook statuses. No one is producing anything new with the exception of Pixar.

Damon’s thoughts came to my mind as I looked at the stat sheet of the Houston Texans vs. Jacksonville Jaguars and saw that Blake Bortles who had a pathetic game (12/28 for 92 yards and an interception) finally had an opponent worse than him.

Brock Osweiler, the $72 million free agent quarterback, was finally so bad (6/11 for 48 yards and two interceptions) that Houston benched him for Tom Savage, a career backup.

The Texans still managed to edge the Jaguars 21-20 and are still in the race for the AFC South crown. Osweiler has been permanently benched by Head Coach Bill O’Brien.

The future of Osweiler is grim.

He has given little reason to think he’ll improve and looks to be an all-time free agent flop who the Texans will have to either keep, cut or trade (maybe somebody is dumb enough to take that contract). The 2016 season and the immediate future 2017 season are in grave doubt because the Texans made a mistake; thus the lesson of Brock Osweiler.

Except that, this isn’t a new lesson. It’s the same old movie script that’s been juggled up, added a new twist here and there, white-out has been slapped on, and new names were written over. The lesson of Brock Osweiler is the lesson of Albert Haynesworth, the lesson of Neil O’Donnell, the lesson of DeMarco Murray, the lesson of Carl Crawford, etc.

The lesson of these lessons being: Don’t just sign players just to sign players or self-convince yourself into a trap. This is what happened in all of these cases.