Alan Truex: Cowboys advance, but Texans are not progressing

LLANO, Texas – To the eyes of a native, tea-sipping Texan, it’s important who’s the best team in the Lone Star state.  At the moment I lean to the college ranks, where for one of the few times ever, the Texas Longhorns, A&M Aggies and Houston Cougars have nationally renowned coaches in the prime of their careers.  In the final AP Poll of the season, Texas ranked in the top 10 for the first time since 2009.

It seems close to a lock that Tom Herman, Jimbo Fisher and Dana Holgorsen will win at least 70% of their games for the next four or five years.  

Alas, the prospects are not so brilliant for the state’s professional franchises.  

The Dallas Cowboys in the 1970s-90s truly were America’s team.  They defined the national culture as much as anybody did, in all its misogynistic glory.  They were reality TV before it existed.

There was Pro Bowl receiver Lance Rentzel exposing himself to teen-aged girls.  There were the relatively wholesome but blatantly erotic cheerleaders. There were the less wholesome women converging on the Residence Inn suite of Michael Irvin.  There was far more danger to women being dragged through the arsenal of Greg Hardy before Jerry Jones decided to make him a Cowboy.  Not that it matters, but at 30 Hardy has reinvented himself – fittingly, I suppose — as a mixed martial artist.

We can go on – a head coach, Barry Switzer, convicted on a gun charge, Dez Bryant head-slapping his mom, Zeke Elliott pulling down a woman’s bra during a parade — but you get the idea.  The Cowboys have always been synonymous with distraction. They were a sick bunch long before Jones bought them and imposed his own peculiar disorder. They’re not an easy team to love.

But they’re a fascinating soap opera that their base never tires of criticizing and supporting, even though they haven’t appeared in a conference championship game since 1995.

But now they’re more compelling than usual.  In spite of everything they’re really good on the field and, for the time being, reasonably well behaved off it.  They won their wild-card playoff 24-22 against a well-seasoned Seattle team led by one of the sport’s most accomplished quarterbacks, the tiny bombardier Russell Wilson.  

The Cowboys were fortunate the Seahawks did not focus their game plan on Wilson but consigned their fate to the clay feet of Chris Carson.  He was a thousand-yard rusher in the regular season, but he could never shake loose from Demarcus Lawrence, Leighton Vander Esch, Jaylon Smith and cohorts.  

The Cowboys limited Carson to 20 yards on 13 carries.  They were much less successful stopping Wilson, who threw 27 times for 233 yards, no picks, 1 sacking.  Wilson is the NFL’s most accurate deep passer and an overmatch for the Cowboys’ very beatable safeties, Jeff Heath and Xavier Woods.  

But the Seahawks’ offensive coordinator, Brian Schottenheimer, is committed to the methodical smash-mouth style of his father, Marty Schottenheimer, inventor of Martyball.  The Seahawks were determined to run as if they still had Marshawn Lynch, though Carson is obviously no Beastmode.

So the Cowboys advance to the divisional round where they face the Rams in Los Angeles.  A Dallas victory is quite possible, with Elliott the NFL’s most dominant running back now that Todd Gurley is minimized by a sprained knee.

Dak Prescott has been under withering fire for inaccurate passing, but Saturday night he was 22 of 33 for 226 yards.  Offensive coordinator Scott Linihan did what he often fails to do – sprint Prescott to the edge with a run/pass option.  No one, with the possible exception of Wilson, throws better on the run than Prescott, and on this day the two passers were nearly equal.

As for the Houston Texans, they seem committed to mediocrity under coach Bill O’Brien, who finished – early as usual – his fifth season as Texans head coach.  

He’s won only one playoff game in his tenure.  He’s a smart talent evaluator, and he excels at guiding his players through challenging circumstances, but as a game coach he’s not even average.  

So it was on Saturday, when the Texans trailed at home against Indianapolis, 21-0 at halftime, losing 21-7.  The Colts’ Frank Reich schemed against the shaky corners of the Houston defense.

The Texans’ general manager, Brian Gaine, thought he’d upgraded the position when he signed free-agent Aaron Colvin to a 4-year contract for $34 million — $18 mil guaranteed.  But Colvin was a healthy scratch for Saturday’s playoff game.

Meanwhile, O’Brien could get nothing going on offense.  “Our red zone has been horrendous for us the whole year,” he acknowledged after their latest one-and-done.   

Steve Beuerlein of Monday QB said, “This whole team came out flat and played putrid football.”  Watson, Beuerlein said, played “his worst game as a pro, no doubt. He missed two wide-open receivers that could have been touchdowns.”

This was an aberration by a 23-year-old franchise quarterback with a solid big-game rep. The offensive problems begin up front with one of the league’s most inept lines.

It would be much better if the team had not parted ways with Pro Bowl linemen Duane Brown and Brandon Brooks.  The former fell out with hard-line owner Bob McNair, now deceased. Brooks was no admirer of hard-line coach O’Brien.  Gaine’s free-agent acquisitions of Zach Fulton and Senio Kelemete have had absolutely zero impact.

But good coaches find ways to protect their quarterback even with substandard blocking.  The Los Angeles Chargers’ Anthony Lynn uses a screen game with Melvin Gordon and Austin Ekeler to slow the rush against Philip Rivers.  The Chargers are advancing to New England for the divisional playoffs. Watson was sacked 62 times this season – most in the NFL.

Another critical O’Brien weakness: clock management.  In Saturday’s game there was no sense of urgency with time draining in the fourth quarter.  This is a persistent problem that I attribute to O’Brien refusing to designate someone else to call the plays.  Unlike his famous mentor Bill Belichick, O’Brien does not like to delegate, tries to keep his fingers on everything.  He’s constantly overwhelmed.

This is a system that guarantees mediocrity.

Few teams have a core of superstars more luminous than Watson, DeAndre Hopkins, J.J. Watt and Jadeveon Clowney.  But Watt is 29. And Clowney’s contract is expiring. Great players are not likely to stay with poorly coached, poorly managed teams.  In the foreseeable future the Cowboys are likely to outperform the Texans if not the ‘Horns, Ags and Cougars.