Though it’s unknown whether Matt Leinart will be able to parlay his shot at running a team that has the tools to play deep into January into a run deep into January, Leinart isn’t exactly stepping into the fray unprepared.
As pointed out during Tuesday’s PFT Live by John McClain of the Houston Chronicle and mentioned by coach Gary Kubiak during his Tuesday media availability, Leinart has been getting some reps with the first-string offense.
“The last month, Matt [Schaub] had a hip bothering him, had a shoulder bothering him, so we changed his routine in practice for about the last four or five weeks so Leinart’s been getting a lot of first team reps,” Kubiak said.
The only problem? Schaub hasn’t consistently appeared on the team’s injury report. Instead, he has only been on the report in Week Three, Week Six, and Week Seven.
So if he had a hip bothering him or a shoulder bothering him or any other body part bothering him over the “last four or five weeks,” Schaub should have been disclosed on more than three injury reports for the entire year.
And so, in their effort to prop up Leinart, who may or may not be able to succeed in place of Schaub, the Texans have admitted that they failed to fully and properly disclose a cocktail of injuries that kept Schaub from properly getting ready to play.
UPDATE 9:00 p.m. ET: In a prior version of this story, I incorrectly wrote that Schaub had been listed on only the Week Three injury report. I came to that conclusion after reviewing every report via the NFL’s media website, and I missed the disclosures in Week Six and Seven. I apologize for the error. The fact that Schaub wasn’t listed in Week Eight, Week Nine, or Week 10 nevertheless suggests a failure to properly report Schaub’s injuries, based on the contention that the team has “changed [Schaub’s] routine in practice for about the last four or five weeks,” which gave Leinart some of the first-team reps.