Knowing he’s going to be under fire the entire offseason, many of his Texans teammates are rushing to the defense of quarterback Matt Schaub.
Which is a prudent course to take, of course, since they’re stuck with him.
“Have they ever been in his shoes?” defensive end J.J. Watt said of Schaub’s critics via the Houston Chronicle. “If you want to sit here and question our quarterback, that’s fine. But every guy in this room believes in him. We all trust and believe that he can take us there. We’re not going to listen to what the outside world says.”
If that’s the case, the Texans should invest in as many ear plugs as backup linebackers this offseason.
Schaub knows this too. He didn’t meet with reporters, but during his regular radio show, he acknowledged the continued disappointment.
“If anyone out there, any listeners, have lost confidence in me or this team, I don’t know what to say to them,” Schaub said on his radio show on KILT610 AM. “Everyone in this locker room gave it up as much as we could for each other, for our team, for our organization, for our city.
“Ultimately, we didn’t make enough plays in that ballgame to win the game, but we’re going to go right back to the drawing board, right back to that wall. We’re going to bust through it one of these days.”
The problem for Schaub and the Texans is that they’re going to have to continue defending themselves until they have another chance to change the postseason narrative. The Falcons essentially went through a regular season knowing nothing they did mattered if they didn’t push through the playoff barrier.
And now the Texans are in the same situation, since expectations have been raised to the point that beating the Bengals is no longer enough.