THE PALLILOG
Latest Texans drama, outrage, and a cloudy playoff picture
Dec 5, 2024, 6:08 pm
Can the Texans overcome the loss of Azeez Al-Shaair? Composite Getty Image.
No Texans game this weekend. No Texans game for Azeez Al-Shaair for a month. Let’s state it simply up front. Al-Shaair's knockout shot of Jacksonville quarterback Trevor Lawrence was flagrantly illegal and obviously worthy of suspension, even more so with Al-Shaair's other personal fouls this season taken into account. He doesn’t get a three-game suspension without a track record. Well, he has one. As the saying goes, if you can’t do the time don’t do the crime. Silver lining, Al-Shaair should be fresh for the playoffs. He can return for the regular season finale.
Attacks on Al-Shaair's off-field character have ranged from unwarranted to offensive, but his on-field character can fairly be called out. Many players in such a violent sport have different personalities on and off the gridiron, but cheap shots are cheap shots and Al-Shaair is a recidivist taker of them. The hit on Lawrence was in one way the least egregious of Al-Shaair's three clear offenses this season in that, wrong as it was, at least it came in making a football play. He should have been kicked out of the Bears game in week two for throwing a punch on the sideline. Two Sundays ago he drilled Titans’ running back Tony Pollard in a blatant late hit out of bounds.
The argument that Lawrence slid late and hence Al-Shaair couldn’t stop himself is a weak lesson learned in an Excuse Making 101 class. Lawrence was a full four yards from Al-Shaair when he started to slide. Of course the action happens fast but that was enough time for Al-Shaair to react differently than by launching himself and leading with a forearm shiver. The claim that he was committed before Lawrence slid does not hold water. He’s not going that low against a runner (and making no effort to wrap and tackle) unless the idea was to go for the knees, also illegal. Any Texans’ player, coach, or executive alibi-ing for Al-Shaair would probably have gone ballistic if, say, Josh Hines-Allen had made the exact same hit with the exact same result against C.J. Stroud.
Fandom: where passion knows no bounds
I think doctors still take the Hippocratic Oath of integrity and pledging to always do what is best for the patient. For many sports fans there is a de facto Hypocritic Oath taken, by which a fan can gloss over wrongdoing when done by one’s preferred team, but want the book thrown at an opponent guilty of the same wrongdoing. The Astros’ cheating scandal was the classic exhibit of that here. Had the 2017 Dodgers been the team caught with hands in the same cookie jar instead of the Astros, many Dodgers fans would have scoffed that it was no big deal and “everybody was doing it.” Meanwhile many Astros fans would have been beyond apoplectic at the nefarious deed and wanted the Dodgers punished to the max. The way of the world.
If one wants to argue that quarterbacks are over-protected, so be it, but everyone knows they are heavily protected as the most valuable and expensive group of commodities in the game. If a defender can’t play accordingly, the defender is the problem, not the rules. There are those who romanticize what used to be allowed in the NFL, and lament what they consider the “wussification” of the game today. It’s a rather Neanderthal-ish perspective given the reality of CTE and the numerous sad stories of dementia and suicide.
Examining the ripple effect
While not a star, Al-Shaair will be missed. He’s been solid overall pretty much at the level of the guy he replaced (Blake Cashman). In the 10 regular season games he’s played Al-Shaair has been on the field for 85 percent of the Texans’ defensive snaps. His suspension does happen to coincide with the Texans’ toughest three game stretch of the season. He’ll sit out matchups with the Dolphins, Chiefs, and Ravens. The Dolphins will be here in desperation mode trying to keep playoff hopes alive, but when Tua Tagovailoa is healthy at quarterback, Miami is a better team than its 5-7 record indicates. The Chiefs are the Chiefs. The Ravens will have Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry ready to roll at NRG Stadium Christmas day.
Fortunately for the Texans they can lose all three of those games and still win the AFC South, but it could get dicey. To borrow from baseball, the Texans’ magic number is two. Any combination of Texan wins and Colt losses that reaches two wraps it up. The Colts also have their open week this week. Next week they play at Denver in a probable loss. Couple that with a Texans win over the Dolphins, and division title clinched. However, should the Texans go 0-3 in Al-Shaair's absence to fall to 8-8...
After Denver, the Colts’ final three games are versus the worse, worser, and worsest Titans, Giants, and Jaguars. If Indy upsets the Broncos, winning out becomes quite viable. That would mean a 10-7 final record, forcing the Texans to win two of their remaining four games. A loss at Denver and three wins closing the Colts at 9-8 would mean the Texans need one victory. The Texans’ regular season finale is at...Tennessee.
Food for thought
Two-time former Texan Kareem Jackson last season got separate two and four-game suspensions for his repeated illegal and/or dirty hits. The 36-years-old Jackson is still hanging on to his career. He's been on the Buffalo Bills’ practice squad this season.
For Texans’ conversation, catch Brandon Strange, Josh Jordan, and me on our Texans On Tap podcasts. Thursdays feature a preview of the upcoming game, and then we go live (then available on demand) after the final gun of the game: Texans on Tap - YouTube
The Astros are always in season for discussion. Our Stone Cold ‘Stros podcasts drop Mondays: Click here to watch!
With overnight temperatures dipping into the 20s this week in Houston, it seems good timing to have the warm thoughts of baseball being back, at least spring training games. The Astros have more shakiness about their squad than they have had in nearly a decade, but the Astros still have a nucleus of an American League West contender. With the exits of Kyle Tucker and Alex Bregman, it’s just a notably different nucleus than in recent years.
Jose Altuve is the last remaining mainstay of the greatest era in Astros’ history, and he is one of the biggest stories of their preseason as he for the time being at least is left fielder Jose Altuve. By every indication he is embracing the challenge with class and energy. The obvious impetus for test driving the move is the soon-to-be 35 years old Altuve’s defensive deterioration. It can be tough for the player himself to notice that his range has declined. The voiding of defensive shifts after the 2022 season shined a brighter light on Altuve’s D decline. Still, last season Altuve made his ninth All-Star team and despite also displaying some offensive decline remained the clearly best offensive second baseman in the American League. It’s part of the tradeoff of reducing the defensive workload on Yordan Alvarez, and hoping to upgrade defensively at second with some combo of Mauricio Dubon, Brendan Rodgers, or other.
The natural comparison in Astros’ history of a franchise icon losing his defensive spot and making a late-career position change is to Craig Biggio. Biggio’s All-Star days were behind him when the Astros moved him from second base to center field for the 2003 season because of the signing of free agent Jeff Kent. It spoke to the athlete Biggio was that at 37 years old he could make the move at all. After not quite a season and a half in center, Biggio moved to left when the Astros traded for young stud center fielder Carlos Beltran. Both Kent and Beltran left in free agency after the 2004 season, and Biggio moved back to second for the final three seasons of his career.
Second basemen are often second basemen and not shortstops in part because of their throwing arms. Altuve’s throwing arm will be an issue in left field. Even though Daikin Park has the smallest square footage of fair territory in Major League Baseball because of its left to left-center field dimensions, Altuve’s arm will be a liability. In understandably wanting to put an optimistic spin on things, manager Joe Espada and general manager Dana Brown have talked of how Altuve will be able to get momentum behind throws more so than when playing second. That’s true when camping under a fly ball in the outfield. That is not true when Altuve will have to cut off balls hit toward the left field line, or cutting across into the left-center field gap. There will be balls that would be singles when hit to other left fielders that will become doubles when Altuve has to play them, and baserunners will go from first to third and second to home much more readily. As an infielder Altuve has always been outstanding at running down pop-ups, so there is reason to believe he’ll be solid tracking fly balls in the outfield. However, the reality of a guy who is five feet six inches tall (in spikes) is that there will be the occasional fly ball or line drive that is beyond his grasp that more “normal” sized outfielders would grab. Try to name a good outfielder who stood shorter than five-foot-nine...
Here’s one: Hall of Famer Tim Raines (also originally a second baseman) was (and presumably still is!) five-foot-eight.
Here's another: Hall of Famer Hack Wilson was five-six. Four times he led the National League in home runs topped by a whopping 56 in 1930 when he set the still standing record of 191 runs batted in for a single season.
And another: Hall of Famer five-foot-four “Wee” Willie Keeler. Who last played in 1910.
Just a bit outside
Another element new to the Grapefruit League in Florida (and Cactus League in Arizona) this year is the limited use of what Major League Baseball is calling the Automated Ball Strike System. The ABS is likely coming to regular season games next year. This spring will be our first look at its use in big league games. Home plate umpires making ball and strike calls will not be going the way of the dinosaur. Challenges can be made until a team is wrong twice. Significantly, only the batter, pitcher, or catcher can challenge and must do so within two seconds of the pitch being caught. No dugout input allowed. No time to watch a replay.
The Astros’ spring park in West Palm Beach is not among the 13 facilities set up with ABS cameras. That seems silly given that the Astros share the place with the Washington Nationals. More use would be gotten from, and more data collected there than will be from a park with half the spring games played in it.
The countdown to Opening Day is on. Join Brandon Strange, Josh Jordan, and me for the Stone Cold ‘Stros podcast which drops each Monday afternoon, with an additional episode now on Thursday. Click here to catch!
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