FREE AGENT FRENZY

Here's how to avoid being blindsided by the Texans this season

Here's how to avoid being blindsided by the Texans this season
Free agency could prove to be tricky for Houston. Composite image by Brandon Strange.
Here's why the Texans place in the AFC South moving forward is so uncertain

Houston Texans new head coach Lovie Smith held court Wednesday at the NFL combine in Indianapolis.

Smith said, “If I’m a defensive lineman, I would like to come to a place like the Houston Texans. We start up front. Again, it’s about, as I said, about the defensive line. We kind of read on the run, athletes getting up the field, making sacks and things like that. I think it’s a defensive line friendly system.”

To his credit, Smith punctuated his prayer with “if” and “would” and “kind of” and “I think.”

This year’s top free agent defensive linemen and pass rushers are Chandler Jones, Von Miller, Jadeveon Clowney, Randy Gregory, Harold Landry, Haasan Reddick and Emmanuel Ogbah.

“If” Smith believes they’re coming to Houston, I “would” doubt it, and “I think” he’s “kind of” dreaming.

Lovie Smith isn’t just drinking the Texans’ Kool-Aid, he’s chugging the whole pitcher. (Fun fact: the record for guzzling a 2-liter bottle of a soft drink is 18.5 seconds, held by Eric “Badlands” Booker. The mass consumption record belongs to late pro wrestler Andre the Giant, who emptied 119 bottles of beer over six hours.)

Star NFL free agents sign with new teams for several reasons. No. 1, of course, is a chance to play for a contender and possibly win a Super Bowl.

The Texans were 4-13 last season and 4-12 in 2020. Vegas sports books have the Texans at plus-20,000 to win next year’s Super Bowl, tied with the New York Jets at the longest odds on the board. Vegas thinks the Jacksonville Jaguars and Detroit Lions have a better shot of winning the Super Bowl.

Star free agents may want to play for a heritage NFL team with a history of winning.

In 20 years, the Texans have never won a Super Bowl. They’ve never even played in an AFC title game.

Or they want to play for a team with a solid owner who’s respected by local fans and a proven front office with a track record of success.

Texans fans hate the owner, think he’s a hillbilly dunce 10 IQ points below Jethro Bodine. Fans want the owner’s Grand Wizard Jack Easterby run out of town. And the general manager Nick Caserio’s explanation of how the Texans wound up hiring Lovie Smith is, well …

Or they want to play in a football-rabid market with adoring fans who pack the stadium, who bequeath season tickets to their next of kin and players can make lots of money in endorsements.

Houston Texans fans are not happy with their team. The stadium is half-empty, security confiscates fans’ signs imploring the owner to sell the team. As far as endorsements, Texans players can’t land a supermarket gig these days. Can you even name the star of the team?

Stars want to play with a generational quarterback who singlehandedly makes a team an instant contender, like Rob Gronkowski followed Tom Brady to Tampa and wound up catching two touchdowns in the Super Bowl.

The Texans don’t know who their quarterback will be next year. Could be second year Davis Mills, could be a free agent pickup.

Free agents are lured to Houston because Texas doesn’t have a state income tax.

This has to stop. It’s not true. A Texans fan could count all the star free agents who’ve signed with Houston on one hand and still have a finger left to tell the owner where to go. Last year, the Texans signed the following free agents: Tyrod Taylor Justin Britt, Donte Moncrief, Vernon Hargreaves, Cameron Johnston, Christian Kirksey, Mark Ingram, Phillip Lindsay, Kevin Pierre-Louis, Desmond King, Andre Roberts, Kamu Grugier-Hill, Maliek Collins, Terrence Brooks, Joe Thomas, Justin McCray.

You got any of them on your fantasy team?

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A lockout appears unavoidable! Photo via: Wiki Commons.

Looming over baseball is a likely lockout in December 2026, a possible management push for a salary cap and perhaps lost regular-season games for the first time since 1995.

“No one’s talking about it, but we all know that they’re going to lock us out for it, and then we’re going to miss time,” New York Mets All-Star first baseman Pete Alonso said Monday at the All-Star Game. “We’re definitely going to fight to not have a salary cap and the league’s obviously not going to like that.”

Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred and some owners have cited payroll disparity as a problem, while at the same time MLB is working to address a revenue decline from regional sports networks. Unlike the NFL, NBA and NHL, baseball has never had a salary cap because its players staunchly oppose one.

Despite higher levels of luxury tax that started in 2022, the World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Mets have pushed payrolls to record levels. The last small-market MLB club to win a World Series was the Kansas City Royals in 2015.

After signing outfielder Juan Soto to a record $765 million contract, New York opened this season with an industry-high $326 million payroll, nearly five times Miami’s $69 million, according to Major League Baseball’s figures. Using luxury tax payrolls, based on average annual values that account for future commitments and include benefits, the Dodgers were first at $400 million and on track to owe a record luxury tax of about $151 million — shattering the previous tax record of $103 million set by Los Angeles last year.

“When I talk to the players, I don’t try to convince them that a salary cap system would be a good thing,” Manfred told the Baseball Writers’ Association of America on Tuesday. “I identify a problem in the media business and explain to them that owners need to change to address that problem. I then identify a second problem that we need to work together and that is that there are fans in a lot of our markets who feel like we have a competitive balance problem.”

Baseball’s collective bargaining agreement expires Dec. 1, 2026, and management lockouts have become the norm, which shifts the start of a stoppage to the offseason. During the last negotiations, the sides reached a five-year deal on March 10 after a 99-day lockout, salvaging a 162-game 2022 season.

“A cap is not about a partnership. A cap isn’t about growing the game,” union head Tony Clark said Tuesday. “A cap is about franchise values and profits. ... A salary cap historically has limited contract guarantees associated with it, literally pits one player against another and is often what we share with players as the definitive non-competitive system. It doesn’t reward excellence. It undermines it from an organizational standpoint. That’s why this is not about competitive balance. It’s not about a fair versus not. This is institutionalized collusion.”

The union’s opposition to a cap has paved the way for record-breaking salaries for star players. Soto’s deal is believed to be the richest in pro sports history, eclipsing Shohei Ohtani’s $700 million deal with the Dodgers signed a year earlier. By comparison, the biggest guaranteed contract in the NFL is $250 million for Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen.

Manfred cites that 10% of players earn 72% of salaries.

“I never use the word `salary’ within one of `cap,’” he said. “What I do say to them is in addressing this competitive issue that’s real we should think about whether this system is the perfect system from a players’ perspective.”

A management salary cap proposal could contain a salary floor and a guaranteed percentage of revenue to players. Baseball players have endured nine work stoppages, including a 7 1/2-month strike in 1994-95 that fought off a cap proposal.

Agent Scott Boras likens a cap plan to attracting kids to a “gingerbread house.”

“We’ve heard it for 20 years. It’s almost like the childhood fable,” he said. “This very traditional, same approach is not something that would lead the younger players to the gingerbread house.”

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