Billionaire owner of the Houston Texans, Bob McNair, passed away last week.  Despite his overall disappointment with the completely mediocre franchise McNair built, Red will say nothing bad about McNair.  McNair was perhaps loyal to a fault hanging on to coaches, general managers and some players longer than prudent.  But that is not a real criticism except in the modern “What have you done for me lately” world of pro sports and other endeavors.

Red will say that there were two games he attended, which if Red had been the owner he would have gone down to the locker room at halftime and fired the head coach.

The first game was the home opener in 2005 against the Pittsburgh Stealers.  The Texans were down 20-0 at the half against a team led by the young wunderkind Ben Rothlessberger throwing two TDs to the underappreciated Hines Ward.  That was bad enough, but Red had never seen a supposedly decent team look so unprepared and overmatched and completely out of it from the beginning.  The second half was not much better and the Texans quietly surrendered 27-7 on their way to a 2-14 season.  Dom “the Dud” Capers would have been a goner under a Red regime.  As it turns out, that would have just saved Bob some trouble as Capers was fired at the end of the season.

The second game was the season opener against the New York Jets in 2009.  It wasn’t quite as bad at halftime as the Texans only trailed 17-0.  But the Jets were led by a rookie quarterback in Mark Sanchez playing in his first game and tearing the home team a new one.  Head Coach Gary Kubiak would have been on the street by 2 p.m. if Red was in charge.  The Texans would rally to a 5-3 record at mid-season only to lose four in a row and stumble to their first winning season ever at 9-7 (courtesy of a Patriots team that sat Brady for most of the last game of the season with nothing to play for).

Alas, Red will never own a professional sports franchise and incompetent head coaches everywhere are the safer for it.