The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Brian Smith On The Texans Trade For Brandin Cooks

Episode Date: April 10, 2020

Is the Matt Thomas show. We go with the final hour of the Matt Thomas show on Sports Talk 790. Those of you on home, we will get to you shortly. Right now a Friday regular, our good buddy, Brian T. Smith from the Houston Chronicle with us on the show. We've had basically about 18 hours to digest the Brandon Cook's trade with the Los Angeles Rams. My thought on this was I'm somewhat optimistic, Brandon Cook's. Provided he stays healthy, stays out of the concussion protocol, can be a decent receiver for this football team. But it's hard to replace an elite receiver with two decent ones.

What is your whole take on the situation? Number one, they are not going to replace DeAndre Hopkins. You cannot replace DeAndre Hopkins. The only way, Matt, they can theoretically, hopefully, if you're the Texans, quote-unquote, replace DeAndre Hopkins. Hopkins is if DeAndre Hopkins, from this point forward, is never DeAndre Hopkins again. I mean, technically, he is in the prime of his career. He is still young. He has wear and tear, but he doesn't have serious NFL wear and tear.

He's always since college, high school, because of what he went through, his mother, his life. he's always played with a serious chip on his shoulder. I mean, just look at what he did on Sunday night football against the Cowboys and OT and the playoffs and playing with injuries. And he was the number one, and you drafted him at 27. So you cannot replace DeAndre Hopkins. The obvious hope is, and this hasn't been talked about enough, they're doing a little moneyball with this.

You know, there's some Jeff Luno Astros with it. I'm not comparing the two. I don't want to see that tweet, somebody tweeting me, saying, Brian Smith just, you know, said the Texans are doing with Luna with the Astros. But part of this, Matt, is about value from their perspective. And it is about relationships. And this is the Bill O'Brien, Jack Easterby Texans, for better or for worse. We're not going to know until they actually start playing some games, and who knows when in the world, that's going to start again.

But this was a decision by them that had been a year in the making, ultimately came from O'Brien, that said, you know what? It's just not going to work anymore with DeAndre Hopkins. Maybe a little bit with money. A lot of it was personalities. A lot of it was relationships. A lot of it was, you know, whether it was trust or the locker room or leadership or a lot of things. things that happened that still haven't come to light, but they were going to move on. And so from the Texans perspective, as much as 75% of Texans fans might hate it,

they basically took Hopkins, got David Johnson, got Brandon Cooks, signed Randall Cobb, and in a numbers value type of way, they're going to hope they got a little faster, they maybe got a little more dangerous down field, and now you have four receivers that you're going to try to basically get the production that they got last year out of three. I'm not saying it's going to work, but that was the plan. But ultimately, you can't replace D.Hop. So what they're doing is they're trying to tell us that in that conference call last week that it was too much money, although Cobb and cooks will be as much as DeAndre Hopkins would have wanted

if he got the money that he was so asking for. So my question to the guys earlier in the day was, You know, great managers, great general managers, regardless of sport, have great lieutenants who aren't afraid to cross-check them to say, hey, are you sure you want to do this? Is this the right thing? Let me give you my perspective. You don't believe Jack Isabry does that for Bill O'Brien, do you? This is, well, you know, I keep saying this. I will say this until it happens. I really wish we could get a sit down with Easterby, you know, just around a round table. know, the media, he had the conference callouts, but he barely spoke. Everything that we know is third hand, you know, comes from sources, comes from people that, you know, that we talk to. But everything that we're told is that, nothing's 100%.

You and I don't agree 100% of the time, but for the most part, Bill O'Brien brought to be here for a reason. He wanted him. They thought it was a steal when they were able to get him out in. New England, and that came when Robert Kraft was having some issues at a massage parlor, right? So that was a perfect time to leap in and steal somebody away. From everything that we know, they are aligned. Much more aligned than Brian Gain and Bill O'Brien were on Kirby Drive.

And so whether it was the Clowny situation, and that was before Easterby, in terms of when that all built, whether it was the Hopkins situation, this is a duo. this is a partnership. It's much, much, much more about O'Brien the Easterby than it's about telling O'Brien at Easterby what they're going to do, right? He's basically giving them carte blanche. And if they're going to make this move,

this is an Easterby move and an O'Brien move, and thus it's a 2020 Texans move. So, you know, these two guys, and I mean, I can't say it anymore because I say it every week. These two guys are running the show. And they are going to sink. I've been saying for a couple of years, Matt, they're going to sink or swim with Bill O'Brien.

And they now truly are going to sink or swim with Jack Easterbeam Bill O'Brien. And, again, we're not going to know until they actually get this team back on the field again. But they've taken another huge risk. They believe in what they're doing. Maybe they'll prove everybody wrong. Maybe it'll be an absolute bust. We'll find out. Brian T. Smith and The Chronicle with us here every Friday on the program.

I alluded to also earlier in today about that there were a lot of teams. teams around sports that are afraid they're afraid to trade with Daryl Morey and before that, Jeff Leno, because they felt like they were going to lose the deal. I feel like that their phones are ringing off the hook down at NRG because Bill O'Brien-A likes making trades clearly has done so in the last year and a half, and he doesn't mind not getting 100% fair value in return. Yeah, I mean, I joked in the Chronicle this week that NFL draft coming up. I mean, a couple of things.

Number one, they should have traded Hopkins right before the draft. during the draft, right? Because then you can blame it on the IT guy. You can blame it on poor Wi-Fi. And speaking of poor Wi-Fi, I mean, what if the Wi-Fi goes out and Ryan's about the trade Deshaun Watson for a second-round pick? I mean, it does feel like that, right? And we can actually have a little fun with it. I mean, we said Trader Darrell for a while and Luno we trust and that unfortunately got ruined by the sign stealing scandal. But Matt, nobody's come in. in Houston's sports history in the last 10, 15, 20 years and traded and moved and changed like Bill O'Brien.

I mean, whether it was quarterbacks before Deshawn Watson, all the star players that they've gone through, I mean, you know, the only real big name outside of Watson that's left with his team is J.J. Watts. I mean, that's really it that's been around, that, you know, has ties to O'Brien, that's made it through this, Bill O'Brien has continued to remake the team in his vision, and as much as 75, 80%, 90% of fans might be incredibly more frustrated than ever,

more frustrated than they ever were with the Texans and Matt Schaubb. When you give him the keys, when you make him the GM, when Cal is allowing O'Brien and Easterby to run things, they're going to run it in their way. And if you're an NFL team, you know the Texans are open for business. Ryan T. Smith, with us here on the radio program. One more thing I want to get to you on, and it's actually something we've not even discussed today on the show,

and I'll get to Joe and Ross's thoughts on the next segment on this. Did you see Bob Nightingale's story today in the USA today about massive re-enignment in baseball for the 2020 season? For those that have not done, seen it. Essentially, there was a story out earlier this week about baseball teams all going to Arizona to play the baseball season for the foreseeable future. Nightingale's report says that the Arizona teams would go to Arizona. The spring training Florida teams would go to Florida and play because they'd be more acclimated to the scenarios in which they're normally in when they go play

in the month of March. That would put the Astros in West Palm Beach in a division that would have the Nationals, the Mets, the Marlins, and I'm forgetting the other team. The Cardinals. So that would be the most bizarre five-team division in the history of baseball, especially for an Astros team that is just back in the America League for a certain length of time. What's your first blush thoughts on this radical realignment if indeed they start and finish out an entire season in these teams' spring training facilities? that we've had two really crazy borderline absurd national reports from ESPN and I think

Nightingale Storks USA Today, from USA Today in the last five days, Matt. I mean, basically ESPN's report was they're going to create their own city outside of Phoenix. They're going to quarantine. They're going to be locked down for four months. Maybe players get to talk to their wives in person, maybe not. That is straight out of, that's like playing baseball on the moon. And this, but at least then, you would have all the teams together and you're still playing as many games as possible and you have your divisions, et cetera.

This is even crazier to all, you know, yes, these are unprecedented times, but you're going to do away with the divisions, the rivalries. If you're going to, if you're going to do either of those, you're, you're, You're better off not even having a season. I mean, let's just be honest. Some people are going to hate that I say that. Some people are going to agree. I don't care.

If you're going to go that far and you're going to have the Great Fruit League, Major League baseball season, the Cactus League, that's just stupid. Especially if they're not going to be fans in the stands. It's like, what are we even trying to do here? Are we that desperate? Are they that desperate? They need money that bad. That's not about keeping baseball going.

If you're playing games without fans and you don't have your decision, and you're playing against the nationals and the Mets all the time, and you're just watching on television. I'm not even sure what we're really watching. They're basically like glorified exhibitions during the time of a national pandemic when people are still dying and everyone's afraid to go to the grocery store. I'm not really sure that's the best answer for the grand old game. We'll leave it at that because I want Ross and Joe to jump in on that as well.

BTS, stay safe for you and Sarah, and we'll look forward to talking with you again next Friday, friend. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. You got it. All right, that's Brian T. Smith from The Chronicle on Cron Brian Smith on Twitter. So, yeah, we just failed to bring it up because we've got so much other stuff going on today. But I wanted you to get that out there for you guys to think about that.

We'll recap what Bob Ninthale's story is and whether or not that makes any sense for baseball. Radical, radical reinlinement, at least for the 2020 season. 213-5-790. It is the Matt Thomas show, and we appreciate you listening to Sports Talk 790.