The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Brian T. Smith: On Theoretical Level Texans Can Keep Game Vs Ravens Close

Episode Date: September 18, 2020

Brian T. Smith: On Theoretical Level Texans Can Keep Game Vs Ravens Close

This is the Matt Thomas Show 201 on Sports Talk 790 final hour The Matt Thomas show on this Well What was your favorite moment of the UH Baylor? Pre-game show Rossi, I put the masterpiece of a pregame show together And now I don't get to use it

I'd have a set an alarm So that I could listen to it and everything Matt. Alarm, the game's at 10 o'clock. You're not up on a 10 o'clock on a Saturday morning? Are you crazy? Okay, fair enough. What time is your sports RV show?

The sports RV show tomorrow at 11 o'clock, right here on Sports Talk 790. Full Texans Ravens Breakdown. We'll talk about what Texas Longhorns are doing on their off date. Pretty much the same thing as U of H at this point. They both have off dates now. Could they slap together a game in four hours, Matt? So you would not be up at 10 o'clock to listen to my approach. pre-game show, but yet your show would be on the air at 11?

Yeah. By the way. I live eight minutes from the station, and I prep my show on Friday nights, Matt. Oh, okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. By the way, I think Dana Holgers is not particularly pleased right this second. Here's the statement he just released from the University of Houston Athletic Communications.

Can I guess? Screw. Screw you, Baylor. Signed Dana. Okay. We'll see how close you got. our team has been and remains ready to play. I'm extremely proud of our kids,

coaches and staff are working hard to meet both conferences, testing protocols to compete this Saturday. We'll be ready to play when the time comes. So basically what I said. Then he said, bitch at the very end. Oh, he didn't. You're right, he didn't say that. Oh, Brian T. Smith, I was one hour away from getting in my car and going to Waco, Texas.

We're screwed in 2020, BTS. I'm bombed. I'm bombed, and I don't wear U of H gear, and I sure as hell, sure is hell, Matt, don't do that stupid, sickom thing that John McLean and all those other weirdos do. This is, and I'm still bombed. I mean, this was, this was, it was a save it game, right?

I mean, UH got screwed the first time. You know, Baylor's had its issues that were many ways before this out of its hand. And I thought this was smart. It kept it local slash regional. It was fun. It was swacky. It was the game on Saturday leading up to, you know, Deshaun Watson and Lamar Jackson

Energy Stadium. On Sunday, it felt like college football and the NFL. And we're continuing to see that pro football can work its way through this, basically, with no corona positives, which is a little weird. He's a little too good to be true. And college football is trying and trying. and coming back, Matt, but left and right randomly, games are getting canceled. And to have it canceled this close, this close to kick off, that's painful.

I mean, that's, like you just said, that's a very, very 2020 type of thing. That sucks. And here's the thing. And look, you know, when you were 18, 19, and 20 when I was, we all learned life lessons, okay? And these kids are learning life lessons. but this is a football part. And maybe U of H is not the only school, but to go through two weeks of game plans to play a game,

to have zero. Dana was afraid that, you know, that a lot of me like, F this, we're out of here kind of thing. And it's going to be up to not the coach Dana Hogerson, the X's and O's guy, but coach Dana like the de facto dad to keep these guys motivated to say, all right, we're going to do this again,

and we're going to practice, and we're going to work hard, and we're going to do everything right, and hopefully we play North Texas next Saturday. Especially in college football. I mean, you know, the NFL, you're playing for your career and your family and a paycheck and your legacy and all those things. You stay on the team to get from the practice squad to the active roster,

whatever it is. But you always in the NFL, you have real incentive. And I'm not saying you don't in college football, but in the NFL, Matt, you always know you're going to play. You know, your team is going to play on Sunday or Thursday or Monday of national TV, whether you're playing or not, big old TBD for 90% of the league. But you know that your team is going to play. College football, if you're U of H right now, you have no idea.

And so you're exactly right. How does Dana keep these guys motivated? If you're a backup linebacker, if you're already struggling with a COVID decision, whether to opt out, whatever it is, that's only more difficult. And I'll say this as well. I thought Dana, well, no thought. Dana had a really, really tough first year of much of itself-induced in Houston, and this is not his fault, and I feel for him right now.

I feel for him, and I feel for that program, because this was a fantastic opportunity. You go to Waco, maybe you beat Baylor. It would be a very interesting game, had it been played, and to have it taken away from you, you know, 24 hours before, or when it just looks so cool. It was like, okay, we're going to make this work. We're going to find a way for all this crap, all this 2020 junk,

and you're not allowed to even go up there. I really feel for him in the University of Houston football program right now. And the reality is this, Brian, it's not just about U of H. I mean, so obviously it's for us because it's local, but this could happen at when the Big Ten resumes, this could happen. There's no part of the country that could be, could avoid it. And even we've talked about this before, this could happen again. We're going to see shuffling.

We're going to see everything. And the most important thing is that we are seeing games being played. And I don't want that to be overshadowed. We are seeing college games being played. We saw NFL week one go without a hitch. We saw the Texans Chiefs game last Thursday, which you were there. Not a single person that was involved in the on-field tested. So there are more positives than negatives.

But the contact tracing has added a new layer, and these conferences, the Big 12, are being super, super cautious because they do not want, you know, the fear of litigation, the fear of a team getting demolished, a fear of team of getting embarrassed because I'm not enough position players. So I don't know if they're working with two different bits of legislation, but the report on the sickom bear or whatever the hell that thing is called had six, yeah, so many negative tests you never would have thought reading that paragraph on that website that there'd be any problem with this game being played to begin with. Oh, this isn't the problem all along with college football.

And look, I'll say this for the record. I don't, well, I should take the high road here, but I'll just be real on $7.90 like I always do. I don't understand anyone who says that, you know, college football should be played or it's the darkest day ever, all that crap. Give me a freaking break. Anyone's saying that, on some level, the profiting off college football. They're getting a paycheck, the cover college football. If the teams are playing in the 10th week of the season, they'll be writing about those games, getting paycheck writing about those kids. It's the coaches. And most importantly, it's the players,

the young men, all the personnel you never hear about what programs. They're the ones sacrificing. They're the ones having to deal with all this. But this is always going to be the problem with college football, Matt. There's so many layers. It's not the NFL. You can't create these mini bubbles. You're not flying private and staying in five-star hotels. You're all over the country. You're dealing with local, regional, state governments, all these different rules. And this college football directly relates to the problem we've had, Matt, for more than six months nationally to where we still don't have any clarity about this thing. Like, the fact that, you know, asymptomatic issues just will shut some things absolutely down. The fact that one positive, even though the person isn't showing any signs, might shut a game down, might shut a series down, if it's major league baseball, whatever it is.

these are the problems the country's still struggling with, whether it comes to small businesses, bars being open in Texas, schools. And so you can make it through, Matt, if you're the NFL or the NBA in a bubble, and you can have your Lemon Pepper Lou, and you can keep playing. But if it's college football and you're kind of everyone's left to their own devices, this will keep happening. But I do believe ultimately that college football will keep being played, but the last thing these schools want to do is have their name attached to an outbreak,

and then they're in the middle of some national controversy. I totally agree on that. Not a much more positive news. Yes, let's be positive. All right. Can Will, no chance in hell, the Texans and Ravens. Do the Texans keep it close this week? Can they?

Yes, on a theoretical, this is 2020, anything is possible, as we've already seen this year. Yes, the Texans can see. theoretically keep it close and inside a stadium without any fans so they're not going to get boot off the field. And DeShon Watson is a great young quarterback. Yeah. Yeah. They could keep it close and beat the Ravens. Will they? I doubt it. And I'll be, you know, I won't be shocked. It's week too. And this league, Matt, is going to bounce week to week. You know, the chiefs are a couple injuries away from having issues. And they look like a powerhouse defending Super Bowl champion 10 days ago at Arrowhead Stadium.

But no, going off what we saw in week one, even if the Ravens played a very poor team and they didn't, and Lamar Jackson wasn't really running, I think over four quarters, even if Deshawn Watson throws for 350 yards, I don't believe that the Texans, here's the problem. I don't believe the Texans have enough on defense to hold down Lamar Jackson and the running game and the Ravens receivers who looked really good and Harbaugh and all that stuff. don't believe they have enough to hold them back for four quarters. And the flip side, until we see it, I'm not going to believe in this Texans offense until

they actually show something that's not in garbage top. And I think in reality, logically thinking fans thought the schedule was a bear to begin with. There would be no surprise of opening up O'N-2. That's why the Bill O'Brien must be fired crap. Doesn't work for me because no one would have thought. That's just stupid. And like, who would even mention that?

Look, if you were going to, I officially wrote that Bill O'Brien should have been fired after the Kansas City game. Okay. Yeah, that's what you do. That's a conversation. And that wasn't a knock on Bill O'Brien personally. That was the fact that he had been your head coach and had all the power and had one every power struggle. And everyone's been fired. And you've been through a billion quarterbacks and on and on.

And at some point, when you get just humiliated like that at Kansas City and you. and you coach your team to defeat again and again, every other NFL franchise would have moved on. But Matt, the time to fire Bill O'Brien was after that game. And what did the Texans do? They officially gave them a ton more power. Nobody in the world would even be talking about firing their head coach after one game in the NFL.

That's not even a conversation that rational people have. You want to talk after four or six or eight games this year? We'll start to talk again. no one's going to do it after 0-1 or 0-and-2, especially after Cal just named Bill the only real head coach general manager in the NFL without official title. Yeah, that's why I think what you have to do is if you're going to really start evaluating, which no one is.

Cal's not evaluating after two or four. If he's going to make a move, which is the chances that are slim, he's doing that at the end of the season. He's not doing it because the team got off to a one-and-three start, because guess what? The Texans have gone to one-and-three starts, and it made playoffs. It would have to be like Cubiak and two. 2013. It'd have to be like, you know, and granted they won their first two games, barely

thanks to, you know, Matt Schaub and Yondry Hopkins, and then Schaub started throwing sixes. But it'd have to be that type of year where what they finished, two and 14 that season. And when Gary was fired, they, I mean, they were horrendous. They couldn't win a close game. Kate Keenum had given way to Matt Schaub and Matt Scha took back over. That's the only way that would happen during the regular season, during a Corona year, Matt. And the fact that anyone in the media would even be mentioned, that right now. It just shows they have no idea what they're talking about because the last person on Earth who's going to even think about firing Bill O'Brien after one game is Cal McNear.

Cal ain't going to do it. Not going to do it. Have a great weekend. And I was going to say, enjoy my cougars, but no one's joining them and joining my cougars this weekend. So we'll just leave it at that. BTS, thank you. I'm looking for the Texans, Ravens. All right, take care of Matt. All right, buddy. That's Brian T. T. from the Chronicle League columnist with us here on the Matt Thomas show.