Battle Red Blog
Those of you that read the By the Numbers piece from Monday saw the introduction to the concept of the stages of suck. In the radio business, they tell you to reset every 15 to 20 minutes because you audience turns over. No one that I know has done a similar study in the blog business, but I guess that we have a similar situation. We get new readers and lose old ones. So, before I dive too far into the analysis I probably should reintroduce the concept.
There is a concept in the psychology world known as the stages of grief. Essentially, the stages of suck are based on that. Those of you that are familiar with the stages of grief will undoubtedly see some of the stages may seem like they are out of order. I introduced four stages on Monday, but with a hat tip to Pat H, I will be adding a stage here.
As we discussed on Monday, the side eye stage usually is reserved for the beginning of a season or the beginning of a regime. The working title for the stage could also be seen as the excuses stage. It is usually accompanied with excuses like, “it’s too early to know” or “it was just an off week’”. Sometimes the excuses could center on the opponent. ”Geez, that was a really good team over there.“
That gets you through week two of the season or in the case of a regime it can get you through year one. However, if the problems fester then you move into the questioning stage. This is where we currently sit with the Texans and their offense. We saw them struggle through the same things last season and they have looked worse so far through week three of the regular season.
We are not at stage three yet. Essentially at that point you immediately go from answering the questions to assigning blame. So, for our purposes there are three questions that immediately come to mind. The first question is whether the personnel is here that is needed to play good offensive football. The second question is whether the Texans whiffed on offensive coordinator again. Finally, the last question is whether C.J. Stroud really is the quarterback of the future.
We start with the juiciest question. Offensive coordinators come and go and head coaches come and go, but franchise quarterbacks are where we are in the state of the NFL. It seems silly to have to say this, but every team can’t have a franchise quarterback. If that were the case then the title would have no meaning. From there, the pure number of those guys depends on your personal definition. However, for right now let’s focus...
