The game every football writer with an ounce of smugness has been waiting for is almost here. When the Texans and Falcons play Sunday, it will mark the first game Schaub plays against his former team. The game also comes packaged without Mike Vick, who is even in trouble with the freakin' Canadians now. There are going to be--and already are--a truckload of articles on how the Falcons never should have dealt Schaub and aren't they a bunch of morons and ahahahaha!
It's the kind of self-congratulatory thing that really ends up pissing me off. The Falcons made a move they thought was prudent at the time. Who could have known how quickly Vick's life and career would spiral downward? I said it at the time and I will say it again: it was excellent value for an unknown quantity who probably would have dove headfirst into free agency had the Vick fiasco never started. It's not like Schaub is lighting the world on fire, either. He's completed a startling 75% of his passes but has only 4 TDs to 3 INTs. Compare that to our own extremely maligned QB, who has completed 68% of his passes and has 2 TDs to 2 INTs. It doesn't seem like the numbers explain why everyone's so in love with Matt Schaub.
I think that has at least something to do with the obsession sportswriters have with kicking a team while it's down. Lately the AJC has broken the sunshine line and started writing some more cheerful pieces, but the national media is still light years away from noticing anything positive with the Falcons. Instead, we get garbage like ESPN's John Clayton talking about Harrington "keeping a spot warm" for Byron Leftwich and tsk tsking the Schaub trade. You know what, John Clayton?
We get it. We know you think Petrino and McKay can't even put their pants on without lighting their own houses on fire. We know our team is so incompetent we may actually lose 17 games. We know Mike Vick is the worst criminal mastermind the country has ever known. And we know you think Matt Schaub is the second coming of Football Jesus. But for all that, I'm still not convinced. I think Schaub's a talented guy and a good guy who deserves whatever success he finds in Houston. I also know that a quarterback can't be judged a success after three weeks unless you're a complete moron. Rehashing the same tired crap about Vick and Schaub only makes writers look like they aren't paying any attention to the Falcons at all. Maybe they're not.
All I know is that I'm not ready to call Schaub a star yet. He'll have a tough challenge against the Falcons will Andre Johnson out, and for one week I'll be rooting hard for him to fail. When the Falcons head on their way, though, I'll be hoping for good things from Matt Schaub. I hope with time that the urge to write smug articles about the trade will die out.
Because I know Schaub can succeed without the Falcons having failed.