Houston Texans owner Bob McNair holds a certain opinion of the quarterback position - purportedly the most important position in the game of football - that may not be shared by many fans of the team and really, isn't backed by much in the way of hard evidence.
McNair, speaking to ESPN's Tania Ganguli at the NFL's owners meetings in Phoenix on Tuesday, said that the combination of veteran journeyman Brian Hoyer and the unproven and injury-prone Ryan Mallett should be enough for the Texans to contend with the league's elite teams next season and beyond because, contrary to popular belief, teams can win in the NFL without a star at the signal-caller position.
"Teams have done that," McNair said. "Look at Baltimore back in 2000. They had an outstanding defense. They could run the ball and they had a quarterback that didn't turn it over that much. I think that is a plan that can bring you great success. Look what we did last year playing four quarterbacks. We didn't have that consistent play at quarterback and yet look how close we came. We've improved our defense this year."
Great success, as McNair said, does not necessarily equate to a Super Bowl victory and McNair's own actions in the past - the selection of David Carr with the first-ever draft choice for the Texans franchise - suggest this opinion may be born more of a combination of draft failures and mental survival/gymnastics than it is of real, deep-seated belief.
Still, McNair was fairly adamant that he feels Hoyer and Mallett will be able to bring a consistency to the quarterback spot for Houston that, along with an already strong roster and a high-quality head coach in Bill O'Brien can lead the Texans to the postseason.
"I think so," McNair said. "We don't know who will come out on top. It's open, they know it. They both have talent. We know more about Hoyer than we do about Mallett because Mallett hasn't had a chance to play. We'll let [them] compete and we'll be a better team as a result of it."
As McNair pointed out in his initial comment, it's the 2000 Ravens most allude to whenever the idea that consistent winning can be achieved in the NFL sans a true franchise quarterback. The problem with that line of thinking is that besides that year and perhaps the Brad Johnson, Tampa Bay Buccaneers championship in 2002, nearly every other Super Bowl victory has been achieved by a team with what can be reasonably deemed a franchise QB.
Here's the list of the other Super Bowl winning quarterbacks since 2000: Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Eli Manning, Ben Roethlisberger, Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers, Joe Flacco and Russell Wilson.
Of course, as McNair himself points out, the opportunity to draft an elite signal-caller simply does not come along very often.
"It shows you how difficult it is to get a good quarterback," McNair said. "No. 1, I mean how many good ones have come along in the last 10 years. No. 2, when they came along were you in a position in the draft to draft any of them. Unfortunately when we had a no. 1 draft pick, there wasn't an Andrew Luck out there. A lot of that's pure luck."
Luck or not, McNair sounds somewhat delusional when he says he thinks the Texans can win a Super Bowl with either Hoyer or Mallett playing just good enough and limiting mistakes especially as the league trends toward higher scores and the rule changes continue to favor offense over defense.
It takes an answer - a real, honest-to-goodness, long-term answer - for most teams to win a Super Bowl and McNair would do well to continue to try and provide that answer for the Texans.
