Let me tell you something about Mario Williams, the number one overall pick in the draft. He's big. He's fast. And he's never, ever going to have amazing statistics that make you realize what a good player he is. He will, though, develop into the type of player the Texans have said he will be.

You can see that in the performance of DeMeco Ryans, the Texans second round draft pick. If Ryans does not get defenseive rookie of the year, there is no justice in the NFL. The kid is unbelievable. Last week, he had 14 solo tackles, a sack, forced a fumble and intercepted the football. He was second or third in the league in overall tackles.

The thing is, though, that Ryans, and any other defensive player on the Texans team that finds himself without a blocker covering him, has Mario Williams to thank for being open. Almost every single play that Mario Williams is on the field, he is double covered. Two offensive players have to be pulled to make sure that tall, strong, fast Williams doesn't get through and sack the quarterback or tackle the back in the backfield. That means a defensive player isn't being covered.

Strategically, and given the composition of the football team at the time of the draft (which included a supposedly healthy Domanick Davis), it made sense to work on the defense. And in a few years, we'll see that pay off. Mario Williams, I firmly believe, will be a defensive lineman of the records, and Demeco Ryans will continue to grow as a linebacker and knock the hell out of a lot of people holding footballs.

However.

I've been to a lot of Texans games. I've been to a lot of Texans games where we've lost. I've seen heartbreakers. I've seen blowouts. I've seen fizzleouts. I've seen a lot of loss.

But then, I was an Oiler fan for 22 years. I'm used to loss. The worst kind, of course, is the loss that could have easily gone the other way. The raised hopes, the expectation that maybe this time we can make it, the feeling that we have all of the ingredients to do this right, and then, for whatever reason, it just doesn't pan out.

Yesterday wasn't that sort of loss.

Yesterday was the sort of loss that kicks you in the stomach. Yesterday was the sort of loss where I realize that all the strategy in the world doesn't make up for the fact that they fucked up royally in the draft. Yesterday was the sort of loss that pissed me off and put me in a bad mood for the rest of the day.

There are two things, two people, that made me realize this. Both wore the number 34.

When talking about missed draft opportunities. Everyone points to the 1984 NBA draft. As everyone knows, Portland went with Sam Bowie over Michael Jordan. Everyone now wants to avoid picking another Sam Bowie when there's a Michael Jordan out there to be picked. Most people forget when they talk about Sam Bowie that there was another player that was picked before Michael Jordan in the 1984 NBA draft.

The Houston Rockets, not the Portland TrailBlazers, had the number one draft pick in the NBA that year. It wasn't that we didn't know that MJ was a basketball god. It wasn't that we needed another big man. It was that we had an opportunity to grab someone that was already beloved by the community, and he was a damned good basketball player, and we'd already let Clyde go. Hakeem Olajuwon became the face of the Houston Rockets for more than a decade after he was picked. You don't ever hear Houston fans questioning the decision to pick Hakeem over MJ. I don't even remember people questioning that decision at the time it was made, even though it resulted in the Twin Towers experiment with Ralph Sampson for a few years. We were all so happy that Akeem, as he was then known, was going to get to stay in Houston. We got to keep our hero, and he gave us two championships.

When I was a very little girl, I had a pale blue jacket that I managed to burn a massive hole in on the back when I stood too close to a fire*. My mother cut up a Houston Oilers tee shirt and sewed it on the back. I wore it with pride. I also had a few posters in my room that my parents had brought back from football games. They were also pale blue and they said "Love Ya Blue" on them. I had blue and white pompoms. It took me years to learn the correct words to the Beatles song "Love Me Do," because I learned the bastardized Oilers version. In the late 70s and early 80s, my town loved and adored its football team. My town loved and adored its football team because we had a hometown hero running the football for us named Earl Campbell. I remember going to football games with my father in the Astrodome and looking for number 34 out on the field. It seemed that he was always holding the ball and it seemed that he never got tackled. We also had a (sorta) hometown hero coaching for us. Bum Phillips was as beloved as any coach in the NFL. I remember having all sorts of Oilers crap all over the house. I remember that this town loved its football team. We didn't win championships with Earl, but we had an amazing ride with him, and to this day there are people who will count the day that Bud Adams fired Bum Phillips as the day they stopped being Oilers fans.

One day, in the future, when the team has gone through several iterations, we'll see that Mario wasn't a bad choice. But he wasn't a choice that will inspire the city to rally behind its team. He wasn't a choice that would have instantly changed the direction of the team. He wasn't a choice that will immediately show the world that we knew what we were doing.

And the thing that pissed me off yesterday was that we got to see the choice that would have done that. I don't have anything against David Carr. I think he's fairly good given what he's been given to work with. He will never be great, though. He will never be what inspries a city to love its football team.

Vince Young could have been that person. Vince Young is from Houston. He led the Longhorns to a national championship in one of the best football games I've ever seen in my 30 years of football fandom. He is an unbelievable athlete, and he loves Houston. I walked into that stadium yesterday, and I saw thousands of people wearing Vince Young jerseys. These were people who have seen him play since he was in high school, since he was in college. These were people who loved this quarterback because he's so damned good, and because he's one of our own. This was the second largest crowd in franchise history, and they all weren't there to root for the home team.

When I first started going to Texans games, there was an energy in that stadium that was palatable. That very first game of the franchise, when we beat Dallas, was one of my happiest football memories, and a LOT of goodwill was built on that. They used to keep track of false starts and botched snaps and timeouts that were caused because the stadium was too loud. By rights, that should have happened yesterday a lot. Rookie quarterback, a huge rivalry, a hatred for all things Bud Adams. But it didn't.

When Vince Young ran in the 39 yards to score the game winning touchdown, the crowd I was standing near went wild. Absolutely wild. I don't ever see that happening anymore. I have never seen a player for the Texans that has inspired so much, that has steped up so much, that has become the face of the team.

Mario Williams is certainly not Sam Bowie. Mario Williams and David Carr are not bad choices. They just weren't the right choice. And that was never so obivious as yesterday. And we'll be reminded of it every time we play Tennessee, twice a year, every year, until he's traded or retires.

*I suspect that whatever material it was is off the market now and may very well be the reason childrens clothing now bear "nonflamable" tags.

Tags: football, houston