Free agency is (un)officially here, as March 11 marks the day that NFL teams may start negotiating with players. The Houston Texans are going to see some of their own, like Jonathon Greenard, sign elsewhere, while hopefully landing a few big names of their own. It's a wild time and it's hard to keep up with everything as it goes down.
It goes fast and furious and sometimes not everyone thinks everything through. Some teams make bold offers that never should be made and those offers bite those teams in the rear. Sadly, the Houston Texans may have to accept that they've acted hastily before. Maybe worse than anyone.
The Texans are maybe most famous for the worst free agent contract to a quarterback in NFL history, with only Nick Foles to the Jacksonville Jaguars being able to rival it. We're of course talking about the signing of Brock Osweiler in 2016. Osweiler was fresh off of a Super Bowl win where he served as Peyton Manning's backup, replacement, and backup once again. For whatever reason the NFL was high on Osweilier, despite being so bad at times that he ended up getting benched for the guy Osweilier replaced.
Somehow, that should've been a warning. Osweiler signed a four-year, $72 million contract with the Texans and was so bad they traded him and a second-round pick to the Cleveland Browns to get out of the contract. He'd throw a then-Texans record of 16 interceptions in a single season, and completed just 59% of his passes for the season. The pick they traded would end up being Nick Chubb, making this one of the worst free agency signings ever, as you not only lost a lot of money but a pick that would've netted you an All-Pro running back.
NFL Throwback on YouTube listed this as the fourth-worst free-agent signing of all time. While it's not unfair to say it was a bad signing, we'd be remiss to not point out that Osweiler had a winning record and made it to the playoffs with the team in that one season. While he wasn't worth his contract by any means, he also wasn't unplayable. He's just far from what everyone was hoping for. If his contract was a third of what he signed, it'd be fair to say that the team would have likely retained him following that season, even if he weren't the starter going forward.
We agree he's probably in the Top 5 worst contracts ever, but mostly due to the Texans giving it to him in the first place, and not because Osweiler regressed like an Albert Haynesworth. Everyone should've known that Osweiler wasn't the guy before an offer was made as if he were, the Denver Broncos would've never benched him in the first place. This is less on him and more on the franchise for being inept that offseason.