The Texans have lost kicker Neil Rackers to the Washington Redskins. Both John McClain and Mark Berman broke the news at 6:10 CT. It's a one-year deal, and terms weren't yet made available.

It would have worried me to have the game on the line and Neil Rackers attempting a decisive field goal last season. The decision to not let him attempt a kick in overtime from the Washington 39 against the Redskins in 2010 was a pretty damning indictment of his leg power, and other than a couple of 50-yarders in the thin air of Denver, it's hard to think of a situation where Rackers was really depended on. He was a fairly reliable kicker from 45 or so in, at least until he slumped near the end of last season. I will say that, for a kicker, he's a damn good special teams tackler.

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It occurred to me that while we have written ad nauseam about things this offseason ... or at least I think we did, sometime before there was a mock draft ... the BRB crew hasn't yet weighed in on such topics under the guise of sobriety.

Join myself, MDC, and Tim tonight at 10 p.m. CT! We will discuss the defections of Mario Williams, Mike Brisiel, Eric Winston (I guess it's not technically a defection if they cut you), DeMeco Ryans (ditto for trading) and Joel Dreessen. I will ask Tim about 10 different questions about Coby Fleener and Stephen Hill. I will murder MDC in a pool of cold blood for suggesting Nick Toon is worth a second-round pick. Other prospects may also be talked about.

If you'd like to get a question answered, please leave it in the comments.

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On the surface, the Texans lost an extremely valuable commodity at tight end when Joel Dreessen joined the Denver Peyton Mannings for three years and $8.5 million. Dreessen has always been the best blocking tight end the Texans have employed during his stint in Houston -- which is meant as a sincere compliment to his skills, not just a damning-with-faint-praise "well, he's better than Owen Daniels at it." Last season, despite being the second tight end in this offense, Dreessen finished 12th in TE receiving DYAR, and second in DVOA.

Steph Stradley recently got down to writing about the possibility of the Texans taking certain positions in the first round, and tight end came up, which was a little surprising to me. My general position on Coby Fleener is that if he's there at 26 and you think he's a Gronkowski-esque weapon, pulling the trigger makes sense. I don't think he's that kind of talent -- I think he winds up being slightly better than Daniels, but I don't think he's going to be a gamechanger. Nevertheless, let's take a look at her reasoning for possibly going with Fleener, while acknowledging that she writes that tight end is "not considered a premium position in the draft."

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The Texans took another step towards the large contracts they'll need to hand out to re-sign Connor Barwin and Duane Brown last Tuesday as they sent DeMeco Ryans to the Philadelphia Eagles for an exchange in third-round picks and Tampa Bay's fourth-round pick.

Once I got over the usual disgust I have over these scenarios (long-time stalwart gets deserved contract, gets hurt, is no longer worth said contract, has to go), I have to say I think this is a pretty solid trade for the Texans. As the NFL continues to tilt towards passing, a two-down linebacker getting paid the salary that Ryans was making is a complete luxury. Is there a chance that Ryans could recover more of his range next year, after he's further past his Achilles' injury? Sure. (In fact, somewhere on this site, there's a study about this ... by DreKeem? What's a DreKeem?) But if there was any doubt in Rick Smith's mind about that, this was absolutely a move that he had to make.

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Texans fans know a thing or two about bad offensive lines. Chester Pitts at left tackle. The Seth Wand experiment. Todd Wade. We've seen our share of the atrocious, so it seems natural to be a bit worried by the defection of Mike Brisiel and the release of Eric Winston. In fact, one of the very biggest factors in Football Outsiders' projection system is offensive line continuity.

Make no mistake: the loss of continuity will be a problem -- but that was going to happen, to an extent, anyway. The Texans were not going to match Brisiel's contract. It's a scenario where they just had to throw up their arms and admit that they should have attempted to negotiate with him before he reached free agency. If there is one thing about the Texans that I think we've learned this offseason, it's that they value the ability to stay healthy. Mario Williams and Brisiel were allowed to hit free agency in the first place because they couldn't put together a healthy season, and though they are both very talented, that ultimately kept the Texans from investing in them long-term.

But the release of Eric Winston was an extremely curious decision. Here was a seemingly healthy 16-game starter who would have been just 29 next season, was a vocal locker room presence, and by all accounts did everything right off the field. Cutting him didn't save all that much money (though it did save enough) at $4.5 million, and he was hailed as one of the best right tackles in the NFL by Ben Muth last season.

So, what happened here?

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The Texans exodus continues.

Word came late Friday afternoon that the Raiders had signed longtime Texans guard Mike Brisiel to a five-year deal. His agent broke the news on Twitter. Later, John McClain had the details on the contract: $20 million over five years. Here's what Brisiel had to say to FOX 26's Marc Berman:

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I know how the sausage is made.

So let's talk about Peyton Manning and the Houston Texans, a pairing that will apparently be role-played together hundreds of times between the time Manning's release is official later today and the actual date of his signing (free guess: Seattle Seahawks!) despite the fact that there is maybe a three percent chance that it happens. Mike Florio, captain of the voyage, was joined last night by Yahoo!'s Mike Silver, who listed the Texans as the best fit for Manning among his potential suitors.

Let's go over the three sides to this story. And yes, there are three sides. To simplify things a bit, even though I feel there are about five or six arguments against the Texans signing Manning, I'm just going to stick to two arguments for each side.

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The Houston Texans undid many of their long-standing defensive problems in 2011 with the hiring of Wade Phillips and the free agent acquisitions of Johnathan Joseph and Danieal Manning. Gone were the days where you could say that shutting down Mario Williams meant that the Texans' pass rush disappeared. Gone were the days where Texans safeties had the range of potted plants, as converted corner Glover Quin and Manning had arguably the best two safety seasons in Texans history. And, for the first time since Dunta Robinson was still healthy (arguably), they employed a shutdown corner that could run stride-for-stride with anyone in the NFL.

Still unaddressed: nose tackle. Despite a decent run defense as a whole, the Texans finished 25th in power success situations, gave up an above-average number of Adjusted Line Yards up the middle, and had teams run on them up the middle an astonishing 67 percent of the time. Not only was that number the highest in the NFL this year, it's the highest in the NFL since 2008, when 66 percent of rushes against the Patriots went up the middle.

So despite the fact that the Texans were, at best, okay defending the run up the gut, even though they almost assuredly compensated for it given all the extra attention teams were giving running it up the gut against Houston, Gary Kubiak had this to offer last Monday, unprompted, from the mothership:

If you look at ‘em, take both of ‘em and say they're your starter - they basically split time - they played extremely well, and our defense played well all year long. There's all kinda ways when you're running a 3-4 - a lot of people think you need a big nose. Those two guys aren't very big but they're very active, and [defensive coordinator] Wade [Phillips] has played with both and obviously was successful with those two guys last year, and we think the world of ‘em.

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Free agency and the draft will be topics for discussion as the gang gets back together to paint their nails and gossip about who Quintin Demps is sleeping with. Oh, wait, I mean, talk about free agency and the draft. Sorry, it's just that not having a million needs to account for in one offseason and the threat of actually losing someone good is confusing and frightening to me.

Join myself, MDC, and TexansDC tonight at 9 p.m. CT! We will discuss Mario Williams, Arian Foster, Chris Myers, and, of course, Jon Weeks. We'll also pass a motion to wish someone a happy birthday.

If you'd like to get a question answered, there are two ways:

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Myself, MDC, and special guest star Morlon Greenwood* will be live from various chairs across America to discuss MDC's passionate love affair with the linebacker and also, supposedly, this "offseason" the kids are talking about.

This thread has many aims. One of them is to solve UprootedTexan's mystery before he even gets to chapter three, but that really requires a lot more reading than I'd like. I'm guessing it has something to do with a butler though, because that's how all mysteries end.

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I don't think we can be surprised at this point.

Chronicle stenographer John McClain has written an opinion piece today concerning the fact that Mario Williams will likely need to take a hometown discount to stay a Texan. Yes, there are players that could be released to free up cap space. Yes, there is the fabled MDC contract, structured like DeMarcus Ware's, that keeps Mario in town and reduces his cap number from last year.

Say what you will about McClain, and I have, but as a stenographer it's hard to get your message out without revealing some element of the truth. I don't like the idea he puts out that the Texans were swell without Mario -- both because he would have made them better and because I'm a little lower on the individual play of Brooks Reed than some -- but I can see the economic appeal to reason here, and it's a very simple one:

Mario Williams can't stay healthy.

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Last week, TexansDC posted about the need for a West Coast receiver. While draft disagreements are nothing new between us (the Robert Quinn Papers would have reached the size of the Federalist ones if we had let them), I think the answer for the Texans is a little more complicated than that.

Andre Johnson's importance to this team was spelled out last season by just how lost T.J. Yates looked without him down the stretch. After teams got some film on Yates when the Texans clinched the division in Cincinnati, he had a couple of stinkers in a row without Johnson. Against the Titans, he had a great first drive with Johnson, and then Andre made a big difference in the playoffs for him. In fact, he was just about the only receiver Baltimore couldn't cover.

In a vacuum, do teams that run a more West Coast-style passing game need outstanding deep threats? Not really. But, to channel Mr. Kubiak, does it also make them a heckuva lot harder to defend? This much, I think, is conclusively true.

For the first draft in Texans' history, this team has no real need to force a pick, especially since I'm not totally convinced that Rick Smith couldn't find two free agent receivers with a chance to be better than Kevin Walter and Jacoby Jones will be going forward. They are certainly weaker at some spots than they are at others, of course.

However, drafting someone like Alshon Jeffery or Michael Floyd -- and I'd even throw Kendall Wright in this crowd -- gives the Texans a chance to use a low-value first-round pick on a very important enterprise: having a potential replacement for Andre Johnson.

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I've been thinking about Jacoby Jones' defining moment a lot lately.

Isn't it funny how quickly a player can change everything we think about him in the football world? NFL players, at this point of time in Americana, usually are playing football for around a decade of time before they are drafted. Hopes, dreams, sacrifice, and hard work. For both their families and them. Yet with one major gaffe at a bad time, they can become complete laughingstocks.

Once Jones fumbled away seven points to the Ravens, it completely shifted the perception that fans had of him. Oh sure, I imagine most people had the mercurial label on him long before that, but this was the play that cemented how he'll be thought of. Dangerous returner? Well, not when it counted. The fact that Jones has been returning punts (for the most part) well since 2007 no longer matters, and the fact that he was leading NFL receivers in YAC+ as of Week 14 doesn't either. Screwing up in a game is one thing -- essentially ending the miracle run of a team's first playoff berth is another.

I don't necessarily hold out hope that Jones is going to reverse this narrative. He's been here for five seasons, which is right around the actual shelf life of most punt returners. However, I wanted to contrast this scenario to a few other moments in time in which Texans fans (myself included) let one play dominate the discourse about a player. To their detriment.

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The Texans enter the 2012 offseason in a strange position: owning a lot of depth. One of the reasons that Houston made it as far as they did last season is because they had players in place to step up in the face of injuries. Ben Tate. T.J. Yates. Brooks Reed. I would even go as far as to include players like Brice McCain and Tim Jamison in that mix.

I'm not quite into my draftnik costume yet this year, but one thing I think sets up for an interesting debate this year is what position the Texans should be targeting with their first-round pick. From the FanPosts (and subsequent Kendall Wright stumping by John McClain), I expect a lot of you to say that wide receiver is the position. I'm not entirely sold that this is true, and I'll get into why after the jump.

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Right now there is nothing to feel but a stinging twinge of bitterness and regret. The offseason has come all too soon, and yet, still later than we're used to seeing it.

The only real reason it hurts is because of Wade Phillips. Nobody on the national scene expected this team to make any noise in the playoffs without Matt Schaub, and while the individual brilliance of Arian Foster and Andre Johnson was on display, it was clear that T.J. Yates, by no fault of his own, was not fit to guide this team to the promised land at this point in his career.

Yet here was this beastly defense, dragging the Texans along in every game. Taking the Ravens all the way to third-and-goal after Jacoby Jones' completely inexplicable gaffe. Holding them to just one field goal -- one that was mainly because Matt Turk gave Baltimore a short field -- after the first quarter. Standing Ray Rice up on fourth-and-goal. Sacking Joe Flacco five times and bringing out "Bad Flacco" from the beginning. Forcing three fumbles. Keeping the Ravens' deep play-action game completely out of the box score despite having just one cornerback of any real worth.

You are why we can feel real pain again.

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Your Houston Texans outlasted the Cincinnati Daltons of Katy Texas to sample victory in their first-ever playoff appearance. J.J. Watt is pretty good at the footed ball, as I hear. Will that momentum carry over into Baltimore as the Texans take on the Ravens?

Join myself, Tim, and UprootedTexan at 9 p.m. CT as we take on pertinent questions such as "How far would you be willing to go to stop Wade Phillips' interview with Tampa Bay?" and "How nervous does the thought of Kareem Jackson versus Torrey Smith make you?"

If you'd like to get a question answered, there are two ways:

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Today we'll be paying as much attention to the Titans game as the Texans did. Which is to say, we might ask a single question about it.

Join myself, Tim, and BFD. We will talk about these "played-offs," I believe they are called. Featured segments will include "Tim ranting about Kareem Jackson" and "Do they now suck, or do they just not care?"

If you'd like to get a question answered, there are two ways:

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