Why Houston Texans Should Favor Ryan Mallett as Opening Day Starter

When an NFL team does not have an established star quarterback, the coaching staff is provided with a myriad of options to choose from. Sometimes, the decision is really easy: You have a high-round draft pick who hasn't fully established himself but has shown promise (Ryan Tannehill, for instance.) Sometimes, you'll have a high-round pick who hasn't shown any promise, but no other quarterback on the roster threatens him (Blake Bortles is a good proxy here).

The Houston Texans quarterback debate comes down to a very simple equation: what we know versus what we don't. 

Assuming Tom Savage doesn't suddenly become Brett Favre overnight, the Texans are going to have Ryan Mallett (the unknown) versus Brian Hoyer (the known). According to Deepi Sidhu at the Texans' official site, the two will split first-team reps at OTAs: 

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This offseason has been as smooth as a transition can be for quarterback Brian Hoyer. Despite being three years removed (from) Bill O’Brien’s offense, Hoyer feels like he’s been able to pick up where he left off in 2011.

“It’s not new - for me, it’s kind of just getting back on the bike,” Hoyer said Monday. “You learn to ride a bike and whether you don’t ride it for a year or two, you can pick it up pretty quickly. There’s some adjustments, especially with (George) Godsey being the offensive coordinator. It’s been a great three weeks so far of getting re-acclimated and learning the nuances that he’s kind of put his own spin on.”

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Houston head coach Bill O'Brien will have to weigh the known versus the unknown. As I've written a couple of times before about Ryan Mallett, I'm not sold on him as a solution for the quarterback slot. The elevator pitch version is: I'm concerned that he'll never be accurate enough to be an NFL starter. This was the knock on him coming out of Arkansas, and it played out that way in preseason games; one solid effort in a run-first game plan against the Browns isn't enough to dissuade me. 

That said, with Mallett, the Texans at least have the possibility of the unknown. We haven't seen Mallett's career play out over a large sample size. There's still a "what if?" factor on Mallett.

And I would argue that it's more important for the future of the franchise to answer that question than it is to (in theory) get another few steady games of Brian Hoyer. A team with a quarterback question is a team that needs to seek any actual solution it can possibly get. Just because I am personally not high on his odds of success doesn't make Mallett a non-solution. 

Hoyer, on the other hand, is a more known quantity to me. We've seen 17 Hoyer starts. In every season in which he's had more than 50 passing attempts, he's had a sub-60 percent completion percentage. Last year he was killing Cleveland's offense so much that the owner rage-quit him for a clearly unready Johnny Football. He'll turn 30 in October.

Hoyer is Ryan Fitzpatrick plus experience with O'Brien's offense. A quarterback well-suited to be managed by O'Brien. Nothing more. 

Year	Snaps	DVOA	DYAR	TD/INT
2012	83	-26.5%	-60	1/2
2013	155	-10.4%	5	5/3
2014	934	-5.3%	166	12/13

What will the Texans actually do? At this point, it's difficult to say. There's still a lot of time for injuries and tutoring to play out. I posed this question to Stephanie Stradley at the Houston Chronicle in our mega-discussion about the Texans, and she framed it this way:

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I have no idea who will start for the Texans in 2015. None. A total wild-a guess (sic) is that Brian Hoyer would end up starting based on (the) coach’s apparent preference for experience, managing games versus risking turnovers, not really wanting to risk much with the deep ball when defense has been solid. As for me, I don’t really care as long as the offense looks like an actual, modern NFL offense, and not so much a retrograde ton of inefficient run attempts, incapable of keeping up with good offenses. O’Brien keeps saying how much he wants accuracy from his quarterbacks, and I am not sure That Guy is on this roster right now.

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I would also agree that That Guy is still in another castle. 

But with what we know right now, even if I apply my rational viewpoint and dampen Mallett's chances of being That Guy, he still at least has a non-zero chance of it. Brian Hoyer is definitely not The Guy. Mallett, well, he's only probably not The Guy.

Rivers McCown is an NFL Analyst for Bleacher Report and the co-host of the Three-Cone Drill podcast. His work has also appeared on Football Outsiders and ESPN.com. Follow him on Twitter at @riversmccown.