Jeff Garcia: How Texans' Rookie TJ Yates Can Learn from Veteran QB

The Houston Texans are a very good football team, but there's no escaping the reality that they have a motley crew at the quarterback position.

Having recently lost Matt Schaub and Matt Leinart for the season with injuries, the Texans have no choice but to start rookie quarterback T.J. Yates for the rest of the season. Not wanting to leave him alone, the Texans have signed two veteran quarterbacks off the scrapheap.

Former Carolina Panthers great Jake Delhomme was the first. The second, per a report from the USA Today, is former San Francisco 49ers great Jeff Garcia.

Bringing in Garcia is a clear desperation move, as he's 41 years old and he hasn't played since 2009. By his own admission, Garcia is not exactly in the best football shape either:

"

Honestly, I'm not saying that I checked out, but I was on to other things. Let's be honest, I'm 41 years old and as much as I keep myself in shape, I wasn't necessarily out there throwing the ball every other day. To get the call and to just have my name come up, it was a great feeling.

"

The bright side for the Texans is that Garcia isn't necessarily there to play. He's there to fill out the depth chart, and to hopefully pass on a little wisdom to Yates, a fifth-round draft pick out of North Carolina.

If Houston's plan was to bring in a wizard to guide Yates along, it certainly could have done worse. Garcia perfectly fits the mold of a "savvy veteran," and there are plenty of things that he can teach Yates.

Even when he was in his heyday, nobody ever accused Garcia of being the greatest quarterback in the world. He was undersized and was lacking in arm strength, but Garcia managed to put himself in four Pro Bowls. He did it primarily by being scrappy, and I'll wager he caused more headaches than any other quarterback in the league.

For lack of a better word, Garcia just had a certain kind of swagger. He shouldn't have been a good quarterback, but he was.

Yates would be wise to take after Garcia with his own play. He hasn't been tasked to do too much so far, but that's likely to change when the Texans reach the playoffs. They're going to need Yates to step up, and they'll basically be looking for him to overachieve.

That's where having Garcia around will come in handy, as he's arguably the biggest overachiever in recent memory.

And yes, that's a compliment. If we're accusing Yates of overachieving a few weeks from now, it will be because he did something right.

It would also mean that Yates managed to learn a thing or two from his aged backup.