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Kubiak's comments about Ced Benson are being twisted
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There used to be a party game - or maybe it was a communications exercise at one of those corporate bonding sessions - where you would get a group of people together and have them stand in a circle or a line.
The facilitator would tell Person 1 a short story. Person 1 would repeat the story to Person 2, and so on, until the story went completely around the circle or through the line. Then at the end, the original story as told to Person 1 would be compared to what it morphed into by the time it went through about 10 people. The story that came out the end of the chute was always totally different from the one that went in. It was supposed to drive home the importance of effective communication, I guess.
That's the first thing that came to mind when I read the story on rotoworld.com that Gary Kubiak "expressed regret for passing on Bengals RB Cedric Benson in free agency this past offseason."
My first reaction was 'huh?'
I knew immediately where it came from, having heard it live on radio during Kubiak's press conference on Monday.
After fielding a question from a local media person about whether Steve Slaton was running the same as he did last year, another local media person asked Kubiak a somewhat bizarre and totally out of the blue question about Benson, setting it up with 'you could have had him in free agency' and 'is that the type of back you would want?'
I thought to myself, 'what the heck was that and where did it come from?' It was very off the wall considering the Texans big win at Tennessee.
But of course, Slaton is having a slow start so I guess that gives the piranhas just enough blood to circle. Some forget that the Texans played two pretty good run defenses in Weeks 1 and 2 (Jets and Titans).
But Kubiak patiently answered the question, as he always does, responding by saying in part, "we had our chance with Cedric in free agency. It just didn't work out. He was free for a while and we were a team that passed in that situation. We ran the ball pretty good last year. We had our chance at him in free agency in the offseason. We evaluated him and evaluated his fit with our football team and we made a decision to go in a different direction."
At no time during Kubiak's response did I get the feeling that Kubiak was 'expressing regret' nor did he use the word 'regret.'
The only thing Kubiak was probably regretting at that point was having to spend time answering that question.
The word 'regret' belongs to rotoworld (Person 3), but they were likely playing off comments in the source article on cincinnati.com (Person 2) that stated "with Benson’s start, the folks in Houston are now second guessing the Texans for not taking a chance on him in free agency."
So I guess one person's second guessing is another person's regret. Just keep in mind that in this case the 'folks in Houston' is the one reporter who asked the question.
Lookng back, I assume Kubiak wanted Benson because they brought him in for a visit. I was intrigued by the prospect as were many Houston fans. But I never got the feeling of 'regret' when they elected to pass on the deal. In fact, I haven't thought about Ced Benson since he left town without a deal in March or whenever it was.
The Texans moved on (as did just about everyone else) after they couldn't strike a deal and luckily, so far at least, Chris Brown remains a healthy complement to Steve Slaton who had over 1,600 all purpose yards last year. And no, I'm not saying I'd rather have Chris Brown over Ced Benson. I'm just saying it's not a matter of regret or second guessing the decision.'
Watch Kubiak's presser (Person 1) for yourself and draw your own conclusions. His response to the Benson question is about 1/4 of the way through the video below provided by houstontexans.com.
You can also read the full transcription of the press conference on houstontexans.com by clicking here.
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