Written by Peter King at MMQB.com
This is a different Brock Osweiler from the one I remember last season in Denver. That was never his team. It was Peyton Manning’s team. But this Houston group, the coaches and the players, treats Osweiler like he’s the no-doubt franchise quarterback. Interesting: Osweiler may get more respect in this place, where the fans and teammates and coaches have never seen him play a football game in a home uniform, than he would be getting right now in Denver, where he started seven games last year.
I thought on Monday I might be able to divine the real reason why Osweiler’s here, when I spoke with him after the Texans practiced inside the bubble at their facility across the street from their home stadium. No chance. He learned too much from his time in Denver—ironically, he told me, so much of it from being Manning’s caddy for both of their careers in Colorado—to relive something bound to be painful to someone.
“There are a lot of reasons why I decided to go to Houston, and with all due respect, I don’t want to go completely into that question,” said Osweiler. “It’s August. The one thing that I will say is I love the football team, and I came here to be a part of this second-to-none organization, from the top down, from Mr. McNair [owner Bob McNair] to the coaching staff to a locker room full of players I respect. I viewed this as a special opportunity, and I have absolutely no regrets with the decision I made.”
Right answer.
I have my theories, but they’ll remain theories, because Osweiler has kept a tight lid on why he left a Super Bowl champion with a suffocating defense and two excellent wideouts. One theory is Osweiler (and Manning, for that matter) were both more fond of Adam Gase’s offense, which they ran before Gary Kubiak became coach before last season, than Kubiak’s. And there was no way the Super Bowl-winning head coach was dumping his offense now. Two is that the offer in Houston was better, with $7 million more in guaranteed money than Denver’s deal, and a higher average per year. Three: Osweiler was sore about being benched at the end of the season and replaced by a recuperated Manning for the playoffs, something Denver GM John Elway referenced in an interview Monday and Osweiler brushed off.
Smart. It doesn’t do any good for Osweiler to exhume his thoughts on Denver, particularly if some were negative. Time to move on.
So … about the different Osweiler. My last memory of him with the Broncos: In the locker room after the Super Bowl win in Santa Clara, with the celebration in full force and reporters swarming Broncos players, Osweiler, dressed to leave, was digging in his locker to pack up and go. Manning hadn’t even taken his uniform off yet, and the mob was around him, and Osweiler just sort of put his head down and scurried from the locker room. “We’d just been told buses would leave in 45 minutes, and I was ready to go,” he said. “So a couple of teammates and I left and went and got a beer at one of the clubs in [Levi’s Stadium] before the bus left. That’s all that was.”
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