Texans coach Bill O'Brien has the perfect attitude when it comes to his quarterback competition at the moment.
"He's a decisive player," O'Brien said of newly-minted starterRyan Mallett on Thursday. "Let it rip and go play quarterback."
At this point, why not, right? O'Brien is in a bit of a conundrum and is doing the best he can with a less-than-ideal situation at quarterback. Last week, Mallett came in and threw for a higher completion percentage and a better passer rating. In a much smaller sample size, he took fewer sacks and he didn't throw a pick.
He has to know the offense as well as Hoyer by now, and the Texans started playing better with him under center.
O'Brien is smart enough to know that sometimes he has to simply ride momentum. An entire summer of parsing film and data led him to believe Hoyer was the right man for the job, and it took him less than 60 minutes to temporarily change his mind.
Is there any doubt that Mallett still represents the great unknown? This is a hot take probably buried in empirical evidence from the preseason -- Hoyer did win the job, after all -- but he only has two starts to his name. Counting last Sunday's duty, two of his three extended outings yielded completion percentages over 60.
Sometimes, you have to just let it rip.
