Brett Favre to Houston? No thanks

The Texans absolutely should not be looking at Brett Favre. (Howard Smith/US Presswire)

We're not really doing this again, are we?

With Brett Favre's 17th retirement and 10 weeks of the NFL's regular season in the rear-view mirror, it looked like we finally had passed Ol' Gunslinger Boulevard on the map. But then, the Texans lost Matt Schaub for the rest of the season.

And suddenly, the calls from the media for Favre-to-Houston began -- first from Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio on Monday, then from the Star Tribune's Michael Rand on Wednesday. Florio, at least, offered this caveat: "I don’t expect the Texans to call Favre, and I have no idea whether Favre would be interested."

There's no reason the Texans should be interested either, and that's coming from a guy who is fully, 100-percent skeptical about what Matt Leinart can bring to the table in Schaub's absence.

One of Rand's arguments for a Favre move down South is that "the Texans need a QB who can win now." It's hard to see how Favre fits in that category anymore -- he missed the end of last season with the Vikings because of an injury and went 5-8 before that. In his 13 starts, Favre threw just 11 touchdown passes to 19 interceptions.

Oh yeah, and he's 42 years old and may or may not be sitting around doing absolutely nothing right now. Even if he's stayed active, he hasn't played a pro football game since December of last season.

When the Raiders brought Carson Palmer aboard under similar circumstances, he threw six interceptions in six quarters, after starting his first game on the bench. Palmer bounced back to to win in Week 10, but even with a bye coming up, the Texans don't have a three- or four-game safety net to ease Favre in to the offense.

Which is why Leinart is the better option right now. It's true that Leinart has not thrown a regular season pass since 2009, and it's equally as true that he has done next to nothing in his six seasons to show that he can lead an NFL team to success.

What he does have, though, is two years experience in Houston's system, as well as a stacked run game, one of the game's best wide receivers (Andre Johnson) likely coming back from injury as soon as this week, one of the game's best tight ends (Owen Daniels) and a defense that's leading the  league in yards allowed.

If Leinart cannot succeed in this situation -- at least in maintaining Houston's lead in the AFC South and getting into the playoffs -- then he'll have no one to blame but himself.

But the last thing the Texans need to do now, after flying under the radar all year en route to the current top spot in the AFC, is create a circus atmosphere by committing to a QB we're not even sure has anything left in the tank.