Brian Smith: Dirty dealing / Trade of Hopkins keeps smelling worse as futility engulfs his former team

It was the craziest trade in Texans history the moment the breaking news went national. With nine games still remaining in the 2020 season, it currently stands as the worst trade in franchise history. And the craziest part of it all? CEO Cal McNair was still defending Bill O’Brien’s (and Jack Easterby’s) decision to coldly trade away DeAndre Hopkins after McNair finally wised up and fired the Texans’ former head coach/ general manager/offensive play-caller. “We moved (Hopkins) to a team that has an exciting and fun offense. I think we did a good job placing him in a good place,” McNair told the Texans’ flagship radio station, 610 AM, on Oct. 7. “He’s a talented, talented guy. We would love to have him, but it wasn’t going to fit financially with all the constraints that we have in operating … under the salary cap. It just wasn’t possible to do at this time.”

Because the Texans badly mismanaged their salary cap.

Because they financially rewarded the wrong guys and let the wrong players go.

Because this team hasn’t had a real on-field identity since Romeo Crennel was running the defense during O’Brien’s early 9-7 years with all the random quarterbacks.

And because McNair listened to — and is still listening to — the wrong advisers inside a Kirby Drive “culture” that led to O’Brien’s firing, the free-falling Texans hitting 1-6 before their open week, and the rest of the NFL laughing weekly at Houston’s NFL team.

The Hopkins trade is seriously haunting the Texans.

If the early-season 2020 trend continues, it could for years.

Just like not getting enough in return for Duane Brown and Jadeveon Clowney. Just like overpaying and overtrading for the good-but-not-great Laremy Tunsil, which led McNair to recently say this:

“We would’ve loved to have Hopkins on our team, but when you have a franchise left tackle, which we redid his contract, which by the way, he’s playing at a top-five level right now, the franchise left tackle is a huge piece of the puzzle,” said McNair, two days after he fired O’Brien. “We have a franchise quarterback, which is what we’ve been looking for for years and what every team is looking for. … So we had those two major contracts. As you look across the league, we are paying more than anyone, and it’s not really very close on our roster.”

If your house floods, do you brag afterward about how much you paid for it?

Only if you’re a billionaire with a 1-6 football team, I guess.

Hopkins woke up Monday morning in a much better place. He leads the league in receiving yards

(704), receptions (57) and targets (73). And the 28-year-old receiver has been playing through an ankle injury yet again shredding the Texans’ childish “smart, tough, dependable” mantra, which was once used by the decision makers McNair listened to to validate sending Hopkins to Arizona on March 16.

How much of an impact has the Texans’ former No. 10 — stolen by ex-GM Rick Smith with the No. 27 overall pick of the 2013 draft — had on the remade Cardinals?

Well, let’s just say Arizona is 5-2 under Kliff Kingsbury, the Cardinals fought back late to beat previously undefeated Seattle 37-34 in overtime on “Sunday Night Football,” and Kyler Murray literally smiled before rearing back and lofting a hurried touchdown pass to Hopkins during the win.

I won’t even mention D-Hop reportedly, before the game, trying to influence the outcome of the 2020 presidential election while driving a Ferrari.

Winners win. Sometimes when they win, they proudly hold up the No. 1 sign.

The Texans?

Ugh.

Meh.

Yeesh.

Zzzzzzzzz.

The old regime, half of which still leads the Texans’ front office, basically gave McNair a blueprint for how to build a 1-6 team.

The Texans’ weird, misguided version of Moneyball that no one else in the NFL is following:

David Johnson is making an absurd $10.2 million this year and is set to receive $7.9 million next season, even though the Texans can barely run the ball.

Whitney Mercilus ($54 million extension), Benardrick McKinney ($50 million), Zach Cunningham ($58 million), Nick Martin ($33 million) and Kenny Stills ($6.9 million salary this season) are all either overpaid or underperforming.

The poor ol’ Texans swore they couldn’t afford to pay Hopkins, a three-time All-Pro and currently the NFL’s best receiver, any more money. But they’re paying all those other guys huge money, let D.J. Reader go when they could have once afforded him — explaining the huge hole now in the middle of one of the sport’s worst defenses — and allowed a non-GM to make franchise-altering decisions for two years.

The real truth? It started going bad between the Texans and Hopkins before the start of last season. Just like it went bad between O’Brien and other big-name Texans from 2014-20, simmering and simmering until there was one final explosion.

Could an experienced, proven GM have found a way to cool things down with Hopkins, who was still under contract?

We’ll never know.

While McNair kept trusting the king he empowered, the Texans internally and externally were going backward, suffering from a clear lack of checks and balances and creating a broken T-E-A-M culture.

Murray smiled on live national prime-time TV.

Watson cursed on a Zoom call after the Texans fell to 1-6.

“(Bleep) sucks, honestly,” he said Sunday.

The Texans haven’t been the same since Hopkins was traded. And it’s been a long time since you believed this little in Houston’s NFL team.

brian.smith@chron.com twitter.com/chronbriansmith