But the Rams did make the right decision getting rid of Warner. He had three poor/mediocre seasons after leaving the Rams, and only three good seasons with the Cardinals, and he had a top 5 all time WR duo there, which he would not have had here as Ike had declined.
Given how poor the Rams roster was in general, Warner had zero chance to succeed here IMO. I'm thrilled for him that he ended up in that scenario - prime Boldin and prime Fitz were MONSTERS - we just had nothing resembling that, and Martz wasn't really a QB friendly coach, so Warner would have kept getting killed. The only argument I see for keeping Warner was ousting Martz.
Not quite accurate, but it still illustrates my point.
First, with Warner, he had a so-so season with the Giants, and was actually on his way to taking them to the playoffs. But the Giants had drafted Eli Manning, and Tom Coughlin wanted him to start, so Warner got benched for that reason alone (and much to the anger of his teammates, who wanted Warner to continue starting). If I remember correctly, the Giants didn't win a single game that Eli started that year (but emphasis on 'if'). In 2006, Warner went to the Cardinals, who had drafted Matt Leinart as their future. That's when Warner started wearing the glove too ... something the Rams could have figured out with him had they not threw him under the bus. Leinart started most or all of 2006 given that he was the Cardinals first round draft pick ... then in 2007, the Cardinals finally threw in the towel and gave the reins to Warner. With a supporting cast that was good, he returned to the same form he showed with the Rams when the supporting cast around him there was solid.
The Rams and many fans gave up on a HOF QB, blaming him for the Rams problems, when clearly a significant portion of Warner's struggles were due to the decline in the team around him. As for the Rams, after Warner got kicked to the curb, there were two 8-8 seasons and many worse than that until McVay arrived. Warner's replacement, Mark Bulger (not bad, but nowhere near Warner's talent) got blamed for all the struggles of the Rams, even though the team around him became shittier and shittier (I heard a lot of the "he doesn't elevate the team around him!" arguments then). So, once he was shot, we draft Sam Bradford, but never bother to get him decent WRs, never bother to put a quality OL in front of him, and we got two predictable results - the QB looked mediocre, and the QB got blamed for their struggles. This lasted up until the time Bradford's knee turned into chopped spaghetti. I don't know if Bradford ever would have panned out, but I'm pretty confident few if any QBs would have panned out in the situation he was put in.
That's the history of this team and this fan base. When there are expectations on a QB but the talent isn't there or isn't as good as it once was when the QB played at a higher level, there is always a loud contingent that myopically focuses on that one position while ignoring the other factors. And any QB - Watson included - that started for a team that went 4-12 would become the target of those fans. You can decide for yourself if you are one of those fans.
Myself, I sure wouldn't blame Watson for the struggles of the Texans, especially in the wake of a moronic head coach who dismantled that team with dumb trades and poor decisions, leaving Watson with little around him to work with. At the same time, while I'll hold Goff accountable for mistakes that are clearly his own, I'm not going to blame him for playing at a level that is less than 2017-18 when the talent around him - especially up front - is not at that level either.
