Texans owner Bob McNair hosted a press conference at his Houston home on Sunday night at 10 p.m. CT. The Texans were virtually eliminated from the playoffs at that point with the Jets leading the Bengals by 30 points in the fourth quarter.
McNair reflected on the Texans' season, and afterward, he said that the team will be picking up the option bonus in quarterback Matt Schaub's contract this offseason. Here's the full transcript of what McNair said about Schaub, who led the league with 4,770 passing yards this season, and his contract:
(on if he will extend QB Matt Schaub's bonus to extend next three years of his contract) "Well, yeah, it's an option bonus, and in our option, we can extend him, and he's done an outstanding job for us and we will be extending him. There's no question about that."
(on if it was a difficult decision) "No, it wasn't difficult at all, because I think he's really been one of the very best quarterbacks in the league this year. The fact that he's led the league in total yardage speaks for itself. We could see how good he was, and he just needed the opportunity. This year we were able to protect him better and keep him on the field, and he put the numbers up there. I think it's the sixth-highest total yards in the history of the NFL, so, I mean, it was really fantastic."
(on when they decided that) "The first time we discussed him. The first time he came up, it was a no-brainer. There's no way that we're not going to keep Matt. He's our quarterback, and the team has confidence in him. He's shown great courage. You've seen when he's gotten injured, he's gone back out there and led his team, so he's really won the respect of his teammates, and that's what you need."
(on if that is to be done in March) "It probably is. I really haven't even looked at it because it was just something that we had already decided whenever it was time to do it, we'll do it."
Earlier in his press conference, McNair discussed the future of Texans coach Gary Kubiak. McNair told the *Houston Chronicle *after the Texans' victory over New England that Texans Kubiak **“will definitely be back”** in 2010.
"Gary's done an outstanding job," McNair said on Sunday night. "We lost half of our line. We've got two guards and a tight end out, and in spite of that, we still played very competitive football. In fact, in 16 games, we've only had one game where we really didn't have a great opportunity to win the game, and we've never been in that position before. So I think he's done a good job of managing the club and he's done it dealing with some adversity that could have pushed us in the other direction, but instead, he kept the team together."
McNair also addressed a question about speculation that he could be extending Kubiak's contract.
"We have to look at all of our coaches and see exactly where we stand in terms of our contract arrangements," he said. "We'll be reviewing all of that, and we're going to do what's in the best interest of the Texans. We're out to build a championship team, and we have to do it a step at a time. Stability is important to us. We don't accomplish anything if we go in and constantly change things and have a disruptive situation. We don't have want to do that. We want to build on our success and maintain stability as we go forward, and that'll give us consistency."
