David Carr: Carr was drafted No. 1 overall by the expansion Texans in 2002, but floundered in the NFL, leading the Texans to a 22-53 record in his five years starting with the team. Carr led the league in completion percentage, starting 16 games in 2006, but also threw just 11 touchdowns to 12 interceptions with 2,767 yards and 6.3 yards per attempt.
Carr led the league in times sacked three times in his five seasons as a starter in 2002, 2004 and 2005. He also led the league in fumbles in 2005 and 2006.
Sage Rosenfels: For as much bad starting quarterback play we’ve seen over the years, it’s a miracle that Rosenfels never got a solid shot as a starter. Unfortunately, his play really came on right after the Texans had invested so much in Matt Schaub that the team really needed to see what they had in their newly acquired quarterback. The fact that Schaub is a good player didn’t help him either.
Still, Rosenfels led the Texans to a 6-4 record during the parts of two seasons that he played in Texans and he put up more than respectable numbers with 3,380 yards, 24 touchdowns and 23 interceptions there. It’s a bit of a shock that after Rosenfels was cut from the Vikings, another team didn’t deem him worthy of adding him as a backup.
Matt Schaub: Schaub was drafted by the Falcons in the third round in 2004, and after impressive preseason and regular season performances was viewed as a starting-caliber quarterback. The Texans swapped first round picks with the Falcons, while also throwing in two second-round picks for Schaub in 2007 to replace Carr.
Schaub has been the Houston starter ever since and has led the team to a 42-33 record. Schaub has had the benefit of playing with Andre Johnson his entire career and was initially asked to play in a throw-first offense, before the team started focusing more on their running game in 2011. Schaub led the NFL with 4,770 passing yards in 2009 while being named to his first Pro Bowl. Schaub was named to the 2012 Pro Bowl as well.
T.J. Yates: Needless to say, due to the Texans’ lack of history, and the fact that they’ve basically had two starting quarterbacks during their eleven seasons in the league, this list gets shallow quick. Tony Banks is already being used for the Ravens, so that leaves us with T.J. Yates.
Of course, Yates was no slouch during his 2011 campaign as a starter once Schaub went down with injury. He completed 61.2 percent of his passes and led his team to a 31-10 playoff win over the Bengals. In that game, he had one touchdown and zero interceptions while mostly relying on Arian Foster in the Texans’ first playoff win in franchise history.
