Quinn Gray to the Texans: Where Will Sage Rosenfels Go?

Columnist John McClain of the Houston Chronicle is reporting that free agent QB Quinn Gray is about to sign a one year deal with the Houston Texans. UPDATE: Signing is official.

He chose to come to the Texans, canceling other free agent trips, to be signed as a #3 behind #2 QB Sage Rosenfels? GM Rick Smith claims the Texans would like to carry three veteran quarterbacks to start the year, even though the Texans haven't done that while coach Gary Kubiak has been running things.

Of course, nobody with a brain thinks that this is the end of the story. Clearly, the Texans are giving themselves the flexibility to trade Sage Rosenfels for some draft considerations. Most sentient football observers would think this is a sensible thing to do, but Richard Justice at the Chronicle claims that:

The Texans cannot and must not trade Sage Rosenfels. It's not even a close call.
...
Weakening the most important position on the field to strengthen another makes no sense. And there's no one available that's even close to being as good as Rosenfels.

Then he proceeds to say a bunch of blather that has no relevance to whether you should trade Rosenfels away if you get good value for him. Well, I suppose I'm glad that Richard Justice isn't running the Texans as actually it is a close call.

Gray is a good quarterback prospect who has shown flashes of ability that the Texans feel they can further refine, like they did with Rosenfels. The Texans have many needs and no second round draft pick this year due to last year's trade for Matt Schaub. Given they have found someone serviceable in Gray and they know how to develop quarterbacks, if they can get good value for Rosenfels they should take it. Seems pretty sensible to me.

Cannot and must not trade Sage Rosenfels?! Oh please.

Rosenfels is someone who clearly has value in a league that suffers from a lack of good quarterbacking. He was able to win games for the Texans coming in as a backup, despite injuries to key offensive players and a ridiculously unreliable Texans running game. He was able to spread the ball around to a variety of targets. He is also articulate, a good teammate and leader. He is someone I could see being a coach after his playing career is done.

I know a lot of the commentary about Rosenfels seems to just see him as just a fungible backup quarterback, but at least what I've seen of him, he is better than a number of the guys starting as NFL quarterbacks last year.

The Vikings have repeatedly come up in trade talks, originally via a rumor from SI.com's Don Banks. It makes sense. The Vikings have an extra third round pick. Maybe they make the playoffs last year if they have a good backup to Tarvaris Jackson or better quarterback play in general.

Heck, check out the side by side stats of Tavaris Jackson and Sage Rosenfels. You can make the case that Rosenfels may be a better quarterback than Jackson, and might be the favorite to be the starter.

The Vikings offensive coordinator, Darrell Bevell was a graduate assistant at Iowa State at the same time that Rosenfels was there so at least they have that shared history.

As someone who follows the Texans, I'm not eager to trade Rosenfels away. He is relatively inexpensive, understands the system, has been productive on the field, and is a great guy in the locker room. He throws more interceptions than you like to see, though some of those interceptions may have been a product of having to throw the ball so much due to the poor state of the Texans running game and getting behind in games.

As with any player, if you are getting enough value to improve your team as a whole, you should do it. Kubiak feels comfortable grooming quarterbacks, and from what I've seen of Gray, I'm satisfied that Kubiak can train him up as a backup.

One way or another, the Gray signing is great in that it gives the Texans more flexibility if they get the right deal.

So where do you think Rosenfels goes? Texans, Vikings or other?