"Before the 2006 NFL draft, Gary Kubiak said Matt Leinart was "definitely a franchise quarterback and one of the best players in this draft."

The Texans coach didn't imagine that 4½ years later his team would sign the washout lefthander with the meager desire that he be better than Dan Orlovsky.

Heck, at the time, Kubiak had just signed off on David Carr being a Super Bowl-caliber, franchise signal-caller, with the right talent around him. (The 1975 Steelers perhaps? Because the '85 Bears wouldn't have been good enough.)

Still, Kubiak is one of the best at developing players at the most important position in football. Of course, it takes only a couple of successes to move into the top tier.

That isn't a shot at Kubiak. There are few absolutes when it comes to evaluating quarterbacks in the inexact science of NFL football where even first-round picks are more likely to fail than succeed.

Enter Leinart, the newest rat in Kubiak's QB lab. The former Arizona Cardinals first-rounder signed a one-year contract with the Texans on Monday. Can Dr. Kubiak fix what is broken?

Since he has been with the Texans, a number of quarterbacks have come and gone on Kirby. Matt Schaub has developed into a consensus top-10 NFL quarterback, and Sage Rosenfels is a top backup.

In Leinart, Kubiak is trying to turn a No. 2 QB into a ... oh yeah, a No. 2 QB. This could work.

It worked with Carr, now a backup with the 49ers. (Unfortunately for the Texans, Carr was their starter.)

Leinart isn't happy about his career taking such a downward turn, but he is ecstatic to sign with the Texans. Losing the starting job in a head-to-head competition with Derek Anderson is a far whine from being the backup to Schaub, who led the NFL in passing yards last season.

If Leinart wants to start in this league, he needs to take this as a learning experience and work his tail off so that Kubiak and general manager Rick Smith will tell the rest of the league how much they think of him next spring when he is looking for a job. And he will be looking, just as Rosenfels was in 2009 and Rex Grossman was this past offseason."