The Houston Texans told offensive lineman Steve McKinney that they cut him loose in order to give him a chance to find a new team that would pay him the same $1.6 million salary that he was due to earn in 2008 from the team that signed him as a free agent in 2002.

And so McKinney will look around for something else, and possibly could re-sign with the Texans.

“It caught me off guard,” McKinney told the Houston Chronicle, “but they left the door open for me to return.  I owe it to myself to test the market, but, truthfully, I’d like to come back here.”

Frankly, however, it would have been nice if the Texans had given him a chance to test the market before the market opened.  But that would have reduced the team’s leverage in contract discussions with Chris Myers, whom the Texans recently acquired in a trade with the Denver Broncos.

Still, cutting McKinney now is better than stringing him along, keeping him around as an insurance policy against injury and threatening to cut him if he doesn’t take a pay cut in late August.