The Texans are favored in this game. If they receive a beat down like they did last year in the playoffs, then I think O'Brian may be out.
It is not clear if McClain is reporting this or simply giving his opinion, but he has a long-standing relationship with the organization, so even his opinion is worth noting. There has been rampant speculation among national reporters O'Brien and the Texans will part ways if Houston loses Saturday against the Raiders with some speculation there is a rift between the coach and GM Rick Smith due to the signing of Brock Osweiler. McClain reports both O'Brien and Smith wanted Osweiler. NFL Network's Ian Rapoport reports "many" teams with head coaching vacancies are waiting until this situation plays out before making their final decision. Spoiler 'Why Would Any NFL Team "Covet" Bill O'Brien?'
Despite the Pancakes jinx what he's saying is consistent with what the Texans have done in the past. Those who keep pushing the narrative that BOB is going to be fired are essentially saying that the FO is going to do something they've never done before just to fit that narrative.....one that was also pushed last season suggesting BOB was about to leave for the Maryland job.
AFC South is a mess, so BOB stays regardless of the outcome today (Texans blowout). Jaguars with a new coach, Colts with a coach likely in his final year (and another year of Gore?) and Titans with Mariota injury (maybe worry about injuring again). 2017 AFC South is going to be owned by the Texans with Watt back and more experience in DBs.
Sorry, I thought the ridiculous story was BoB was going to leave. Anyone who thought that he would be fired is living in an alternate universe. 9-7 mediocrity gets you extensions in Houston. McNair gets phone calls of congrats based on how hard his team tried. This is why any story of BoB leaving was also BS. No one leaves the most secure job in the NFL.
I don't see why anyone would covet O'Brien either. He hasn't done anything special while being here. The offense since he's been here has been one of the worse in the NFL. I don't care if O'Brien goes, good riddance. But the downside is possibly losing Crennel if a new coach wants all of his own guys. This organization is just between a rock and a hard place right now.
Texans front office are dumb as **** if they fire obrien. There's many teams waiting to know obriens job status, that's a pretty good indication that he shouldn't be fired.
what i find funny, well not funny, but more eye rolling is that as soon as Glazer releases that opinion, the local dorks all of the sudden start singing to the tune of, "oh it's a bad environment. they hate each other." why not release that a day before glazer if you were so certain? You won't get a better situation if you're a head coach than in Houston. You bring your own guys from the system you envision, even your own quarterbacks, you get to dismiss the qb position for a couple of seasons if you sweet talk that you're looking for that guy that can manifest your multi week by week hybrid ugg offense and that you don't want to be the ALMOST team. To be a coach that moonlights to be the full GM, you need at least one superbowl appearance or wins. Most of them flame out. Maybe he wants to bring in a puppet gm like kubiak did when he brought in Rick smith. But that should be a lesson to everyone, that puppet gm might sneak behind you with a straight blade while you're putting pomade in your hair and slash. TRUST NO ONE.
I can't look at this roster, mainly with lack of QB and a patchwork OLine, and think we should've been better than 9-7. Hell, we were expected to be 9-7 at the beginning of the season before Watt got injured and before anybody realized how bad Brock was going to be and we still got to 9-7. The problem is people don't like the way that we got to 9-7 because of the way the offense looked. I think O'Brien coached the offense the way it needed to be in order to win those 9 games. With Osweiler and poor pass protection, we basically had to go conservative. And I think going aggressive with Os at QB would've lost us more games. This really was the 2000 Ravens model (bad QB, good rushing, #1 defense) and Brock isn't that different statistically from 2000 Trent Dilfer. Not to suggest we're as good as those Ravens, but following that model, if we were going to win, it was going to have to be with conservative passing while relying on the ground game and defense.
The problem also is BOB has had 3 years to build the roster and it's getting worse. If this is his first year and is given this roster, OK 9-7 makes sense. But his offensive roster acquisitions haven't really panned out at all.
