I don't understand the "they are out of time" thing. Nothing is happening in the NFL for the next month. Just keep looking. 2 days ago, No one in hte NFL was looking at Lovie as HC. You're not at risk of losing him so they could still hire him in March or April if they want. Sure, they'll look incompetent not having a head coach - but they look incompetent anyway, and at least this way, they don't get stuck with mediocrity for 2 years. If they wanted a Lovie-level head coach for the foreseeable future, there are a dozen of those out there. They were trying to hit a home run or find some kind of super-genius. Unless McCown is the only one out there, why not keep searching? As it stands right now, whatever Caserio's vision might be, he's not going to get a chance to implement it until Year 4 of his tenure at the earliest. It's like BoB not bothering to seek out a QB for his first several years. You can't start building your vision until you have the core elements in place - that's coach and QB.
Yeah it is interesting. The national media loves to tell the Texans to hire Flores.... but does an organization really want to hire a coach that is suing other teams and the NFL? That is a huge distraction, and it is even possible there would be a bias against the team from the league office. Not to mention that they will never publicly state it, but I am sure the Texans were afraid that if they had an employee misbehave or internal issues that Flores would not handle it internally. Some people don't want to hear that but I am sure that was something considered. Also the Texans were clearly not Flores' first choice and likely not their second one either. He also is very independent and I am not sure that the front office really wants that. Hiring McCown would have been almost setting him up to fail. The Texans are going to be bad next year and the year after most likely. So why put someone with zero real coaching experience in charge of a bad team, with a second year QB and some players that really don't want to be on the team.
I actually disagree with you a bit here, apart from whatever Lovie can or cannot do. Your scenario is the most Texans-like for maybe five years ago, where they had some talented pieces on the roster. I think they're a good number of players away from respectability. In some sense, Cully might have really over-achieved with that roster, even though all of us liked to clown him.
Out of time because other teams are setting staffs. Hard to hire a head coach a month from now and have him put together a staff he wants which makes it harder to even get the HC to come here. If they started the process all over now it's more difficult especially when we all agree they aren't going to have guys falling all over themselves to come here and be on staff right?
So...why didn't the Texans just hire Lovie last season? If they were looking for token black guy to take it in the teeth until they get the white guy they actually want it would have been a pretty good hire. Lovie gets 2-3 years in an unwinnable situation, then you put your guy in place when you are(hopefully) ready to win. They look sooo bad right now, even by Texans standards.
Yeah I mean, Flores is suing the NFL and has said it's more important than his coaching future. Which, kudos to him. Cool. But if you are hiring a coach it's hard to justify bringing that guy in. Aside from him being a distraction to your organization, is HE distracted? And is his status as a litigant going to make it harder to get coaches under him? They don't want to be tied to his lawsuit? I don't know the answer to that, but we all knew all along that once he sued the NFL it probably ended his career.
Because they thought they had a real coach lined up....and were as usual caught with their pants down when things went a little off course.
I'm all in on mocking them but we really need to get over the "why not just keep Culley." I wanted to like Culley, but he was an awful head coach who admitted he couldn't keep up with game decisions. If David Culley was white nobody would be wondering why he got fired. Dude was a really nice guy who clearly couldn't be HC. They are caught with their pants down again, but this time instead of needing to scream "THE POOL WAS COLD!" when chicks see what they are working with they can at least feel adequate.
Based on the fact that they're still going to be paying him a ton and Lovie Smith was already going to be on the coaching staff no matter what... chances are had they known "this" is where they were ending up, they'd have just kept him. They could always have fired him during the season and promoted Lovie Smith at that point. Its also not as if Lovie Smith is going to bring in a lot of new staff members. They're basically going with guys (Hamilton) who were already going to be retained. Its just not what I would expect when people think Casserio operates on some "genius level", commensurable to being one of the highest paid GM's in the league. And this does trickle down to his competence on how he handles the draft and the Watson situation.
The damage done to this organization by Bill Obrien is really immeasurable. At the end of the Kubiak era this was seen as a top tier organization (not TEAM, organization) that had been good but not elite on the field. They could hire anybody back then. They hired Obrien and he burned bridges with lots of members of the organization. He hired crappy coaches. He feuded with two GMs. All of this is a result of that. Amazingly, if they had hired Lovie Smith instead of Obrien they'd be better off today even though Lovie wouldn't still be HC.
Its the owner/Easterby at this point... including whoever was supporting the botched Casserio/tampering. If they helped enable BOB, fine... but incomptent ownership and front office leadership is everything. 2 years is enough to "reset" how business is done once you get rid of people... and yet they're making the same mistakes.
Oh I agree, I don't believe at all that this is what they wanted. I think some combination of them wanting Josh McCown, interested in Brian Flores, interested in Josh McDaniels is probably true. They ended up holding the bag at the end because they appear to have locked in on McCown and then couldn't do it. But forget what THEY wanted, as Texans fans we should be happy that Culley isn't the HC for 2022. It's not the organizational reshape I wanted, but it's at least marginal improvement without hiring a high school scout team coach.
Yeah Cal sucks, we all know that. The thing here though is this process looks really bad at the end but if McCown had been a hot offensive assistant it would have been fine, or if they had hired Flores it would have been fine. I have no idea how to evaluate Caserio's organization. I don't understand how it operates and neither do you. The Texans don't leak to local reporters like they used to so the local reporters are left writing fiction for fan consumption. That greatly skews how we see things.
This doesn't bother me that much as long as Pep Hamilton is OC. Three things matter for the Texans the next 12 months. 1. The development of Davis Mills 2. Trading Deshaun for as much as possible 3. Not screwing up in the draft Wins and losses don't really matter. This team doesn't have the talent to compete. All I want is to see Mills ball out after getting some help on the o-line and an actual running game. Then a handful of players need to show promise that you want them on the roster the following season. If a draft pick turns into a star than even better...
So here are a few thoughts. The Texans org is pretty much a train wreck. Can even the ones that constantly suck the Texans knee caps agree to this? Yeah, thanks. If the Texans were going to continue with the “bridge” type coach, they should have hired Lovie last year. Lovie will run circles around Culley. I don’t hate Lovie as the coach, it’s just a little late in the game for it. The org needs a true young bright mind to build something here. That said… Who in their right minds want to go to/coach a team that will be so heavily micromanaged? I think there will be very few candidates if any that want that. Who is running the damn show in Texansville? We all love to speculate, but who is it? I mean really…They lie about it constantly but we don’t really know. Where is the direction? Whose direction is it? It feels like Easterby. If this is in fact the case, you can bet your ass that until he’s gone the org is in trouble. So, anywho, I’m ok with Lovie, I don’t hate it. It’s better than Culley but still not the longterm answer. It’s better than McCown.
@justtxyank can likely explain it better...... I have little contacts with the Texans, mostly with the Bears. What I have heard is that people around the league don't believe Smith would be the coach if he wasn't black. Having said that, if they were going to go the re-tread route, Smith is better than most. He is very conservative and boring as **** as a coach and in his press conferences, but his teams usually are at least prepared. I will be curious to see if he runs the ball as much as he is going to want to.
