So then was the point? If you didn't think you could win with him and weren't planning on firing him after 1 year, what was the end game? Have a lame duck coach for 2-3 years and then pick a new coach, but miss out on the opportunity for that coach to develop players in his own system or draft players that fit what he wants to do? This seems like the dumbest of all the options.
That goes against what the Texans are saying that Cal has been too hands off in the past and wants to get more involved in this year's coaching search. By other reporting, Gannon declined the job because Caserio wanted to pick his assistants and he said "hell no" to that stupid idea.
Prior to this year the reporting was that Cal hired the coaches. This "hands off" story is pretty new. The second half of your post though is definitely believable. The hiring assistants thing is a big problematic trend in all sports with established coaches. But, with that said, both with Culley and with Lovie the coaching staff was full of guys tied to them for the most part.
That's true. But I feel like the Texans whole Front Office / ownership / coaching situation has always been a rorschach test (same with Easterby, BoB/Gaines, etc). No one ever explains who's in charge of what, so people can blame whoever they don't like for whatever goes wrong.
Since the Texans' FO is so out of touch, will any of you be surprised if they wait until the last moment once again and announce that Pep will be the new head coach of the Texans?
Caserio gave the clearest answer on this the other day saying he suggests the HC but Cal/Hannah makes the call. Also said they have the trump card which alludes me to believe they’ve used it before.
Let's start here: while MLB does not, by any means, have a pristine race record when it comes to its managers, there've been 62 Black managers throughout MLB's history (not to mention dozens & dozens of Hispanic managers). The NFL? 24. These are not the same things. But, to answer your question: No. Baker was hired specifically because Crane - and, frankly, many within baseball - saw him as an ideal candidate to help the team navigate the post-scandal waters. It was likely to be a difficult task - but handing him a 109-win team that just played in the World Series is a capital-O Opportunity. If Baker was able to right the ship and continue winning... It certainly wasn't setting him up to fail. The Texans, OTOH, hired Smith so they could fire him as soon as 1) they cleaned up their own mess and/or 2) someone better came along. These are also not the same thing.
He was specifically hired because the Astros thought he was an ideal choice to guide a really good team through a difficult time. He wasn't hired as scapegoat or last option or with the intent to fire him. And it worked - he led the Astros through the scandal and has had massive success, leading to an even more extended opportunity for him. When forced to make a choice between the manager and the GM, the Astros continued to support the manager and let the GM go.
Baseball has also never been a majority black game and yet they've had double the black "head coaches." So that's even more damning.
Yeah I've said this for years. The Yankees worked this way for a long time as well under Steinbrenner. He had his "tampa office" and the NY office and of course himself. Anything good was either George spending money or the brainiacs in NY, anything bad was always Tampa. But no one ever knew who made what decisions UNTIL it was either good or bad and then they blamed. Texans reporters have said over and over prior to this year that Bob and then Cal hired the coaches. We also know that Cal has had a long standing relationship with Lovie. To my knowledge Caserio has never had any connection to Lovie. It's inconceivable to me that Caserio hired Lovie as the DC for Culley BEFORE he hired Culley and then made keeping Lovie as DC a condition of hiring the next head coach. It just doesn't make any sense. For clarity: It doesn't make sense that Caserio would do that for LOVIE, not that he would be the type to demand to hire assistants.
I don't remember the Cal-Lovie mandate but this is certainly one of the most plausible scenerios I've seen.
Agreed. I don't know how much or even if race played a part in it. The Texans have now fired three head football coaches over the last three years and all of them are black. There are a couple of ways to look at it. A decade ago and I don't think a team would likely hire three straight black head coaches. On the other end, the Texans knew that these coaches wouldn't be around long term when they hired them. Someone had to play QB. Yeah and they even screwed that up. The Texans were not going to hire Flores after he sued the NFL. The Texans are not a progressive organization and wanted NOTHING to do with that and worried they could be next. That is the Texans.
I've been openly critical of Caserio, in large part because, at this point, the only vital thing he could really do was hire a competent head coach. And, well... But whenever I've brought this up - here, on Twitter - I've been told repeatedly Caserio did not hire Culley or Smith; McNair did. I never bought that, and even if Cal were to call me and confirm it (full disclosure: uh... he has not), it still doesn't paint Caserio in a positive light at all. Why would a general manager abdicate arguably the most important hire within an oganization? Anyway, having Cal now confirm he wasn't involved in Culley or Smith - or, at least, not so involved as to absolve Caserio from any blame, I will now go back to pushing the alarm as hard as I can on Caserio. Can someone - anyone - tell me why we shouldn't be full-on concerned that Caserio - like O'Brien, like Easterby - hell, like Cal - is just another overmatched moron?
Dates back further to Kubiak really being the GM, but bringing in Smith to handle the cap, and along the way Smith became close to the McNairs and ended up outlasting the guy who really hired him. Since they were winning (relatively), nobody was worried about a possible role definition issue. So the McNairs still are the root of the problem. Casserly was probably the only GM in the franchise's history that truly had full control over all things football, and since that was a colossal failure, the McNairs have been more hands on (in a bad way) ever since.
The Astros have had Dusty Baker as their manager for years. The Astros were an elite team when they hired Dusty Baker. The Astros hired Dusty Baker in part because of his long track record avoiding scandal and his strong relationship with the media and with major league baseball.
The Texans franchise started to head south when they hired an incompetent head coach in Bill O'Brien and kept him around far too long allowing BOB to destroy everything the franchise had built to that point. After that, they hired 2 more completely incompetent head coaches, but seemingly learned the lesson from the BOB experience and they fired the incompetent coaches after just one season. IMO it's bad that they hired the 2 more incompetent head coaches, but it's a VERY good thing that they dumped them after one season to limit the damage they could do. If the Texans hire a competent head coach this time around, maybe they can start building back. We should flat out ignore those who only care about the skin color of head coaches, those kinds of people are irrelevant at best and actively harmful at worst. The ONLY thing that should matter is competence. Get a competent coach and the rest will take care of itself. The whiners will whine, but that's fine...it's what they do best. They aren't stopping no matter what you do.
Yep. And if they fired him after the covid year to re-hire Hinch, they would have been rightly criticized. But that was never their intention. The Texans initial intentions have brought all of this on them... whether they were truly aware of what they were doing or not. They hired people who had no other options to be a HC, and they had no expectations of them being here long term.
If the Astros failed to make the playoffs, they'd have probably fired Dusty Baker. You seem to not realize that coaches get judged based on team performance. Dusty is still around ONLY because of how well the Astros have done, actually exceeding expectations the past several years. You hire a coach, if they suck, you fire them. The last two Texans head coaches have been absolutely godawful...they are right to fire them. If you are a godawful head coach, you should have no expectations of being around long term no matter who you are.
Honestly they were likely going to fire him after this past season after any outcome EXCEPT winning the WS, which he did lol.
