Texans hire DeMeco Ryans as Head Coach

—Lot of work ahead of us but in a great spot. Can’t wait to get started with DeMeco.

—One of the things we’ll try to do is, however we build this staff, you want to try to develop continuity over a period of time. You can’t keep everyone forever but you want to make sure you have enough people in place. Kyle has done a great job in SF. Staff construction will be important.

—Philosophically, we believe in a lot of the same things. We’ve both had good fortune to be in good programs for an extended period of time. When you have core principles and beliefs, it gives you a foundation. One of the best answers he had yesterday was his perspective being in the draft room and 6th round process. He had enough self-awareness to see where his team was that this player over here (Elijah Mitchell) is someone that can help our team and makes more sense than having another LB in the room. He & I didn’t know each other. We knew of each other but not each other. When you go through this process, it gives you an opportunity to do a deeper dive on people. This is a people business. It starts with great people with great principles that have good process. You merge those together. In the end, it’s a collective effort. It’s not about one person, one individual. DeMeco was asked about QB. We’re not dancing around it. The reality is we have one QB. We know we’ll have 2-3 other players at that position on the team. We’re not at the end point there of who that’ll be or what that’ll look like but his overall understanding of team building, not necessarily just defense, as we took a deeper dive in the intricacies about what’s important, DeMeco has tremendous self a awareness. He understands football. His football intellect is very high. When you combine that all together, will we be perfect? Every decision? No. We have to be able to flip the page, OK what happened and make sure it doesn’t happen again and make good, smart decisions over the course of time. If we do that, we’ll be in a decent position. Does that mean we’ll win the division 8 years in a row? No. We share a lot of the same beliefs. It’ll be constructive dialogue. My responsibility is to support him in my role, whatever that entails and make sure the rest of the building within the football operation, we’re supporting the coaching staff, the players, providing the resources so they can go out there Sunday and feel confident and ready to go.

—Football is football. DeMeco’s background, he mentioned the different coaches that have impacted him. My situation, I had the good fortune of being in one place for 20 years. We’re all a product of our background. Our foundation is based on principles that we learned wherever we work and you accumulate those over time. The application of those principles, regardless of system or tree you grew up in, the core elements will be the same. In the end, we have to make it our brand of football, our program, what do we believe in and usually, it’s an accumulation of things you’ve learned over time. That’s natural. In my situation, when you’re in one spot for a long time, you just assume it’s just that or it’s this or that. Not necessarily. You have to have enough understanding and self awareness of what’s going, understand the league, understand there’s different ways to do things, there’s no right or wrong answer, what works for us, what do we believe in, how can we make it work here? That’s what we’re focused on.

—(Interview) It was very organic. He literally raced off the practice field and got in his office and we just started talking. Everyone gets caught up in interviews having a bunch of books or power point presentations or something ridiculous. In the end, it’s meant to be conversational. Give the candidate a chance to learn about us, us learn about him, then deep dive into football. What do you look for offensively? What’s important? Defensively, what’s your philosophy? It was interesting having a conversation about tackling, as an example. We weren’t a good tackling team this year. It was very poor. Conversely, SF was one of the best. They allowed the least amount of yards after contact of any team in the league. We had a discussion. He went through of here’s how we view it, here’s how we practice it, here’s how we drill it. You marry that up with how they play, you start to see things match up. It was an organic conversation. We just kept going back and forth. You touch on a myriad of different topics. It’s not one particular thing. The first interview, you don’t pull out a spreadsheet and go through 4-5 deep at each position. That’s probably more of a follow-up. Generally speaking, what type of coach, what type of coaches are you looking for, what’s important. You’re trying to get a general outline of the person, the individual, how they think, what they think is important coaching wise, what are their principles and you learn about the person and what makes them tick. It was very apparent in initial conversations this guy was basically the way everyone describes him. There’s not one person that we talked to, …literally everyone we talked to, it was the same thing. Then you match that up with the discussions, you start to go “Yup, this looks like it’s headed in the right direction.” There was a certain element of patience we had to display because of rules/parameters but in the end, we’re happy with the end result and now it’s time to go to work.

—(DeMeco was almost trying to close the deal “I want to come home. I want this job.” Is that normal for a coaching interview. Did that surprise you?) Every interview takes on its own life. One thing apparent was how sincere and heartfelt he was about this place, the organization and opportunity to be the coach here. … We gave him the opportunity there at the end. We hung up and it was kinda like “Man, everything he’s about, it’s genuine and sincere.” …

—(Did you get a sense he has a view of the whole picture maybe more so than other coordinators?) One thing he mentioned in the interview as illusion of complexity. When you watch how SF plays both O/D, you see that. No one motions/shifts more than Kyle but there’s a reason. There’s a purpose behind it. On defense, it’s the illusion of “We’re gonna do this.” He has a good feel for that. I was talking to Chester Pitts about this. If you do simple better and let’s say you make an adjustment with a LB, making a 6”-8” step to put him in a passing lane to create a pass breakup, that small adjustment gives you the opportunity to make a big play. You don’t want to have 5,000 different calls. You gotta have certain things you do well, core principles, core calls. Where it comes into play is situationally. Where you see more complexity is 3rd down and red area. … Football is a cat and mouse game but you don’t want to put players in position where they have 4,000 things in their head. When you watch how they play, the illusion of complexity manifests itself. They have certain things they do well and changeups out of it. That’s what the good teams/good staffs do. You have to morph into something different based on the opponent. One thing he mentioned is our job is to accentuate the strength of the players, put them in the best position to maximize their skills. … When you draft players, none of them are ready. Some may be further along than others but everyone has something to work on. Identify players with the right traits, are they tough minded, selfless, do they have a good work ethic, do they understand football, are they gonna take coaching? Whatever their physical attributes are, that’s where the staff will say “What can we do to help this player, how we put him in position to succeed?” In the end, it all has to fit together and the two of us believe in that.

 

—(Stingley under DeMeco) Once we have the system in place, he’ll teach the defense or whoever the coordinator is. There will be certain parameters required of that position. When you watch how SF has played, Ward and Lenoir, they kinda mixed and matched. Times he’s on the LOS, times he’s off. Some might be the call. Some might be the opponent. Whatever the player does well, our job is to put the player in position to succeed. Derek is a very intuitive, very smart, instinctive football player that understands football, good work ethic, fast, good quickness, plays the ball really well.

—(Brandin Cooks?) Every player on the roster at some point, DeMeco and I will do a deeper dive on where the team is, who’s under contract. We talked about this with our players in our last team meeting, whatever your situation is, whatever your contract is, we’ll have a discussion. We won’t articulate or negotiate it through the media. A lot of respect for Brandin. Great player, has been in this league for a long time. We’ll work through our process and do what’s in the best interest of the Houston Texans. … Call it 4-6 weeks as we get ready for free agency. We have time to work through some things and have different discussions internally.

—(You mentioned 8 traits into being a good head coach) There’s probably more. There’s a thousand things that go into being successful at anything. Let’s evaluate the candidates through the prism of these 8-10 traits. Leadership, humility, tactician, strategy, there’s a few others that were in there. As you’re going through the process, we have to make an assessment where the candidate stacks up in those areas. It’s not limited to 8. Just maybe quantify these 8-10 and evaluate each candidate through that lens and make a decision on the data and metrics we accumulate. It’s data accumulation, analyze the data and make a good decision based on the information you have. (Seth: I won’t rest until it’s algorithms out there on the field. Nick: There’s some people that want that. Daryl Morey believes in that but it’s more applicable to his sport. Nick & Seth continue to talk. …)

—(Have you and DeMeco discussed your role on game day?) We haven’t gotten into that. I don’t care what my role is on game day. I’m here to support, to help the team. I don’t want to get in the way. I think I can be a resource and help. I’ve had the good fortune of doing a lot of different things on game day. I’m not calling plays. I’m there to observe, listen, learn and watch so after the game when he and I are having discussions, it can be constructive. I love football. I love everything that goes into it. I have a decent understanding of schematics. I want to help in any way possible. … I don’t want to get in the way. I want to help. I want to be a resource. We‘ll work through some of those dynamics and whatever he thinks makes the most sense, we’ll do. There’s always give and take on everything. I love game day. When you understand a) your team, how you want to play and then understand your opponent, that’s what I crave, that’s what I enjoy. That’s what I’ve learned over the course of time. … My job has always been a conduit from the coaching staff to the scouting staff and be the bridge. “Hey, what happened on this play? or “Who’s responsibility was this?” They can’t all run into DeMeco’s office. Hopefully I can give an informed opinion on it. We’ll get to that when it’s appropriate but I’m willing to do whatever to help the team.

—(You weren’t wearing socks) I did have socks. They’re ankle socks. I didn’t go in barefoot. That’s not good hygiene. My youngest daughter said “Daddy, you’re not wearing a tie!” I did have socks.

—(Which draft board are teams using?) Trade chart? Most teams are still using the Jimmy chart but they’ve modified to more of an analytical chart. There’s a traditional chart and analytics chart. Quite frankly, it creates for difficult conversations because the values don’t always match up. … Jimmy’s chart still has relevance.