The narrative is that teams hire black coaches ONLY for the rebuilding years. In other words, Lovie will be let go in a few years when they are ready to compete. If they hired McCown, they'd keep him and let him reap the rewards of the rebuild. Whether it has any merit or not, I have no idea - but you've got the idea wrong.
1. Watson had a prior relationship with Culley, that can't be ignored here. 2. Honestly, I don't care what Watson wants and neither did I care back then. He's the QB not the GM. Watson, as has been proven, is not the best decision maker out there so it really is irrelevant in the end what he wanted. 3. Why not just hire McCown now then? They could have hired McCown a literal month ago. I think the Texans organization is dumb, that's why they promoted BoB because they aren't very well run, they'll fire Lovie in 2 years because they are terrible at long term planning. I mean they are not very smart, I don't think these decisions can come down to race. Let's remember that they are the only teams to even hire a black GM and he was the GM for near a decade and only lost his job due to health.
Like I said b4 it's bad optics to hire McCown cause firing a black minority coach to hire a white coach with literally no coaching experience over a coach like Flores is exactly describing a portion of the current pending lawsuit. Louvie is gonna get fired and McCown hired when the lawsuit dies down just a matter of time
This is impossible to prove though so it's a bad point to make and a bad idea to even start from. How do we know that if they hired McCown that he would have been a long term plan. My guess is he wouldn't have and you can't prove that wrong. My guess is he would have failed here (because the talent is such that a coach can only fail here) and Caserio and Easterby would have thrown him in front of bus to get their next coach. At the end of the day, the Texans are one of the few organizations that have had a black coach, black GM and now are somehow under fire by some for hiring a black coach.
Watson and Culley did not know each other. Sure that's possible. But that's what the claim is regarding black coaches being hired for rebuilding. White coaches get hired to shitty teams all the time - that's not the issue.
Here is the thing though and my last post on this... If they wanted McCown sooooo bad, why did they wait this long? They could have hired him before all this stuff came out after all, could have done this a month ago. They could have had sham interviews with a list of coaches day by day, hire McCown, and sit back and watch the rest of this play out. Like I really don't think the Texans are that calculating. What Easterby has done is done in broad daylight and brazenly. I think they dragged this out because they did like McCown but were genuinely curious about their other options. Also, I might not be the biggest Lovie fan but it is kind of insulting to say he's only getting hired because he's black. He's actually a pretty safe pick. I'm not saying they won't end up hiring McCown either but it might make more sense for them to do that if he's the QB coach or OC somewhere else and impresses. My point is I don't think the Texans are hiring and firing coaches based on their race. People want to get mad at teams for not giving black head coaches a chance lets look at the teams that actually haven't given black head coaches a chance or these ones that might have basically told these coaches to lose on purpose.
Lovie was very successful in Chicago, and never really had a chance in TB. He's also had 7 consecutive losing seasons between TB & Illinois, which is pretty terrible. With the Watson situation still unresolved, this had to be the least appealing job opening. Has to be unfortunate for Lovie to once again take a job with big question marks at QB.
They could have hired him before all this stuff came out after all, could have done this a month ago. They could have had sham interviews with a list of coaches day by day, hire McCown, and sit back and watch the rest of this play out. They were doing this exactly, but it all about timing. They didn't want to b the first team to hire an incompetent/no experienced coach and get clowned on. Lovie is a pivot hire. No fking way did he came out of nowhere and impressed the Texans to hire him. They wanted someone in house so they can figure out the next hiring strat since the flores lawsuit is gonna make it look bad to hire McCown. Imagine interviewing all the coaching candidates and all of a sudden hire someone else.
That isn't exactly the claim Flores made though, it's not the full claim because as you point out, white coaches get hired to bad teams all the time too because obviously good teams are rarely looking to replace their head coach in the first place. The claim isn't only that black coaches get hired to bad teams but also, and this is far more important, are being told and incentivized to lose games and so they aren't even given a chance if that's the case. If you hire a black coach and tell him to lose then he's not even given the chance to exceed expectations and grow his reputation. Instead he'll be labled as a bad coach while the org collects assets and replaces him with someone else. A big part of Flores case will be proving that the Dolphins offered him 100k for losses.
I mean but Smith was still in talks to be the DC so it's not like they disliked Smith. I read somewhere that he was also helping them in their search for a new head coach. I don't know if that is true or not but if it is then that would indicate that they have a lot of respect for him. It's like how people assume trades happen, the news reports it and people think it 'came out of nowhere' when really it was something weeks in advance in the works. It might seem like it's out of nowhere because he's part of the organization already so there isn't much of an interview to be done, they know what they have in Lovie, they don't have to reach out to another team to interview him as he's had a whole year here under Caserio and Easterby and so interest in Lovie Smith might not have been caught by the media but I think the interest was always there because they kept him on as DC. Meanwhile, they fired Tim Kelly.
I think Lovie will also love the opportunity for his son to be DC alongside him, Miles did well at LB coach
It's funny that the Texans will be paying Bill O'Brien, David Culley, Lovie Smith, Brian Gaine, and Nick Caserio all next season.
Theres no way to dress this to make it look good. Black, white, green, purple or polka dotted. This was a terrible hire. They would have done better hiring Lovies beard.
