Lovie Smith - Seen as the Gary Kubiak of defensive coordinators. Offense sucks. Must hire good/great OC if you hire him. (Anything else?) Ken Whisenhunt - Was poop without Warner in Arizona. Rightly or wrongly blamed for Skelton/Kolb/Anderson disaster. Rightly or wrongly credited for the turn around in San Diego/Phillip Rivers Wade Phillips - old; retread; starts off strong, fades away as the years pass. Kevin Sumlin - Aggie; no more Aggies. Not experienced enough. Defense sucks everywhere he goes. David Shaw - longshot Bill O'Brien - longshot?
Ugh... exactly why I don't think they should be excluding all coordinators that just haven't happened to have been a head coach before. Zimmer, Jay Gruden, Greg Roman... guys who could possibly turn into good head coaches if given the opportunity. If Lovie Smith or Whisenhunt were such great possible head coaching candidates... they would likely be a head coach right now. I know everybody thinks they'll eventually get a Bill Belicheck (a head coach who "failed" in his first stint, but succeeded in his second)... but had Cleveland not been uprooted during that season, Belicheck would have likely had another playoff team and possibly never gets fired.
I found it rather interesting that Art Briles showed up at a Texans practice earlier this week. But, Bob said he wanted someone with NFL experience.
I once thought Briles would only consider the NFL if he had a chance to reunite with Robert Griffin. It's happening???
Ready for NFL return, Bill O'Brien draws interest from Vikings, Texans Penn State's Bill O'Brien, who came close to taking the Eagles job a year ago and was approached by several other teams, is ready to return to professional football, according to pro and college sources, and has already been approached by the Texans and Vikings. O'Brien struggled with the decision last year and ultimately felt he owed it to his players to stay at Happy Valley for a second season, but relations between him and the school frayed some when the school was subjected to more post-Sandusky sanctions than expected, and he also has had three staff members depart recently. His buyout is less financially restrictive than in past years, and, furthermore, there could be litigation over his buyout as well, if the situation escalates, given the penalties the program faced. At a time when many college coaches are opting to sign extensions to stay in their school -- some of them ironclad, like Texas A&M and Kevin Sumlin, and others much more easily circumvented, like Baylor and Art Briles -- O'Brien's combination of pro and college experience, his work with quarterbacks and his willingness to make the jump, all make him attractive to NFL teams. While some expect the Texans' search to end up with a coach other than O'Brien, he was contacted by them. And, with Vikings coach Leslie Frazier in the final year of his deal, and no extension talks forthcoming, that team has begun reaching out to possible candidates as well, sources said, including O'Brien. O'Brien could end up a candidate for the Redskins job, with restoring the play of quarterback Robert Griffin III such a priority for that franchise, as well, while sources said Briles would have more interest in that job than has been reported. O'Brien boosted his coaching pedigree on Bill Belichick's staff in New England, and, while it's true that many Belichick's products have failed when venturing out on their own as head coaches, O'Brien managed a very difficult situation at Penn State in the wake of the sexual abuse scandal there and pulled off some big wins and righted the program in the face of that adversity.
Schefter: Sumlin & Shaw plan on staying. Shaw is on the Texans radar and any other NFL team making a coaching change. Those who know Shaw/close to him firmly believe he won't leave Stanford. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Two less HC candidate for NFL: Just as Kevin Sumlin plans to stay at Texas A & M, David Shaw plans to do the same at Stanford, per sources.</p>— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) <a href="https://twitter.com/AdamSchefter/statuses/412250767249375232">December 15, 2013</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
I fully expect the Texans to hire a ho-hum candidate and us look back in 5 or 6 years and wonder why we passed on X.
I'm curious as to what Jack Del Rio could do with this team. I know that's not a popular choice, but I wouldn't mind it.
Barring a Superbowl victory, I fully expect the Texans fanbase to act this way no matter who gets hired.
Why? What credentials does he have that makes people believe he is a SB coach in waiting, or that he's even better than Kubiak was? Longest tenured coach to never win a division championship? JDR. Again, if he was so good... he would've been considered for a position at some point over the last 2+ years. I'm firmly against "re-treads"... even more so against re-treads who have never had any real sustained success (lumping Lovie and Whisenhunt in this category as well).
