Alan Truex: Texans may lose a good coach, Bill O’Brien, by staying with Rick Smith
HOUSTON — Even before the Houston Texans lost 45-7 to Jacksonville, there was media buzz about the jeopardy their coach was in. Now the buzz on Bill O’Brien is approaching deafening decibels. That’s what getting blown out by Jacksonville can do for you.
It really shouldn’t be this way, although O’Brien’s record in four seasons in Houston is a flat 31-31, and 1-2 for postseasons.
The main credential O’Brien has is the support of his players, especially the franchise quarterback, Deshaun Watson. When he heard that the coach’s job was on the line, Watson tweeted: “I want OB with me.”
He backed up O’Brien’s claim that “I have great relationships with the players here.”
O’Brien’s relationship with Watson could have been tenuous. After all, the 48-year-old coach was one of the few people in Houston who once believed that Tom Savage was a better quarterback than Watson.
But hey, even the smartest people can be wrong. How long did it take Lincoln to figure out that Grant was his best general?
I do have other qualms about O’Brien. He’s no Payton or Belichick when it comes to making the most out of the last two minutes of a game. Sometimes Obie seems downright dumb. But sometimes I say the same about Andy Reid.
You gotta look at the whole picture.
If O’Brien has one extraordinary quality it’s that he knows how to guide a football team through the most difficult times. Recall that he succeeded the scandalized Joe Paterno at Penn State in 2012. The campus was reeling from the Jerry Sandusky child molestations.
You think Bill O’Brien knows how to deal with distraction? When he took over at Penn State, he had no idea. But he called the team’s senior leaders together and he accepted their advice on how to regroup. Amazingly, the Nittany Lions went 8-4, and O’Brien was Big Ten Coach of the Year.
O’Brien showed this same flexibility in coaching Watson. When the rookie quarterback suggested running some of the plays that had worked for him at Clemson University, O’Brien quickly added them to his own offense.
Bob McNair has made many mistakes during his ownership of the Texans, one of them being that he fired a head coach, Gary Kubiak, after the 2013 season. and two years later he won the Super Bowl for the Denver Broncos.
If Houston has a problem, it’s not the coaching. It’s the talent acquisition. And that’s the job of the general manager.
Rick Smith has been living off the laurels he earned from making one very astute draft selection: J.J. Watt, with the No. 11 overall pick in 2011. Watt developed into the NFL’s best defensive player though he’s been curtailed by injuries the past two years.
And just when those 2011 laurels were beginning to wither, Smith made one other spectacular draft move. Last April he traded up for Watson, who turned out to be a scoring machine.
The Texans averaged 34 points in the six games Watson started. Thanks to a defense that lacked Watt, energy and speed, they were able to win only three of them. They’ve lost six of seven games since Watson’s season ended with knee surgery.
Smith became Texans GM in June 2006. Last year his contract was extended to 2020, while O’Brien’s expires at the end of next season. There is a sense of urgency here. If O’Brien goes into next season as a lame duck, his ability to lead the team and maintain a quality staff will be hugely compromised.
The question is whether Smith and O’Brien can co-exist. O’Brien has been reported to be “miserable” working for the Texans and under Smith.
O’Brien doesn’t say much for the record, but you can read between the lines. He speaks of his relationships with players and the need to satisfy McNair, but he makes no mention of Smith, his immediate superior.
Even if you give Smith a mulligan for his first season as GM (6-10 in 2006), when most of the players were those he inherited, the Texans have gone 86-88 under his management.
His signing of Brock Osweiler to a contract guaranteed at $37 million was a blunder of historic proportions. It was so bad that the Texans had to trade next year’s second-round draft pick to Cleveland to take Osweiler off their hands and free up enough salary-cap space to assemble a competitive team.
The two worst units on the Texans are the offensive line and secondary. And here, Smith – or perhaps McNair – deserve the blame. Not O’Brien.
Two years ago the Texans had two of the NFL’s finest O-linemen, Duane Brown and Brandon Brooks. They were lost in free agency, Brooks to Philadelphia in 2016, Brown to Seattle in October, after the Texans refused to pay them what elite players at their positions were earning.
Smith decided to rely on the players he drafted. Such as Xavier Su’a-Filo, 33rd choice in the 2014 draft. According to people who have no life and spend hours of it breaking down film and analytically grading Su’a-Filo, the Texans’ right guard gives up an average of almost one sack per game. It’s all but impossible to keep a quarterback healthy if he’s in the lineup.
A.J. Bouye was a Pro Bowl cornerback last season in Houston, which refused to compete with Jacksonville for his rights in free agency. At 26 he signed with the Jaguars for five years and $28 million guaranteed. He appears destined for the Pro Bowl again. He could have paired with Kevin Johnson, instead of Jalen Ramsey, to be the NFL’s best young cornerback tandem.
O’Brien has insisted he “will not quit” the Texans, even if his contract is not extended. But the team’s future depends on changing the duties of Smith so that he’s not preventing O’Brien from succeeding.
Because if he doesn’t succeed in Houston, O’Brien will succeed somewhere else, just as Kubiak did. With about a third of the NFL teams expected to hire new coaching staffs in the next two months, O’Brien would do well in free agency. Bob McNair should not let that happen.