Crennel helped create a sack monster when he drafted Houston
The respective careers of Justin Houston and Romeo Crennel intersected at the wrong time in Kansas City. They should have been a perfect pairing — this wise old defensive strategist and the rough-edged but gifted young superstar-to-be.
But Houston was going to need time, and time was something Crennel didn’t have. He just didn’t know it yet.
“Justin was like many other college pass rushers in that he had to learn to be an (NFL) outside linebacker,” Crennel said Wednesday. “He was going through that transition when I had him. He showed that he had a good combination of quickness and strength and ability to rush the passer, and he developed that ability to be a pretty good pass rusher.
“When you get 22 sacks in a single year,
that’s pretty good. Not too many people can do that.”
To be exact, only four players have, Houston among them in 2014, when he led the NFL. By then, Crennel was starting over in his first season as the Texans’ defensive coordinator, having been fired after two years as Kansas City’s head coach.
Houston’s potential — and he showed plenty — notwithstanding, Crennel’s Chiefs were too anemic offensively, too young defensively and too generally discombobulated to win anything other than the shortest of leashes, never mind the five Super Bowl championship rings Crennel had collected with the New York Giants and New England Patriots.
A 7-9 debut season would be followed by a 2-14 collapse, and that was that. After a 12-month sabbatical, Crennel got to work with a no-less intriguing consolation prize. The J.J. Watt he inherited from Wade Phillips was already a fully formed force of nature when last fall rolled around.
While Houston won the sack title in his fourth season, Watt won everything else. But their personal battle for supremacy begins anew Sunday when Kansas City visits NRG Stadium for a season opener in which defense will be front and center both ways. Quarterbacks Brian Hoyer and Alex Smith could spend much of the afternoon alternately chucking, ducking, and curling up in the fetal position.
“If you like pass rushing, it’s going to be a fun game,” Crennel said. “They’ve got two or three that are pretty good, and we’ve got a couple as well.”
Sacks appeal
Watt and Houston came into the league together in 2011, the former as the 11th overall pick and the latter as the 70th man taken, going in the third round. They’ve since dumped opposing quarterbacks at a similar pace — Watt has 57 sacks to Houston’s 48½ — but the Texans star’s unworldly statistics dwarf those accumulated by Houston pretty much across the board otherwise.
Watt is the more complete player, but telling that to Hoyer won’t make him feel safer.
The Chiefs are paying their outside linebacker even more than the Texans are paying Watt to make Hoyer’s first start as a Texan a miserable experience. Houston’s sack numbers have increased each season, from 5½ to 10 to 11 to the breakout 22 that left him just a half-sack shy of equaling Michael Strahan’s single-season NFL record. Until further notice, there’s no reason to believe he’ll slack off despite the $52.5 million he’s guaranteed to reap from his new six-year contract no matter how he plays.
“Knowing how to beat your man” is the key to becoming a better pass rusher, the former Georgia standout said. Toward that end, he has worked on his “first step, my power and my speed … just trying to improve every day.”
Houston remains grateful to Crennel for, first, coveting his raw football skills and then for giving him the right trajectory as a player. Crennel might have failed as the buck-stops-here guy in Kansas City, but he gets at least partial credit for developing the guy who’s now keeping his current boss, Bill O’Brien, awake at night.
“Romeo was one of the main guys that wanted me,” Houston said. “I really appreciate it so much for giving me the opportunity, and I’ve made the best of it.”
First things first
Mercilessly chasing down quarterbacks may be Houston’s forte and also the reason for his newfound riches, but he insisted it’s the dirty work in the trenches that makes the fun stuff possible. Not wanting to be known as a one-trick stallion starts with what he and his teammates can do to bottle up the Texans’ wounded ground game.
Arian Foster, of course, will be spectating as he recovers from surgery to repair a torn groin muscle suffered early in training camp.
“We’ve got to stop the run first to make all the other stuff possible,” Houston said. “Putting them in third-and-long gives us more time to put pressure on them.”
Crennel concurred. Watt and the rest of the Texans’ defense will be equally obliged to clamp down on the Chiefs’ workhorse running back, Jamal Charles.
“Hopefully,” Crennel said, “they don’t get to rush (the quarterback) as much as we do.”