Coach and GM can blame self for ultimate dismissal
There is no other way to write this: Bill O’Brien brought it all on himself.
King O’Brien. Head coach, general manager and offensive play-caller (again) O’Brien. Angry, bridge-burning O’Brien.
You don’t go through all those bad and average quarterbacks for years, then keep blaming everyone else but yourself.
You don’t trade away All-Pro wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins because of a personal grudge in the offseason after blowing a 24-0 lead in the playoffs against the eventual Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs.
But O’Brien did just that, just like he did everything else. And now the HC/GM/ quasi-OC who survived Rick Smith and Brian Gaine on Kirby Drive is gone.
The timing was stunning. Monday afternoon. Just four games into a new season heavily affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
The end result was years in the making and had become painfully obvious after the 0-4 Texans lost another game they didn’t deserve to win.
I wrote in Monday’s Chronicle that 99 percent of NFL owners would have already fired O’Brien.
I said Sunday night on the Chronicle’s TV show that CEO Cal McNair was the person who truly had to answer for the Texans’ horrendous start.
I wrote after 51-31 Chiefs last January — easily the worst game in Texans history — that the franchise needed to get it over with and fire O’Brien immediately.
Almost nine months later, McNair stepped up and shocked the NFL — finally making long-frustrated Texans fans happy — by getting rid of a king who had long worn out his welcome on Kirby.
It’s a huge TBD where Deshaun Watson and the mismanaged Texans go from here.
But this is already a fact: O’Brien got everything he wanted from the Texans, and he never came close to doing enough with all his power.
Brian Hoyer and Ryan Mallett were handpicked. O’Brien signed off on the Brock Osweiler failure. Two offensive coordinators had their play-calling power taken back by O’Brien. Romeo Crennel, now the Texans’ interim coach, lost his defensive coordinator title.
When Smith, Bob McNair’s longtime general manager, and O’Brien kept fighting year after year, the latter won a nasty power struggle and privately convinced the McNair family that he was the best man to lead a former expansion franchise to a level it had never reached.
Now the Texans can’t win a single game, and they need a new head coach and GM.
O’Brien constantly was his own worst enemy. He angrily fought with almost everyone — coaches, team personnel, media, fans.
He ended up 52-48 with just two playoff wins, and one of those postseason victories came against a third-string quarterback.
Under O’Brien, the Texans took way too much pride in their flimsy AFC South banners. They were never Super Bowl contenders — and never came close to the franchise peak in 2012, when Gary Kubiak guided the Matt Schaub Texans to a 12-4 mark.
Even when the Texans won 11 games under O’Brien, they were aided by one of the weakest divisions in the league and held back by their own limitations.
Now?
Hopkins plays for Arizona, Miami owns the Texans’ 2021 first- and secondround draft picks, and Houston’s NFL team is again among the worst in the NFL.
A thin roster is filled with the same holes O’Brien inherited. But it’s outrageously overpriced, the defense is worse, the offense is a mess, and No. 1 wide receivers aren’t allowed to play for the home team inside NRG Stadium.
The Texans blamed O’Brien for 0-4 on Monday. But you know that seven crazy seasons devoted to everything O’Brien was ultimately the McNairs’ fault.
“I learned a lot about myself here in Houston,” O’Brien said in a brief video interview that ended coldly. “Experience is the best teacher, right? You gain experience. You try to make decisions that are in the best interest of the team. You always try to think about that: What’s best for the team? You work very hard. You put a lot of time in, and you put your heart and soul into the organization. Sometimes things don’t work out, but you definitely learn a lot about yourself.”
There was another side to O’Brien: friendly, caring, funny, down to earth. It’s a shame fans rarely got to see it and the Texans spent seven seasons struggling to make it public. At times, he could be great to deal with — refreshingly honest and real. But overall, the wall around O’Brien kept getting higher and thicker, and the Texans’ hard-to-please leader kept getting in his own way.
A 2-14 record in 2013 led to the end of Kubiak on Kirby. O’Brien was hired by franchise founder Bob McNair to toughen up the “soft” Texans, who could never overcome Bill Belichick, Tom Brady and the New England Patriots.
In October 2020, Texans fans would love to have the best of the conservative Kubiak years back.
Watson is going backward — the 25-year-old franchise QB struggled to complete simple passes Sunday during a 31-23 home defeat to Minnesota — and the Texans are viciously booed inside NRG.
Credit to Cal McNair for finally making himself heard. But I also guarantee McNair privately regrets listening to O’Brien last June, when Gaine was coldly fired as GM and the Texans foolishly granted O’Brien even more power.
The Texans must get their fourth head coach right — Watson’s NFL future and the franchise’s first appearance in the AFC championship game depend on it. They also must figure out what to do with Jack Easterby, who quickly befriended the McNairs but also went out of his way to explain away everything O’Brien did. The overly cheery Easterby was once O’Brien’s biggest supporter on Kirby. How is that odd dynamic going to work now that the man who helped bring Easterby to Houston has been fired?
There will be time for all the questions. Twelve games still remain for a 2020 team that, technically, still could make the expanded playoffs.
But Monday was a true breakthrough for Texans fans. The coach they’ve begged for years to be rid of — since 2015, really — was finally fired. Along with the GM who didn’t get enough in return for former No. 1 pick Jadeveon Clowney and traded away Hopkins. And the play-caller who wasn’t getting the most out of Watson’s undeniable talent.
It didn’t have to go this way with O’Brien. At his best, he was an old-school football coach who added much-needed grit to the McNair’s plastic franchise.
But the longer you were around O’Brien, the more you covered him and the more you heard, the end was obvious.
The Texans were never going to come close to winning a Super Bowl with O’Brien. And the ex-king of Kirby was going to make the Texans fire him.