Dramatic change later but subtle now?
McNairmust exorcise all elements of old regime and make a start fresh
Who is going to tell Cal McNair the truth?
Who is going to tell the McNair family what it really needs to hear about the overpriced, declining Texans?
And does the franchise’s chairman/CEO understand just how dysfunctional the football side of his organization has been since 2014?
If McNair privately scoffs at that last sentence, you’ll immediately know a former expansion team with a lifetime 131-161 record still isn’t ready to do what must be done in 2020.
Clean house on Kirby Drive.
For the first time in a long time.
If McNair relies on the unqualified and inexperienced Jack Easterby to run the Texans for the remainder of this season, then
lets Easterby hold the lead role in the franchise’s search for another head coach and another general manager?
Well, I just hope Deshaun Watson kept the receipt on the $156 million payday he received last month.
Because there’s no way the Texans can get all this right at a Super Bowl-winning level without clear checks and balances, true delegation of power, and top-down accountability.
After wasting years — J. J. Watt’s prime, DeAndre Hopkins’ time in local red and blue, Watson’s initial 42 games — by bowing down and giving (former) King Bill O’Brien more and more unprecedented power, McNair finally got it right Monday by firing O’Brien.
The decisions that follow will be much more difficult and mission critical.
Who’s going to be the leading voice guiding the Texans through an uncertain era that could lead Watson to a Super Bowl — or keep him shuffling through head coaches and offensive coordinators?
Who’s going to tell McNair what he must listen to, which noise he needs to ignore … and how absurdly stupid it is to trade away Hopkins out of personal spite and not get at least a first-round pick in return?
Don’t even get me started on sending away two first-round picks and a second-rounder just to acquire an above-average left tackle, then paying him an NFL-best $22 million a year because that was the money he thought he deserved.
Or trading away former No. 1 overall pick Jadeveon Clowney on the cheap (and out of spite) in the name of the already outdated “Dependable, Tough, Smart” slogan?
Easterby proudly backed and promoted the brilliance of those moves and many more, often serving as O’Brien’s personal public-relations expert.
Hmmm. That flower power now looks a little weird in the real world, doesn’t it?
By firing O’Brien just four games into a newyear — a move normally reserved for scandalplagued teams or the of tendys functional Raiders — McNair told every Texans fan in the world that he got it wrong with O’Brien the last few years.
The painful kicker: The coaches still left inside NRG Stadium are O’Brien hires, and Easterby was given a front-door key because O’Brien insisted the Texans needed to steal the ex-Patriot away from New England.
Eighteen months after Easterby was hired, two GMs have already been fired, and the Texans’ seven-year head coach has been pushed out the door.
That’s another recurring trend on Kirby Drive that McNair might want to look into.
It got nasty when O’Brien was hired at the end of the 2013 season. It got really nasty during the following years, when O’Brien started privately duking it out with Rick Smith, the GM whom Bob McNair spent years defending. Then it only got worse when O’Brien paired with Easterby and the McNairs gave the oddly paired duo carte blanche inside NRG.
With all their money and non-football expertise, the billionaires bought an 0-4 record and a head coach/GM search with 12 games left in the season.
Easterby is an upbeat guy, so he isn’t Joffrey Baratheon. But Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish and Lord Varys are smiling somewhere as they watch the Texans’ executive vice president of football operations skillfully move pieces around the suddenly vacant Kirby throne.
Almost 15 years ago, Bob McNair hired Dan Reeves — who knows a few things about Super Bowls — as a football consultant. Dom Capers and Charley Casserly were eventually replaced with Gary Kubiak and Smith. By 2012, the Texans owned Houston, and professional football was again the hottest sport in one of the largest cities in America.
How the Texans have risen, fallen, risen and fallen again since then.
Heck, when they went 4-12 in 2017, the McNairs rewarded O’Brien with a four-year extension, paving a new path to the sinkhole they’re now staring at.
The roster has been hollowed out. They’re again in salary-cap hell. The 2021 draft is currently unable to save them. It will take a brilliant GM and the next great head coach just to reach the AFC Championship Game for the first time … and potentially save the early part of Watson’s career.
Another painful kicker: While the McNairs were freely giving away precious power and long-term extensions, many of those within the walls of NRG Stadium were saying for years how backward and unprofessional the football organization was.
“Can McNairs put together a championship NFL team?”
I wrote that column in June 2019. Sixteen months later — and 19 years into the Texans’ existence — the question is more pressing and relevant than ever.
With the comfort of hindsight, it’s clear they got it wrong at the end of the 2013 season, when Kubiak was fired but Smith was allowed to remain in charge of football operations. Watson is only a Texan because Smith stepped up in the 2017 draft. But the half-hearted power change ultimately resulted in O’Brien’s constantly warring with Smith and the misguided McNairs giving in to the bull-ina-china-shop sway of the old Kirby king.
O’Brien was hired to create a new identity, and now the Texans again don’t know who they are or what they want to be. While they figure all the big things out, they should stop treating long-frustrated fans and the local media like they’re a nuisance — a trend that began after Kubiak left the building and only increased with Easterby’s meddling presence.
The Texans should also remember that the Chiefs, now blessed with Patrick Mahomes and living life as the NFL’s reigning Super Bowl champions, were an internal mess before Andy Reid gradually started getting it right.
The coach whom Reid followed in Kansas City?
Romeo Crennel, of course, who went 2-14 the season before the Texans fired Kubiak and sold themselves on O’Brien.
Cal McNair simply did what fans wanted by finally firing O’Brien.
To really get this right, the Texans CEO must fully erase a stench that’s been rotten for years. Then hire a head coach and GM who will do everything to support Watson’s rise, instead of fighting the same tired internal fight while the Texans keep failing and falling.