Still paying the price for former coach’s final act

This will not matter if the Texans pick the best quarterback in the 2023 NFL draft.

This will eventually all be forgotten if DeMeco Ryans leads the rebuilt team that he once played for to the AFC championship game in a few years.

This will just become one of those weird, quirky sports trivia facts if Bryce Young (or C.J. Stroud or someone else) becomes the new, lasting face of Houston’s NFL franchise and accomplishes what Deshaun Watson never came close to.

But right now?

Less than 50 days before

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell walks onto a nationally televised stage in Kansas City, Mo., and announces that Carolina will pick first in the draft?

With the Texans badly needing to get everything right after getting almost everything wrong season after season? There’s no way around it. This looks really bad.

This feels like the same ol’ Texans.

And Chicago already trading away a No. 1 overall pick that 100 percent should have belonged to the Texans is 99.99 percent unexplainable.

Some owners would have fired everyone after the horrible Texans improved to 3-13-1 during the final minute of an absolutely meaningless game in Indianapolis on Jan. 8.

The Texans allowed Lovie Smith, who spent an entire season resisting change and coaching behind the times, to celebrate like a winner while the top brass looked a little queasy nearby.

“We wanted to leave the season with a good taste in our mouth. … It was good to see those guys kind of finish this one,” said Smith, who confidently stood behind a podium and insisted that he absolutely believed he would return as the Texans’ coach in 2023.

The problem with all of that?

The Texans already knew they were firing the one-and-done Smith.

Heck, I believe they knew it for weeks, which is partly why a head coach who never was supposed to receive the job was axed before Black Monday arrived in the NFL.

So why did Cal McNair, Nick Caserio and the Texans allow Smith to wreck three seasons worth of futility with a lastminute two-point conversion that took a prized No. 1 pick away from the franchise?

Until the official 2026 Texans Super Bowl documentary is released, we might never know.

Brandin Cooks announced to the football world at the trade deadline that he didn’t want to be part of the Texans’ current or future worlds anymore. Caserio and Co. still allowed Cooks to suit up in Week 18, then catch five passes for 106 yards and a touchdown.

It’s not Cooks’ fault that new Panthers head coach Frank Reich and billionaire owner David Tepper can now do whatever they want at No. 1, and dictate the Texans’ immediate future at No. 2.

Just like it’s not Smith’s fault that, as absurd as it was, he allowed the Texans to drive 83 yards, run 14 plays, convert a fourth-and-12 at Indy’s 48-yard line and then somehow turn fourth-and-20 into a deceptively miraculous Davis Mills to Jordan Akins touchdown.

“All that you’ve been working for all of your life, you play to win,” Smith said. “Forget that? Lose the game on purpose?”

That sounded cool for a few seconds.

Then everyone else remembered Smith was about to be fired. And because he finally became aggressive in the final minutes of Week 18, the Texans had given away a draft selection that could have instantly changed their rebuild.

Chicago received the No. 9 pick and a late second-rounder in this draft, a 2024 first-round selection, a second-rounder in 2025 and wide receiver DJ Moore, who has recorded more than 1,100 receiving yards in a season three times and is still only 25.

Think about that: The oncebumbling Bears gave young dual-threat QB Justin Fields a new offensive weapon and added three premium draft picks, just because Smith (not the Texans’ franchise) won

32-21 against the Colts in a game where Mills was barely better than a horrendous Sam Ehlinger.

Now, the Texans must wait and watch as the Panthers do their thing. Then keep insisting that if Carolina takes Young (or Stroud or someone else) at No. 1, the Texans were dreaming about their eventual No. 2 pick the entire time.

The part that I still don’t understand and never will: The Texans could have fixed all of this by being smart enough to fire Smith after Week 17. He was already a goner. His team had just been embarrassed 31-3 at home by Jacksonville. He was a two-win coach who wasn’t the Texans’ first choice, and stories were already leaking that Smith had struggled to connect with players and impress the franchise that would soon announce his fate.

He spent the next few days acting like a win would save his job in 2023.

The Texans told everyone hours after his big “win” that nothing would save Smith’s job, because finding a better fit to lead their meandering rebuild was the only option.

So why let him steal away

No. 1?

Until the Super Bowl documentary is released, we’ll just keep wondering and hoping it wasn’t simple corporate ineptitude.

I’m ready for the Texans’ future.

None of this is Ryans’ fault. But before Houston’s NFL team can move forward, it must keep glancing backward while waiting to draft at No. 2.

Every other professional franchise would have found a way to lose Week 18 in Indy in the final seconds.

The Texans watched a coach who they would soon fire win a pointless game that gave a precious No. 1 pick away. That pick has now been in the hands of two rebuilding teams before the draft has even arrived, and both have benefited from its price.

Michael Conroy/Associated Press The Texans made DeMeco Ryans’ job that much tougher by not securing the top pick when all they had to do was lose the season’s final game.