O’Brien now has to prove he has all the right moves.
The Texans’ general manager has had a pretty good season.
First, he fired his predecessor, which is quite the underrated accomplishment.
Acquiring offensive tackle Laremy Tunsil and receiver Kenny Stills in the Dolphins’ fire sale trade before the season started was as impressive a move as any team made last offseason. It ranks just slightly above the pickup of 1,000-yard runner Carlos Hyde, who was traded for at the same time.
Move after move since the end of last season, replacing injured or ineffective players, tended to work out.
The Texans aren’t the most talented team in the NFL, not even close, but they have a mix of players that give them a chance against any team they play. Game-changers like All-Pros DeAndre Hopkins and J.J. Watt, superstar-to-be Deshaun Watson, Tunsil and Stills. Plus Hyde and Duke Johnson, and up-and-coming defenders in D.J. Reader, Benardrick McKinney and Zach Cunningham.
It’s funny, though. They’re not getting the type of respect such a collection of players should command.
They didn’t earn it.
After an up-and-down year that saw almost as many poor performances as good ones, the Texans can hardly be trusted to show up with their best on game day.
Thus, Houston is a measly 2½-point favorite for Saturday’s wild-card game against Buffalo, which is the only team with worse odds of reaching the Super Bowl than the Texans.
The Super Bowl odds are directly related to the Texans’ next game, should they beat the Bills, which would be at Baltimore or Kansas City.
In this week and potentially that next week, the nameless Texans general manager will not be on the spot. Head coach Bill O’Brien will.
This is his time to shine. Coaches will tell you they never stop learning, but most individual deficiencies should be dealt with in the first five seasons. By then, a coach should know what he does well and have hired others to help him with what he doesn’t do well.
This is O’Brien’s sixth season. He still makes rookie mistakes in clock management that are inexcusable at this level this deep into his career.
There aren’t any do-overs in the playoffs. No “On to next week” or “I have to do a better job,” because lose now and the season is over.
The pressure is squarely on his shoulders to show that he is the man that can lead the Texans to greatness.
He has proved he can lead them to division titles in the AFC South, which he has done four out of the past five years. Only New England (five AFC East crowns) has won more in that time.
But why haven’t the Texans gone deeper into the playoffs?
O’Brien likes to brag about his division titles, and he deserves to acknowledge the accomplishment, but a whopping 16 different teams have advanced to conference championship games since O’Brien was hired by the Texans in 2014.
While O’Brien has been winning his little division, half the league, including two teams in the AFC South, has played for a chance to make it to the Super Bowl.
The AFC is as wide-open this year as it has been since the Texans were formed.
While O’Brien the personnel man has been excellent this season, O’Brien the coach has been decent. He needs to be at his best.
His Texans are better than their numbers indicate. They were good enough to handle the Chiefs and Patriots and led the Saints until the final seconds.
Yeah, Baltimore rolled them, but that was on one of those no-show days. A couple Texans players have said they would love another crack at the Ravens.
The Texans gave the season finale away to rest and recuperate for the playoffs, but that 21-point loss to the Titans left them with seven fewer points scored than allowed for the season.
Not only is Houston the only team in the playoffs that has been outscored by its opponents, it’s the only such team with a winning record.
Just 10 playoff teams in the last 10 years had a worse point differential. One of those was O’Brien’s 2016 squad, which beat Oakland and its rookie third-string quarterback in the first round. (That rookie, Connor Cook, has not taken an NFL snap since that game.)
Saturday could be O’Brien’s first legitimate playoff victory. Make that, it should be his first. Should he be at his best in the next couple weeks, this could be his first playoff “run.”
It is difficult to imagine the Texans failing to take care of business at home against offensively challenged Buffalo, which scored 17 points or fewer on nine occasions and hasn’t topped 17 since November.
If they do fall in an upset Saturday, the Texans’ general manager ought to take a hard look (in the mirror) at his coach for ruining his great year.
One would think he’d like his head coach to be better than decent.
JEROME SOLOMON It’s time for O’Brien to prove coaching skills can match his GM moves with a playoff run