TIPPING POINT
Sunday’s loss to Vikings proves to be final straw.
Cal McNair fired Bill O’Brien because the Texans are 0-4 and the most disappointing team in the NFL through the first quarter of the season.
If the Texans had beaten Minnesota, O’Brien would still have his job and a chance to go 2-3 with Jacksonville coming to NRG Stadium, but McNair didn’t like the direction the team was headed after another miserable performance in a season that began with such high expectations.
The Texans have been discombobulated on offense without receiver DeAndre Hopkins and running back Carlos Hyde. They’ve been almost helpless on defense. Based on what McNair witnessed Sunday in the 31-23 loss to previously winless Minnesota, he’d had enough.
Now the Texans are Romeo Crennel’s problem. Crennel, 73, will be the interim coach for the rest of the season. Like O’Brien, he’ll work closely with Jack Easterby, who’s in his second season with the Texans and his first as executive vice president of football operations.
O’Brien and Easterby had disagreements about the way the personnel operation was being run. The organization was being divided the way it had been when O’Brien and general manager Rick Smith had their disputes.
Although McNair hasn’t decided about how he wants to restructure the football side of the organization, Easterby will play a key role and will be part of the interview process to hire O’Brien’s replacement.
Expect the Texans to hire another offensive-minded head coach who’ll work with Deshaun Watson, who’s one of the NFL’s best young quarterbacks, but is going through an inconsistent stretch.
O’Brien took back play calling from offensive coordinator Tim Kelly for the Minnesota game, and the offense was awful in the first half but improved in the second with Watson throwing two touchdown passes and what could have been a third that was overturned by instant replay with time running out in the game.
It’ll be interesting to see if there’s a noticeable difference with Kelly calling plays again without O’Brien being involved in the process.
Even though McNair wasn’t happy with losing the first three games, especially with the way the Texans played, he rationalized the losses, including the Chiefs and Steelers on the road, knowing Kansas City, Baltimore and Pittsburgh are elite teams.
McNair expected to beat the Vikings and Jacksonville to rebound with a 2-3 record. When the Texans lost to Minnesota and looked bad doing it, he didn’t want to risk losing to the Jaguars in their first division game.
The players played hard for O’Brien — they always did — but this season they didn’t play smart, and they didn’t play well on either side of the ball. The Minnesota defeat spurred McNair to take action.
The Texans are desperate. After the Jaguars, the Texans play at Tennessee and host Green Bay, so there’s a good chance they’ll go into their open date at 1-6 or possibly even 0-7.
McNair put O’Brien in charge of personnel in June 2019 when he fired general manager Brian Gaine. O’Brien got control of personnel and was given the general manager title after the season.
In the most controversial decision of his almost seven years with the Texans, O’Brien made the unpopular decision to trade Hopkins to Arizona.
Hopkins, a perennial All-Pro selection, is thriving with the Cardinals, while the Texans’ offense has been discombobulated without him.
Not only are the Texans winless, but they haven’t looked good in the process. They were 8-3 in one-score games last year, and they’re already 0-2. They lost three road games in 2019, and they’ve already lost two.
A team trying towin a fifth AFC South title in six years looks like a candidate for the first pick in the draft. That cheering you’re hearing is coming from South Florida, where Miami has the Texans’ first- and second-round draft choices to complete O’Brien’s trade for left tackle Laremy Tunsil and receiver Kenny Stills.
Of the current 53-man roster, 22 players have been acquired since O’Brien was given final authority over personnel, including seven who started the Minnesota game.
O’Brien had come back from poor starts before. In 2015, the Texans were 1-4 and finished 9-7. In 2018, they were 0-3 and finished 11-5.
Even in 2008, when Gary Kubiak was the coach, the Texans finished 8-8 after an 0-4 start.
In the loss to the Vikings, though, the Texans showed again they can’t run or stop the run, and the defense can’t force a turnover. After that defeat, J. J. Watt looked like he’d been run over by an 18-wheeler.
“This is terrible,” he said. “It’s brutal. I mean, it’s depressing. It sucks. I don’t know any other way to put it.”
Watt was talking about the Texans’ performance and not O’Brien when he said, “We have to do something different. It needs to be fixed. Whatever we’re doing is not working. Something needs to change.”
And that change turned out to be firing the head coach and general manager.