Houston Texans: The three-step plan to a successful off season

Step #2: Heat up a cool seat under Bill O’Brien

In Bill O’Brien‘s entire coaching tenure with the Houston Texans, I have never seen a moment where I could say out loud that he deserved to remain as a head coach.

And don’t even get me started on his clock management or how he can create the worse case scenario within the last two minutes of each half.

I understand that throughout the season, O’Brien was a scapegoat that all fans believed was the fault of every loss throughout the season. After a win, fans would say, for the most part, “Watson da GOAT!” But after a loss, they’d imply to fire O’Brien.

And then comes this nine-game win streak that messes with my head, and O’Brien’s job will stay safe for at least another year. But despite that, the ending of the season was rough as the Houston Texans missed out on the bye week and came crashing down in the playoffs. About halfway through the winning streak, I had written a piece declaring my opinion on if O’Brien should still be at the helm and this was my original opinion.

Now looking back, I am convinced that O’Brien needs to go. But he won’t. The entire front office, along with part of this roster, has been built around his needs. Besides, this season was too successful to fire a head coach but here is why I think there needs to be a hotter seat under O’Brien.

I find the win streak to be questionable. There were certain games where I thought that the win wasn’t deserved or they beat themselves to the point to where they should’ve lost the game.

Their Week 4 match up with the Colts was a lucky win as Frank Reich made a stupid call on 4th down, giving the Texans excellent field position before the time ran out. The Buffalo Bills game was a very close one and they could’ve lost had it not been for Johnathan Joseph‘s heroics. The Denver Broncos game was poorly managed towards the end, as we had allowed Broncos to get a field goal shot. Luckily, Vance Joseph didn’t try to get a closer attempt because a game-winner would’ve been in order but it didn’t happen. Then the same thing occurred again against the Washington Redskins.

The scary thought is if the Houston Texans had lost these games, they would be 7-9.

My first case to fire O’Brien is that there were few, possibly five wins that I felt the team actually deserved. The rest were close and could’ve gone either way. I blame O’Brien for putting us in those situations in the first place, because his extremely conservative approach didn’t cost them as many games as it should have.

My other case is the Wild Card Game two weeks ago.

It was nasty. It was hard to watch. But most importantly, it exposed O’Brien.

Allow me to be a bit more specific. Before the playoff game, I had written an article on what the Texans needed to do to win that game. It seemed to be a list of general ways to help a team win on the football field but I mentioned the same things that the Colts used to burn Texans over the years, especially their Week 14 loss the Texans had to the Colts prior to their playoff meeting.

Click here to check out the game plan I had for the Texans.

Did they win the penalty battle? No.

Did they rule time of possession? No.

Did they contain Andrew Luck in the pocket? I saw him get an occasional first down from his feet.

Did the Texans dominate time of possession? No.

Let me be more specific once more.

One of the most important things I had mentioned was to limit T.Y. Hilton. He has killed the Texans over the years and it would be a reason for a loss if they didn’t stop him. Here is a brief script of the first Colts’ drive.

Facing third-and-12 at the Colts’ 23 yard-line to open the game, Luck found Hilton in a tight window against man-to-man coverage. To keep the drive alive on third-and-2 from the Colts’ 43 yard-line, Luck escaped the pocket, then dropped an easy pass to Hilton, who ran for 13 yards. Two plays later, he found Hilton behind the secondary for a 38-yard chunk that set up the Colts with a first-and-goal.

Even if the Houston Texans defense limited Hilton after that, it would be too late. The rest of the offense has already been opened up and the other receivers, even Mack, would start to attack with the stretched defense resulted from Hilton’s impact.

But hey, the Colts went scoreless in the second half!  And you know what?  The Texans offense, headed by supposed-offensive guru O’Brien, only scored seven points in arguably the most crucial game of his career.

What the hell kind of an offensive guru is that? When was the last time New England Patriots scored just seven points in a playoff game?

I’ll wait.

The Colts stuck with the same script and they were able to beat the Texans once again.

What the hell did O’Brien command the players to do on the practice field all week?

O’Brien is 1-3 all time in playoffs, his one win coming against the Oakland Raiders in 2016.  He faced Connor Cook, a then-3rd string rookie QB in his first-ever game filling in for an injured Derek Carr.  That’s not a big achievement if you ask me and there’s no point in having a coach who can’t win playoff games against good QB’s.

Another thing I have to mention is O’Brien’s conservative approach. I believe that O’Brien’s strategy won’t give Watson enough crunch time moments as he deserves.

Let me illustrate.  I’m sure you recall in an early matchup in 2017, Watson’s rookie season, the Texans opted to kick the field goal and give the ball back to the Patriots.  O’Brien call forced the Texans’ defense to try to make a crucial stop rather than give Watson the opportunity to go for it on 4th down and finish the game.

By the way, the Patriots won 36-33 as a result of that ill-fated call.

More often than not, O’Brien has relied on his defense to finish a game instead of relying on his star signal-caller.  O’Brien’s conservative approach is another way of saying that he is coaching not to lose rather than to win.

He only relies on Watson when they are losing, not when they are winning.

It’s ridiculous because Watson is meant for those moments and his lack of trust in the idea of letting his offense finish off a game on a 4th-down attempt is just disappointing. And this most likely isn’t the only example.

O’Brien’s cautious accession to the game will hurt Watson along with the Houston Texans win column and it needs to be that either O’Brien needs to have more trust in Watson or there needs to be somebody else coaching him. It’s as simple as that.

I will do O’Brien a huge favor and blame this underachieving O-Line for the struggles and inconsistencies of the offense this year. However, if us fans are still watching the same offensive horse-crap in a year or two, I think it won’t be hard for us to figure out where the real problem lies.

And you certainly know where to point the finger.