Houston Texans problems, analysis, Lovie Smith sacked, next coach, gave up No.1 pick, draft QB prospects

In retrospect, maybe it all started before the team even played its first game.

After all, the name is stupid. The Houston Texans? Imagine the NRL expanding now and introducing the Brisbane Queenslanders or the Sydney New South Welshmen.

Perhaps on that day in 2000, when the name of the NFL’s 32nd and still youngest franchise was revealed to the public, they were cursed with some form of nominative determinism.

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For those unaware, that’s the idea that people are drawn towards jobs that fit their names – like Usain Bolt. But in the Texans’ case, they’re drawn towards stupidity.

The final day of the 2022/23 regular season was another prime case of the Texans doing Texan things.

At roughly 3:15pm local time, they produced a remarkable comeback win over Indianapolis, scoring on 4th and 20 and then going for a two-point conversion – boldly getting over the line 32-31 against their divisional rivals.

A heart-warming achievement when stripped of its context, but that context is important, because in combination with Chicago’s loss to Minnesota, the order for the 2023 NFL Draft made a major change.

Up went the Bears. Down went the Texans. The No. 1 pick had changed hands.

And so, at 10:27pm local time, another Texans thing happened: the sacking of a coach. Lovie Smith, the former Chicago boss who was elevated to the top job in Houston just 12 months ago, was let go.

Was it because he cost the franchise the No.1 pick? Probably not exactly. But that couldn’t have helped him.

But either way, this is Houston in a nutshell: doing things that make no sense. They’ve done it for years, and it’s why they’re never going to be anything other than a league-wide laughing stock until something changes.

They are the fourth team since the AFL/NFL merger to have a different head coach to open four consecutive seasons – Bill O’Brien, David Culley, Lovie Smith and whoever drinks from the poisoned chalice to open the 2023 campaign.

They are also, not coincidentally, the ninth team in the Super Bowl era to lose 12-plus games in three consecutive seasons.

Consistency at the top of a sports organization is critical to success – with few exceptions – and after years of being one of those exceptions, the Texans have the exact opposite.

Their current losing skid began under coach Bill O’Brien, who led the team to four AFC South championships (primarily because the division has almost always sucked) and two playoff wins, but stayed for too long and became central to the team’s backroom drama.

By the end of his stint, O’Brien was also the general manager, and seemed to make decisions based more on who he liked than the team’s best interests.

Out went Jadeveon Clowney and DeAndre Hopkins for almost nothing – in came Laremy Tunsil in an extremely expensive trade that gave him absolutely mammoth leverage, allowing him to command an enormous contract.

The Texans were winless and had the NFL’s highest payroll when O’Brien was sacked, but it’s not like getting rid of him cleaned up the mess.

Then came the bizarre rise of Jack Easterby, a former New England chaplain with little football experience who became a Texans executive vice president with a shocking amount of internal power through his connections with owner Cal McNair.

Unsurprisingly a man whose greatest achievement was bonding with a rich dude over religion didn’t turn the NFL’s worst situation into a good one, and eventually his former Patriots colleague Nick Caserio was brought across as general manager.

Caserio’s main idea has been to try and keep the Texans competitive by spending a surprising amount of money on short-term veteran deals.

In a sense it is admirable that he didn’t go ‘full tank’ and sell everything that was left for whatever value he could gain, while playing rookies in every position. But it also hasn’t gotten them very far. Or worked.

The Texans haven’t been competitive. They’re not terrible every week, but they’re 7-26 with a tie over the last two seasons.

And that losing record hasn’t even earned them a No. 1 draft pick. They had pick three last year, taking cornerback Derek Stingley Jr. – and watching fellow corner Sauce Gardner, took one pick later, became an immediate superstar in New York.

The two teams that picked ahead of the Texans in the 2022 draft, Jacksonville and Detroit, showed just how easy it should be to turn around a team. The Jaguars won the AFC South; the Lions had a winning record and missed the wildcard round on a tiebreaker. Throw in the Giants, who picked at No. 5 and also made the playoffs this season, too.

But, no, Houston is still awful. They used the 2022 season to give Davis Mills an extended audition at quarterback, but the third-round pick – who went eighth at his position in that draft, not exactly suggesting he was valued as a future star – flopped.

In an ideal world, the Texans will head to the draft and take the quarterback of their choice. Except, of course, they may not have that option.

Chicago, picking No.1, doesn’t exactly need a QB – they took Justin Fields just two years ago and while he hasn’t been a superstar, he looks like the second-best of his class behind Trevor Lawrence, and the Bears finally started to unlock his talents this season.

But the Bears could very easily trade out the pick to a team that does want a QB – such as Indianapolis (No.4), Las Vegas (No.7), Atlanta (No.8) or Carolina (No.9), or even Seattle (No.5) or Detroit (No.6) if they’re not happy with the surprisingly-effective Geno Smith and Jared Goff respectively.

Alabama’s Bryce Young shapes as the top QB on the board while Ohio State’s CJ Stroud and Kentucky’s Will Levis have their fans – so there will be an option for the Texans either way.

But missing out on the No. 1 pick is such an obvious, unforced error that could easily come back to bite them. What if their divisional rivals the Colts trade up and nab Young, and he dominates them twice a year for a decade-plus?

This could still work out. And sacking Lovie Smith, in a vacuum, isn’t an awful move. He was an uninspiring pick, having left Chicago in 2012 and been poor in his jobs since, at Tampa Bay and the University of Illinois.

There were also suggestions Smith, who is black, was only hired because the decision came when Brian Flores was suing the NFL for alleged racist hiring practices – with Texans higher-ups actually said to prefer Josh McCown, the white journeyman quarterback who interviewed for the job in early 2021, just months after finishing his playing career.

Hiring McCown would be an extremely Texans move given his reported links to the men in charge of the organization.

But, then, who would take the job otherwise? You’ve got no quarterback (until the draft at least), very little skill position talent (running back Dameon Pierce looked solid as a rookie but top receiver Brandin Cooks wants out) and a pedestrian-at-best defense.

There are only 32 NFL head coaching jobs so someone will take it, of course. But you’re not going to get the cream of the crop candidates.

And all they’ll be trying to do is turn a team that has never been a true Super Bowl contender – unless you count the moment they were 24-0 up on the Chiefs in the 2019 divisional round before collapsing horribly – into one.