The Houston Texans fired Lovie Smith after just one season. Since firing Bill O’Brien in 2020, four coaches have led the Texans into completely lopsided battles, the result often a forgone conclusion.
Since 2020, the Texans’ 11-38-1 record (.230%) is the worst in the NFL over that span. They’ll enter 2023 with their fifth head coach in four years when including Romeo Crennel during his time as the interim coach in 2020. Why did they give Smith just one season before moving on?
Lovie Smith Was Never Their Long-Term Solution
It’s a shame to see. Smith entered 2022 with an impossible task. The Texans’ roster never had a chance at seeing any kind of relative success, even in a putrid AFC South. But over the last five games of the season, while many of Houston’s young starters headed to injured reserve, the Texans played their best football.
Aside from the Week 17 drubbing at the hands of the surging Jacksonville Jaguars, the Texans looked like a respectable football operation. They played the Cowboys and Chiefs down to the wire and then beat the Titans and Colts. Against all odds, they climbed their way out of the abyss of the worst record in the NFL, and in turn, missed out on the top pick in the NFL draft.
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Smith was given a hand grenade, and the only way he was ever going to keep his job is if he somehow made that hunk of metal and explosives into lemonade. This came just one season after David Culley — another minority hire — was also handed an impossible task before being swiftly discarded.
Houston never wanted to hire Smith in the first place. They wanted to hire Josh McCown. If not for Brian Flores’ discrimination lawsuit, McCown would probably be Houston’s head coach right now. Smith, a man with NFL coaching experience dating back to 1996, was a placeholder for a man who had never been on a sideline before as a coach.
Lovie Smith’s Style Didn’t Fit a Modern League
Smith is a defensive coach from an era long gone. Reports out of Houston were that Smith’s style clashed with players, who felt their voices weren’t being heard. Although his two-high defense had its moments in 2022, there was a lack of adaptability in Smith’s scheme. When things weren’t working, the adjustments never came.
Smith lacked an appetite for using analytics, and instead of taking a community approach to building a game plan, he kept a small group in his inner circle, not listening to player input or input from coaches. In the end, the hire never made sense. It was simply a means to an end.
This brings us to the second-biggest reason the Texans fired Smith.
The Texans Are an Unserious Franchise
When was the last time Cal McNair made a decision that helped move the Texans forward instead of backward? Maybe Nick Caserio was the right choice for the general manager job. His first draft was impressive, but it will be years before we know if he is truly the man for the job.
Things weren’t bad when O’Brien was coaching the Texans. Rick Smith and O’Brien built a decent roster. But O’Brien is a Bill Belichick disciple, and O’Brien wanted roster control, as is the “Patriot Way.” Like most Belichick disciples, giving O’Brien roster control was an unmitigated disaster for McNair, which has led to the moment we live in now.
Think of it this way. Houston HAS had more head coaches in the past 48 months than the Pittsburgh Steelers have had in the last 48 years. And now Houston may have an excuse to make an unprecedented hire. The Colts elevated Jeff Saturday to interim head coach after firing Frank Reich. It was a disaster, but it set the precedent.
It would follow a pattern of unserious behavior, especially with a plethora of legitimately talented candidates on the market this offseason. Even if McCown comes in, Caserio hits on a QB, and the team finds success, the process was ignorant at best and downright disrespectful to the profession at worst.
Now that the Texans have the second pick in the NFL draft in a class with quarterbacks worth a top-five pick, Houston will finally bring in the coach they want to build around. Culley and Smith were easy scapegoats, and that type of organizational function is why the likes of Houston and Cleveland have consistently failed while the Steelers continue to overachieve with a lackluster roster.
Texans Are Finally Starting Their Rebuild
It was clear that McNair wasn’t happy about the Texans’ last-second 32-31 win over the Colts. The thing is, the first two reasons here are the reasons why Smith is no longer the Texans coach. There didn’t need to be a CVS receipt full of reasons because they never wanted Smith to be their long-term answer. He was never making it past this season, barring a truly unbelievable turnaround from arguably the worst roster in the NFL.
Smith said in his postgame interview that he believed he’d be back in 2023, but he probably knew that wasn’t the case. He’s done this for a long time, is a true professional, and knows how to say the right things.
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Going for two and winning the game right then and there at the end was probably just a move made by a coach with nothing to lose in an already lost season. However, from the outside, it could be seen as a big double bird to McNair. Now, the Texans will have to overpay for the QB they desire, all to move up one spot.
But with cap space and five picks inside the top 75, the Texans will give their new head coach time to work with a young roster. Operating this way isn’t inherently wrong. What is wrong is the way Houston went about it. They took a respected coach and used him as a pawn in a greater game. It’s a business, but sometimes the business objectively stinks.
Even though Houston has been a disaster recently, the job is attractive. Realistically, the coach and Caserio will have their pick at QB, with a clean slate and freedom to grow with the roster. McNair certainly doesn’t want a revolving door as head coach, so the new staff will likely have multiple years to build the roster.