Houston Texans: Can Bill O’Brien Get Team Over the Hump?
By Luke Sims
Houston Texans head coach Bill O’Brien is not yet in a ‘prove-it’ year, but he does need to show that the team can get over the hump.
In the modern NFL, teams only go as far as their quarterbacks. The Houston Texans are a great example of this, featuring one of the league’s best defenses (and sometimes the best), but struggling after making the playoffs due to poor quarterback play.
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Since Matt Schaub left town, this has been the story. It has been a revolving door at quarterback, the game’s most important position. Even once the team thinks it has the position settled, like in Brock Osweiler’s case, something changes and resources have to be used to jettison that player before too much damage is done.
That is no way to run a team effectively and it’s a great way to ruin a team’s chances of actually being competitive once the playoffs start. Texans head coach Bill O’Brien knows this, recently telling the Houston Chronicle that the Texans need to strive for stability at quarterback. Churning through 10 quarterbacks (eight starters) in three years like the Texans have done is no way to create stability—just ask the Cleveland Browns.
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And those limited-use quarterbacks have only yielded 27 wins in three seasons. O’Brien’s overall track record is 27-21, barely getting above .500 each season after three-straight 9-7 campaigns. That’s enough to win the AFC South division for now, but there is only so much more time that will hold true and only so much longer that the Texans fan base, long postseason starved, will be willing to suffer through routine playoff exits.
The fact of the matter is that the NFL isn’t about being better than the year before or making the playoffs. Those are simply secondary goals to make the one true play at a Lombardi Trophy. At the end of the day, all that matters is the Super Bowl. Unless something extraordinary happens in a playoff game like the “tuck rule” game, the playoffs are frequently glossed over. Losing teams are relegated to the footnotes of history.
While O’Brien has certainly been put between a rock and a hard place, managing a roster heavily invested in its defense and still struggling to find its quarterback, the team must find ways to get further ahead. It’s a tough task, one that head coaches can rarely deliver without the right pieces. Thus far, O’Brien has proven that he can keep the team’s nose above water, but he must also prove that he can make more out of nothing and keep the team from routine futility.
In short, O’Brien must prove the Houston Texans can get over the hump. 2016 helped in some regards, with the Texans beating a Derek Carr-less Oakland Raiders in the first round of the playoffs. But that won’t always be good enough. Drawing an opponent like that won’t always happen.
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And when that doesn’t happen, the Texans need to take a hard look in the mirror and ask if O’Brien is the guy to get the team over the hump. 2017 will help answer that question, especially in light of a greatly improved AFC South. The quarterback situation will be a guide as well. But, ultimately, the buck stops at the head coach and O’Brien’s abilities will be put through the wringer in proving that he can still, miraculously, scrape by.