Bill O’Brien is responsible for his make-or-break season with the Texans

In a series of two moves Saturday, the Texans sold low on one franchise player and bought high on another. From a macro level, it all seemed very messy. For Houston head coach and de facto general manager Bill O’Brien, it made perfect sense.

Out went defensive end Jadeveon Clowney, a former No. 1 overall pick and three-time Pro Bowler who’d been deemed a luxury in a top-five defense. In came left tackle Laremy Tunsil, a hopeful panacea to all the team’s blocking problems for a perpetually disappointing offensive line. While they came in a dizzying exchange of player values, Houston solved two problems that needed to be addressed in a quest to win its first-ever AFC title. The question now is whether O’Brien the general manager has made the kind of moves that can benefit O’Brien the coach.

The former Patriot assistant and Penn State head coach has been perfectly serviceable in his five years with the Texans. An inconsistent AFC South, an occasionally dominant defense, and the budding wizardry of quarterback Deshaun Watson has pushed him to the postseason three times. With Andrew Luck retired and the Titans and Jaguars each facing quarterback issues, a fourth division title in five years is within his grasp.

Winning in the regular season hasn’t been a problem for O’Brien. What comes next has. Houston’s only playoff win under O’Brien was against a Raiders team derailed by Derek Carr’s late-season broken leg. Now he heads into his sixth year at the helm with the most complete roster of his tenure — but if he can’t take advantage of a star-filled lineup, another AFC South championship could ultimately be his final failure.

Managerial problems afforded O’Brien an extra layer of autonomy few NFL coaches have. Thanks to an entirely botched hiring process, Houston is without a general manager for the upcoming season. That’s left O’Brien as the default architect to cleve away at some parts of his roster while remaining steadfastly conservative in others.

He wasn’t exactly primed for success after former GM Brian Gaine was fired in June. Despite a surplus of more than $50 million in salary cap space, the Texans were quiet in free agency. Tyrann Mathieu rebuilt his value as an upper-tier safety in his lone season in Texas. Rather than re-sign him at a cost of $14 million annually to bring stability to a secondary that was losing former starter Andre Hal to retirement, the club settled on Tashaun Gipson, who is two years older and roughly half as expensive. He’s the only player the team signed for multiple years this offseason.

Instead of shelling out big money and trying to outbid other franchises on offensive tackles like Trent Brown or Ja’Wuan James, Houston settled for a one-year deal with Matt Kalil. That shifted the team’s OL help focus to the draft, where the Eagles jumped one spot ahead of them to make Andre Dillard the first tackle taken. This forced the Texans to push high-ceiling, low-floor Alabama State tackle Tytus Howard into the first round as a high cost lottery ticket at the edge of their line.

Kalil was released shortly after Tunsil was acquired. Howard will be playing left guard as a rookie.

This lack of solutions seemed, at the very least, to clear the decks to lock Clowney in to a top-of-his-class contract while leaving space for an eventual Watson extension. Instead, the Texans sat on that money as talks with the edge rusher made it clear the two sides had very different feelings about his value. Though Clowney couldn’t negotiate with other teams thanks to Houston’s use of the franchise tag, his decision to hold out without signing that tender left the Texans in a tough spot. They could:

a) sign him to the contract extension he wants, tying up somewhere around $70 to $80 million in guaranteed money
b) let him sit out the season, a la Le’Veon Bell, before leaving in free agency in 2020 and recouping a likely third-round compensatory pick in 2021 for their troubles, or
c) trade Clowney, but only to a destination he prefers, since league rules mandate a franchise cannot trade a player who hasn’t signed a contract with them. Clowney would effectively have to OK the situation and sign his franchise tender before getting sent off to his new team.

With no intention of paying Clowney, and with Clowney not interested in being part of the Dolphins’ rebuild, O’Brien instead shipped him to Seattle in exchange for relative peanuts. Houston gleaned a third-round pick — a year earlier and likely 10-15 spots higher than the compensatory selection the league would likely have awarded — and a pair of replacement-level players in Barkevious Mingo and Jacob Martin. In one fell swoop, the Texans lost one of the best players from a dominant defense without gaining any kind of value that could address their glaring offensive line or running game needs in 2019.

Fortunately — or unfortunately, depending on how you value Houston’s draft assets — O’Brien wasn’t done yet. Hours later, news broke the Texans were shipping out two first-round draft picks, a second-round pick, defensive back Johnson Bademosi, and offensive tackle Julie’n Davenport (who’d started 15 games in 2018) in exchange for Dolphins left tackle Laremy Tunsil, wideout Kenny Stills, a fourth-round pick and a sixth-rounder.

(Somewhere in there, he also acquired Carlos Hyde and his 3.3 yards per carry average last season and landed former Patriot special teamer Keion Crossen as well. Take that as you will.)

After trading Clowney for little return, O’Brien mortgaged his draft future to find someone capable of protecting Watson this fall and beyond.

In a vacuum, the Tunsil trade may not be as egregious as overpay as “two firsts and a second” sounds up front. Jettisoning their 2020 and 2021 first-rounders would be the cost of any reasonable move up next spring’s draft board to pick up a high-profile rookie left tackle. The extra second was a luxury tax for getting a player who already has two years of NFL development under his belt and has emerged as an above-average player.

Throw in Stills, once one of the league’s top deep threats and now only 27 years old, as a mentor for a recuperating Will Fuller and complement to DeAndre Hopkins and it’s clear to see the Texans have improved their offense. O’Brien’s bet is that this will be enough to overcome any loss the departures of Clowney and Mathieu have created on the other side of the ball. Houston fielded top-seven scoring defenses in each of O’Brien’s first two seasons — seasons in which an injured Clowney missed 15 games and had a limited impact on the field.

The Texans’ defense has only cratered once under O’Brien. That came in a 2017 season when J.J. Watt, Whitney Mercilus, and Brian Cushing all played only five games each thanks to injuries while Clowney played the only 16-game season of his career to date. Watt and Mercilus shined in 2018 and are back to full strength for 2019, and linebacker Zach Cunningham is a worthy replacement and probable upgrade to Cushing in the middle of the field.

O’Brien’s hope is this core, along with a rapidly improving Justin Reid at safety, is able to maintain a high level of play despite the absence of two Pro Bowl-caliber players at valued positions. Houston effectively told the world saving $20-25 million annually is worth a slide from a top-five caliber defense to a top 10ish unit.

That’s quite a gamble for a team that could have afforded to spend big in 2019. Watson will only count $8.5 million against the salary cap his next two seasons before he’s due for a massive extension that will likely make him the game’s highest-paid player. The Texans are heading into the season with an estimated $32 million of spending room still on their cap. That left a clear opportunity to spend big on the free agents needed to turn a good team into a great one, a la the 2018 Rams.

Instead, O’Brien waited too long to extract any kind of meaningful value from a Clowney trade. Then he bet his immediate future on Tunsil while deferring his big splash into the free agent market one year down the line.

2020 will be the last year Watson earns a seven-figure salary. Between the fifth-year team option attached to his rookie deal and the lucrative contract extension that will almost certainly follow, the talented dual-threat passer is about to go from one of the league’s biggest bargains to one of its richest players. O’Brien would like him to get there in one piece, which explains why the Tunsil trade was worthwhile even at a steep price.

That leaves a well-defined window for the Texans to surround him with talent before the salary cap becomes an issue. While the Tunsil deal eliminates much of the opportunity to add inexpensive rookie players who can contribute immediately, O’Brien’s moves have cleared the deck for a spending spree next spring. Per Spotrac, the club has nearly an estimated $100 million in cap space for 2020 — currently third-most in the league. Though likely extensions for Tunsil and Cunningham (slated for free agency in 2021) will eat into that, there’s a lot of room to beef up an already playoff-ready roster.

(He also could have had plenty of spending room AND Clowney on the roster. Time will tell if this was a wise decision.)

Will O’Brien author the shopping list behind this trip to the veteran playmaker market? Good or bad, last weekend’s trades will be what defines his tenure as Houston’s head coach. He’s pushed the Texans out of stasis and shored up one of his biggest weaknesses by acquiring a left tackle who won’t be confused for a turnstile. He discarded a Pro Bowl player he didn’t think was worth a nine-figure extension in exchange for, well, something — even if it’s just a slightly upgraded third-round pick and future cap space.

For O’Brien to push into the hazy future he sees more clearly than anyone else, he’ll have to prove he didn’t waste a year of his championship window by burning Clowney and betting big on Tunsil. He’s helped construct a roster that will head into 2020 with a handful of top-50 players on the roster and the financial — though not draftable — flexibility to mold a franchise around them with high-powered help. And if he can prove he’s capable of winning in the postseason with that foundation, he’ll get the chance to see his experiment through.

Otherwise, the Texans are going to be 2020’s hottest destination for rising head coach candidates and eager general managers.