The Texans collapse is a product of bad decisions, ownership, and a youth pastor

It wasn’t long ago that it seemed the Texans had finally turned the corner. Houston had one of the brightest young quarterbacks in the NFL, a defense good enough to slow teams down, and the AFC South was ripe for the picking. Following their 11-5 season in 2018, there was plenty of discussion whether the Texans could push further and make it all the way to the Super Bowl.

Then everything started going wrong. Now, after a 4-12 season, the Texans aren’t in the middle of a collapse, the team is in a free fall. Deshaun Watson reportedly wants out, the front office was fired and controversially replaced without talking to the franchise QB, and one of the organization’s most prominent voices is a former pastor who holds few qualifications for his job.

The Texans have become perhaps the most dysfunctional team in the NFL. It’s the most precipitous drop in recent memory.

We’re going to be talking about Bill O’Brien here, and not simply because he was a coach who couldn’t get the job done. Rather O’Brien was a symptom of a larger problem that began plaguing the Texans: A hopeless desire to be the New England Patriots.

General manager Rick Smith was desperate to turn the franchise around following the disastrous 2-14 season in 2013, electing to hire O’Brien hot off a one-year turnaround of Penn State. At the time, O’Brien was credited as the architect that led the Nittany Lions back from NCAA sanctions following the Jerry Sandusky scandal, and his past as a member of the Patriots’ staff positioned him as a steadying hand needed to guide a organization in dire need of stability.

O’Brien hired a staff full of people he had prior experience with, either in New England or at Penn State. The 2014 Texans went 9-7, prompting wider belief that O’Brien was every bit the turnaround artist he showed at Penn State.

Fast-forward four years, and the team failed to take further steps forward. In fact, Houston began taking a step backwards — and blame fell on Smith for his inability to create a solid roster that O’Brien could take advantage of. Smith took a leave of absence to care for his wife, who was battling cancer. This gap led to the team hiring Brian Gaine, who was gone a year later, and still nobody knows why.

O’Brien became GM, traded DeAndre Hopkins after reportedly comparing him to Aaron Hernandez in a weird meeting. It was a key move that ran the Texans into the ground, and O’Brien was fired mid-season with a 0-4 record. That’s a lot in a little time, but he did his best to ruin everything.

There’s this tendency in the NFL that if you’re hearing about anyone in a front office other than the general manager, it’s a sign things are going poorly. Nobody talks about their director scouting unless a draft class explodes, nobody cares who the director of player personnel is unless a star is complaining about their workplace.

Jack Easterby’s name has been in the headlines a lot this week, and it’s one of the weirdest situations in recent memory. Easterby, who took over as executive vice president of football operations for the Texans in January of 2020 has become a central figure in the Texans’ collapse.

Easterby had a shoddy football background when he entered the NFL, to say the least. A youth pastor, Easterby was hired by the Patriots in the wake of the Aaron Hernandez arrest as a “character coach,” and team chaplain. Somehow he moved through the organization and became more involved in football to the point the Texans made the bizarre decision to move him from preacher to key front office member.

For as much flack as O’Brien got, a stunning dive into the Texans by Sports Illustrated in December explained how Easterby was behind some of the most stunning decisions by the organization in recent memory.

“One former staffer says that when Easterby is asked for specifics about a subject on which he’s out of his depth—not uncommon considering his scope of responsibilities and limited NFL experience—he’ll artfully deflect and move on to a new topic. They watched curiously as Easterby’s responsibilities expanded well beyond the role for which he was hired—in some cases, outside his areas of expertise. As another colleague puts it, “Jack was basically doing everything O’Brien was doing, except for calling plays.”

Watson, growing frustrated with feeling like he wasn’t being valued by the front office, wanted a bigger say in the decisions moving forward. Trading away Hopkins, which was executed by O’Brien, and reportedly suggested by Easterby, doomed the offense in 2020, giving the star quarterback cause to be upset.

The breaking point appeared to be when Easterby reportedly held a team meeting, offering effusive, embarrassing praise for Watson — but leaving out other members of the team. It reportedly upset Watson further, leading to rumors Easterby would be fired when Nick Caserio took over as GM.

CEO Cal McNair stated publicly that he would not be firing Easterby, much to the chagrin of Texans fans. Watson tweeted after the news, and it lacked no subtlety.

The above directly restates Watson’s reported anger that the team traded Hopkins, saying his “anger was at a two, now it’s at a 10.” This time he was clearly referring to the news that Easterby would not be on his way out.

The Texans essentially took the needs of the star quarterback, arguably one of the best players in the entire league at the his position, and made them secondary to firing an ill-equipped front office member who has done nothing but hurt the Texans since arriving.

Watson has no plans to play for the Texans now, and while it would take a mammoth trade to pull off, there’s no question a player of Watson’s caliber is worth it. The first, true franchise quarterback in Texans history will be lost after a few years, all because of ownership choosing to keep a pastor, over making the team’s quarterback happy.

New reports now indicate that Easterby has creatively used his faith as a tool to guilt people into keeping him around, routinely inviting them to pray with him, or appealing to their Christian values. Meanwhile Easterby has made ludicrous claims, such as Sports Illustrated being backed by Robert Kraft and his family, with the exposé on his failings being a hit job ordered by the Patriots.

This should be the easiest decision in NFL history. Fire someone who obviously can’t do their job. For whatever reason McNair and the Texans are keeping Easterby around, regardless of who gets upset about it on the way. The Texans may get a boat load of picks and assets by trading Watson, but it’s unclear if anyone in the organization will be able to use them correctly.

In two short years the Texans went from a team on the verge of breaking out and having sustained success, to being more dysfunctional than the NFL’s biggest laughing stocks. They only have themselves to blame.