Texans Will Be Even More of a Joke If They Fire David Culley After One Season
By Liam McKeone
The Houston Texans are one of the worst teams in the NFL this season and that is mostly by design. It obviously was not ideal for the franchise for Deshaun Watson to demand a trade, and the subsequent sexual assault allegations cast a very poor light on the Texans while submarining Watson's trade value. Nick Caesiro, hired last offseason to be the team's GM, decided to try and make the best of a very bad hand by trading away most of the team's better talent in order to effectively tank this season.
The tanking effort has worked out great so far. With one game left to play, Houston is nearly guaranteed to get a top-five pick and will very likely end up picking in the top three. Caesiro hired David Culley over the offseason to oversee this effort. It was a bizarre choice, given Culley had never been a head coach before and would be 66 years old by season's end, but the Texans were going to be bad no matter what so it didn't matter all that much.
Houston is not set to be good anytime soon, either. The roster is so utterly devoid of talent that it'll be a multi-year process to return to contention no matter what the team eventually gets in return for Watson. That apparently will not stop the Texans from canning Culley after one season, as reported by Jay Glazer this morning.
The coaching firing carousel began this AM w the firing of Vic Fangio. It’s just the start. Here is my coaching forecast and what you need to know of who’s safe, on the hot seat and still in flux as well as an extensive guide to candidates to fill those jobs. pic.twitter.com/4QRxArTTz5
— Jay Glazer (@JayGlazer) January 9, 2022
What a complete and utter joke. Houston ripped apart the roster entirely through their own volition, told Culley to make the best of it, and are now going to fire him? What possible reason could they give? The fact that this team has four wins going into the last week of the season is a minor miracle in of itself.
Culley hasn't been perfect. Some of his decisions have been strange, like when he benched one of the team's few leaders for a whole game because of a "disagreement" earlier in the week. But to hire a guy in what is clearly a lost year and then immediately fire him is just disgraceful. It's the sort of thing other coaches and players notice. Culley was never given a real shot. Firing him after one season with these circumstances tells everyone that this was always premeditated, that the grand plan was to hire Culley to take all the heat for a bad season and then can him no matter how well he coached.
It's embarrassing, and it'll be even more so if the Texans actually do hire another Patriot like Josh McDaniels. It's this kind of decision-making that caused Watson to demand a trade in the first place and it will continue to prevent this organization from reaching any heights as long as it continues. An unserious football franchise.