After consecutively losing four games, the Houston Texans made the challenging decision to fire the head coach for the past seven years, Bill O’Brien. The Texans declared his termination Monday, October 5, 2020, shortly after losing 23-31 against the Minnesota Vikings.
On Sept. 10, the Texans kicked off the 2020 season with a hard-fought game against previous Super Bowl winners, the Kansas City Chiefs, losing 20-34. Following the Chiefs game, the Texans continued the losing streak for the remaining three games of the first quarter of the season.
In an interview with Texans Radio, Chairman and CEO Cal McNair addressed why he decided to fire O’Brien.
“After the Viking game, I just felt it was the right thing to do,” said McNair. “With 12 games left, the season isn’t over. If you divide the season up into quarters, we’ve just played the first quarter, and it’s time to go out there and focus on one game at a time.”
McNair truly believes in his players’ ability. This change of coaching was a necessity to bring the Texans to the top.
“We have really good players. We have seen that in spurts in games. We’ve seen a number of good drives by the offense and a number of good stops by the defense,” said McNair. “Put those together and go find a way to win the game.”
There is no shortage of Houston Texas fans that are pleased with O’Brien being gone. Many fans believe that the short term consequence will result in a loss, but over the coaching change will be an extraordinary thing for the Texans’ organization.
“Short term won’t work out so well, but long term it is going to be one of the best decisions the organization can make,” said senior Tyler Poe, Klein Cain senior. “O’Brien has been messing up the organization so much and was continuing to ruin everything, including Deshaun Watson’s career.”
Throughout his seven-year career as the head coach for the Houston Texans, O’Brien led the Texans to 52 wins, four AFC South Division Championships, and various playoff debuts.
Romeo Crennel, named interim head coach, will be taking over O’Brien’s spot for the remainder of the 2020 football season. Crennel has an entirety of 38 years of NFL experience under his belt and has been with the Texans for all of O’Brien’s seven seasons as head coach. For the short term, Jack Esterby, executive vice president of football operations, will be stepping up to the plate as the team’s general manager.
