The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Aaron Reiss: Things Could Get Worse Before They Get Better For Texans

Episode Date: October 6, 2020

Aaron Reiss: Things Could Get Worse Before They Get Better For Texans

Hey, this is Whitney Mersens. The Texan this year. Listen to real Texan talk on your smart speaker. Just say, hey, Google. Play Sports Talk 790 on IHeart Radio. 132 on Sports Talk 790. We have Astros baseball beginning in one hour from now. Right now, let's stay with the Texans and say how to our good friend, Aaron Reese.

On the Texans beat, you can follow him from the athletic at Aaron J. Reese. Okay, Aaron. So where are you yesterday when things started to unravel and we found out about Bill O'Brien's firing? And what were one or two quick observations you thought off the top of your head besides, oh my God, I've got to get some quotes from somebody. I mean, the first one, I guess, was just a little, being a little surprised by the timing of it, that they would do it so quickly into the season. Obviously, the season was, you know, has been a total disaster.

But still you think, you know, from Cal McNair's perspective, you let this. guy, O'Brien, and Jackie Esterby, you know, mortgage of the future, tradeaway superstar players and some very unpopular moves, only to punt on the whole operation four games into O'Brien actually being general manager and title, I think, it was pretty surprising that just from an optic standpoint alone, you wouldn't hold on a little bit longer and kind of see things through, especially considering schedule the Texas face. But I think that speaks to just how bad Cal McNair determined things to be and how dire the situation was. Why is Jack Easterby still here?

It's a good question. I mean, I think if for nothing else, you need somebody to kind of be in charge of the front office, right? And he was the number two in command to O'Brien in that respect. And obviously, with on-field performance teams O'N-4, I think it's a little

bit easier to fire a coach mid-season. So, O'Brien also being the GM, of course, creates a void there. But, you know, I will have to see kind of how influential Eastby is in terms of hiring the next people, whether the fact can hire another GM, whether he becomes the GM, what exactly the leadership structure looks like and where he fits within that in the future. Aaron, he's not been made available. So now it's just conjecture in our part. What is Jack thinking?

More importantly, what is he saying? And what is the building feel about a Jack Eastby-led building with Romeo Cornell as an interim and no Bill O'Brien in that building anymore? Well, you know, I think it's interesting. In the short term, I don't really know. I don't really know what changes, right? You have to consider that Romeo Cornell, obviously, has not been successful as a head coach. I don't think anyone views him as really auditioning for the job here, even though the Texan schedule lightens up. And he was just demoted from a defensive coordinator during the off season.

So I don't think in that terms, and maybe other than him being kind of a stabilizing force, I don't know how much impact he has in the short term. And it needs to be, I think, kind of you have to wonder how much does the Texans operation really change in terms of their approach, right? Eastryby was side by side with O'Brien in terms of trading draft picks and the contracts they handed out and trading away superstar players. You know, I mean, they were, if nothing else, presented a United Front on all those things. And this is really Eastryby's first taste of like front office experience. So there's no reason to think that he would really have a counter approach that he just wasn't allowed to kind of, you know, exercise here. So I'll be curious to see kind of how much things really change in that regard.

and I have to imagine that's the most too often wonders how much really changes between now and the time when the Texans, if they even do, hire a new general manager. Aaron, if Jack tries to separate himself, can't you call BS on that? Because as you've covered this team almost every single time, Jack mentions Bill, Bill mentions Jack? I mean, unless that was just a big old fraud case, it felt like everything was done in mutual admiration with all these decisions, correct? No, correct. I mean, you know, and especially when you, you know, you look, but it is kind of, it's always one of these things where everything is together until, until it's not, right? I mean, it wasn't that long ago that Bill O'Brien and Brian Gain were also saying they, you know, they had aligned priorities and saw things the same way. But, but I do think, you're right. I mean, Jackie should be just because he survived, he is not, it's not like he is not still attached to kind of the issues that the Texans now find themselves in. And these are not issues that, you know, are going to go away just because, you know, Bill O'Brien has gone. I mean, the thing, the scary thing of you're a Texan fan is that this team that you're seeing now is old-for a team that's non-competitive.

I mean, things could probably get worse before they get better because Deshaun Watson's going to get more expensive. Jeremy Temple is going to get more expensive. They're going to lose more rookie contracts than they gain because of kind of the draft capital they've shipped away. So this team is not clearly not good enough, and it's hard to find avenues for them to become good enough. We argued about this before you joined us, Aaron Rees from the Athletic with us on the Matt

Thomas show. How good do you think this job is for a general manager and for a coach if Cal and deed goes after two spots this offseason? From a head coaching perspective, I think it's a good job. If nothing else, you have Deshawn Watson. And, you know, the Texans obviously are deficient in some areas, but they have a lot of talent in other spots. You know, you have some building blocks there in Deshawn Watson and Laramie Thompson being the most important ones. Zach Cunningham is maybe being paid a little overmarket, but he's a good player. Bradley Robey is a solid corner,

just to read is a good young safety. So they have talent there, Watson being, of course, the most important part. That's a better quarterback situation than I think really any new head coach would inherit. And along the same lines,

if they do hire general manager, that would already, that job would come with the biggest item on a new GM's to-do list already checked off and finding a franchise quarterback, right? That's very rare, again, people that are brought in from outside inherit a situation like this.

But, you know, I do think the GM job is definitely less attractive, in my opinion, than the head coaching job. For one being, obviously, the lack of draft capital. But also, you think now, I wonder why, if Cal McNair, giving that Cal McNair fired Bill O'Brien so quickly, you have, this team has gone through two GMs and a little more than two full seasons, both of which ended in playoff appearances.

So how short of a leash, how quick of a timeline is the next GM on, if they do indeed hire one? Are they expected to have produced a meeting improvement, despite the fact that they really have, you know, no draft capital to do so? and the situation I'm excited only going to get harder because lots of in the tons

are going to become more expensive in terms of their cap-in. I brought this up to open up the show at noon today, and maybe it was a bit hyperbole, but I think there's a little bit of fact. And again, this is just a gut feeling I have. I feel like the grumpiness that has been

JJ Watt, and we saw it two weeks ago, and I asked you about it last week, clearly he was really pissed off this past week. Is there any part of you that believes that a handful of players went to Cal and said, this is not working anymore. Because as you know, I know this from basketball.

Aaron, players can walk into owners and get coaches fired in a second. I don't know if the NFL works that way or how much it would. But this feels like there are enough guys in that locker room that just didn't buy into Bill's BS anymore. And they were just like, we're over this. We need to change. We've seen a lot of good players leave our room because of trades and non-signings that the leash for Bill with his players. was as short as it's ever been. Yeah, you know, I don't know if it was

something as formal as going to Cal, but I think, you know, if you're coming there, you obviously are watching JJ Watts look like he just got ran over by a bus in that most recent press conference. You're, you know, you can see the team not really looking inspired on the field. And, you know,

yeah, I mean, definitely just over time, I think that the culture of kind of Bill O'Brien, everything that he's been characterized as behind the scenes, I think that obviously is going to weigh on people, if it's not producing results, and it was just not producing results. So I don't know the NFL if a player, even if they did go to the owner, would have enough power to do that, even JJ Watt.

I mean, you have to consider kind of the stage of JJ Watt's career and the contract situation, all those things. But I just think that, you know, it wasn't hard to probably get a read that the team was just not bought into this anymore. And it was, that was obvious if you just watched the game. All right, Aaron, last question. And again, we're hearing, a lot of us are hearing the same. same names, really cool coordinators, Eric Bienimi on the top of the list.

We're hearing some maybe some retreads of some other folks. What kind of coach do you think you being around this team is the best fit for this operation? Do you go offensive-minded, defensive-minded? Do you go with a guy that's been in a head coach before? Do you want fresh blood? And more importantly, who's going to make this call? And at the end of the day, do you believe Jack will be in this process to replace the next head football coach? Yeah, I mean, he's clearly sticking around.

I think he's going to be involved in the process. You know, at the end, it will obviously be Cal's call, or he at least has the authority to make the call. You know, I'm, anyone who reads me knows that I'm kind of more of an analytics focus personally in terms of analyzing this stuff. So I would veer towards picking an offensive-minded person just because all the numbers would indicate

that having a sustained offense is, a good offense is the most sustainable way to be successful. And along the line, you want someone who's going to bring fresh ideas who's going to build an offense that caters directly to Sean Watson's strength. So I think there, the enemy has one person, Greg Roman, the office coordinator of the Ravens. You know, he has a proven track record with Lamar Jackson, building a system that caters precisely to his quarterback's strength.

So those are kind of people that I would look at. I think you take the best player you have, which is your quarterback, and you do everything to maximize that. All right, my friend, have fun on the chase on this. The problem is you're going to be chasing rumors all over the place. I don't know if you've been involved in these kind of things before, but there's some fun and there's some of it is just a lot of guys just throwing names out because they want to get their names

out to the national media. So I wish you luck on this. Yeah, well, I think, you know, the weird thing is that given the point at which Bill O'Brien was fired, it's obviously going to drag on for a very long time because of the Roman or the enemy or a lot of these other guys who are being ruined, they obviously can't leave their current job for that job

for a while. That's true. That's very good, my friend. Thank you very much for the visit. We'll talk again next week. All right, thanks, but. You got it. Aaron Reese from the athletic. Aaron J. Reese on Twitter. You can him and he does a spectacular job covering the team on the athletic website. Let me tell you about Hoops, basketball goals, and sporting equipment. How many days could you be shooting basketballs with temperatures in the 80s, 70s at night, 60s

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