The Houston Texans didn’t finish 3-13-1 because of one thing.
Even though the Texans fired coach Lovie Smith as their first act after finishing the season with double-digit losses for the third year in a row, the employment of Smith was hardly the sole reason why Houston was terrible.
As general manager Nick Caserio enters the third offseason with the Texans, he has to determine where Houston went wrong and how they can put the new coaching staff in a position to succeed.
“Every year we look at everything,” Caserio said. “Are there different ways, different players that we can bring on the team? Do we have an opportunity to add a player that maybe we lost out on? Overwhelming factors. Why did a player work out? Those are the dialogue and communications that we have with the scouting staff, and we meet on a regular basis. The coaching staff, the input of the coaching staff is going to be important.”
Caserio was pleased with the talent acquisition in the 2022 offseason, which was aided by the haul from the NFL draft. Houston added two first-rounders in cornerback Derek Stingley and Texas A&M guard Kenyon Green along with starter-level contributions from second-round safety Jalen Pitre, third-round linebacker Christian Harris, and fourth-round running back Dameon Pierce.
“I think we’ve brought in, I would say, some decent young players here over the past few years,” said Caserio. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ve solved all of our problems, but we’ve gotten good production out of a fair amount of players.”
Ultimately the Texans as a whole will have to find ways to improve, not just the coaching staff.
Said Caserio: “When you win three games, it’s not about one thing. It’s not about one particular area that you have a shortcoming. There’s a number of things. But I think there are examples, whether it’s in the building, whether it’s on the team, whether it’s on the field that we saw some encouraging things. It doesn’t mean that we’ve gotten ultimately to where we want to be. Whatever we can do to fix it, whatever areas we can look to improve, that’s the only thing we can do is try to come up with solutions and fix problems.”
The Texans are eligible to virtually interview candidates this week whose teams did not qualify for the playoffs or have the wild-card round off.
