HOUSTON — No one man should have all that power. This line is a lyric from the song Power written and produced by one of the most influential hip-hop artists of all time, Kanye West. In the musical piece, it is debatable who West is referring to — whether the government or a higher power — the song is a double pun for power distribution.
With no clear indication, West leaves it up to the listeners’ imagination to draw their personal conclusion of who he is referring to in the piece. But perhaps the Houston Texans used the song’s interpretation to learn from their past failures.
Thursday afternoon, the Texans fired coach David Culley after one season at the helm. Culley’s departure was the conclusion of a four-day evaluation process led by general manager Nick Caserio and executive Vice President of Football Operations Jack Easterby.
As a result of their assessment, Caserio credited “philosophical differences” as the reason why the Texans canned Culley. Caserio’s reasoning would imply that Culley had a rugged say in what took place during his lone season as coach of the Texans. But in reality, the Texans did not give Culley much authority as head coach.
Outside of selecting defensive coordinator Lovie Smith, Culley had no governance in his staff. And although he was the coach of the Texans, Houston’s management interfered with Culley’s coaching decisions on Sundays.
“With different perspectives on what we would’ve done if we were in that particular situation, I was in just being able to bounce [ideas] off each other those situations,” Culley said in December. “Not only the good things but the mistakes that we’ve made along the way. We basically decide what’s best for us during a particular situation to do and make those decisions, and that’s been very helpful for me.”
Culley later added: “They see things differently. To me, having Romeo (Crennel)’s perspective of things has really been good for me. Obviously, with Nick with all the experience he’s had in New England going through this and being a part of that, we get to have some really good, hard conversations about what we would do and what you think we should do.”
The last time the Texans gave a coach too much power, Bill O’Brien scorned the organization. His game management skills cost the Texans several winnable games.
In 2018, the Indianapolis Colts demolished the Texans 21-7 during the AFC wild-card game when O’Brien elected to go for it on five fourth downs, which resulted in Houston committing three turnovers on downs.
A year later, O’Brien made his most egregious mishap as a play-caller when Houston blew a 24-0 lead against the Kansas City Chiefs. First, O’Brien called for his field goal unit at Kansas City’s 11-yard line instead of trusting his offense led by Deshaun Watson to convert on fourth down for a chance to increase their lead 28-0.
On Houston’s next possession, O’Brien called for an inadequate fake punt that resulted in the Chiefs taking over deep inside the Texans’ territory. The Texans would go on to lose to the Chiefs 51-31 during the Divisional Round of the 2019 playoffs at Arrowhead Stadium.
But despite his poor decisions as a head coach, O’Brien’s most egregious judgments took place after the Texans promoted him to general manager.
O’Brien handed out several controvertible contracts, and he executed one of the worst trades in NFL history by shipping All-Pro wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins to the Arizona Cardinals in exchange for running back David Johnson.
O’Brien’s absurd judgments could have made the Texans paranoid about giving a coach excessive power, but Houston didn’t provide the most ordinary control to Culley.
As a first-year head coach who has been an NFL position coach since 1994, Culley made a handful of subpar calls throughout the Texans’ 4-13 season. But Culley’s imperfect game management was largely the result of accepting flawed guidance from others on his headset.
And the one-time Culley made a bold decision as a head coach should — it backfired.
“I go back to the New England game, I can remember just like it was yesterday that the conversation went, ‘let them score.'” Culley said. “I heard the conversation, and then all of a sudden, it didn’t compute to me at that time. Now from that point on, I’ve learned to be ahead of those things. When you’re ahead of those things like that, you’re much better to make those decisions.”
For the second consecutive year, the Texans will be on a quest to find a candidate to fill their head coach vacancy.
It’s uncertain what qualities Houston will pursue in their next coaching search. Over the last three years, the Texans have a tale of two illustrations of what could happen when giving a coach superabundant power verses not allowing someone to have much of a say at all.
The list of potential coaching candidates could result in Houston finally hiring the right coach as the team moves forward with their rebuild. As long as the Texans keep West’s Power piece in their mind, Houston could find a perfect check and balance system between coach and management.
But then again, there is always someone seeking more control to have ultimate dominion above all.