The Houston Texans beat the Jacksonville Jaguars 30-16 in Week 15 to earn their third win of the season. The fourth consecutive sweep of Houston’s AFC South foes provided a feel-good event for a 3-11 campaign that has been more excruciating for fans long-suffering to have a contender at NRG Stadium.
Rookie coach David Culley has been a part of the problem, as has everyone else because football is the ultimate team sport. However, new rules to interviewing coaching candidates provide that teams can interview targets in the last two weeks of the regular season and not wait until the regular season concludes.
According to Doug Farrar form the Touchdown Wire, these new rules make Culley a target for the hot seat.
This isn’t Culley’s fault; let’s make that clear. Years of bad coaching and roster mismanagement under Bill O’Brien, and Deshaun Watson’s ongoing legal situation, has basically turned the Texans into a farm team. Culley was ostensibly hired to provide a calm presence through what has been a rough season, and in that regard, he’s done a fine job. But if the Texans are to get off the mat anytime soon, they’ll need a more dynamic presence to team with general manager Nick Caserio to put things back in the right place — hopefully without interference from the more negative presences still in the building.
If general manager Nick Caserio is going to get rid of Culley anyway, it would make sense to do so and have first crack at the candidates. The Las Vegas Raiders and Jacksonville Jaguars are already in the queue as they have coaching vacancies.
Caserio said earlier in the month on Sports Radio 610 that he will evaluate Culley, along with all aspects of the team, at the end of the season. If the evaluation shows they need to move on from Culley, Houston will already be behind in combing through the best coaching candidates, which is where they found themselves in early 2021, even though they were the first team to fire their coach after an 0-4 start in 2020.