Tag: Belichick coaching tree

Texans’ Romeo Crennel more pleased with winning at home than beating Bill Belichick

Houston Texans interim coach Romeo Crennel is pleased to have a home win more so than getting a specific victory against Bill Belichick.

Houston Texans interim coach Romeo Crennel became the latest member of the Bill Belichick coaching tree to get a win against their former boss.

Crennel was the defensive coordinator for the New England Patriots under Belichick from 2001-04, and now the New York Giants’ Joe Judge is the only remaining former Patriots assistant yet to vanquish Belichick.

“Any time you go against a guy that you’ve worked with and that you’ve coached against before, a win is a good feeling,” Crennel said. “So, I feel good about that.”

As satisfying as the win against Belichick was, Crennel is happier to get the home win at NRG Stadium.

“I really feel good about the fact that we were able to win a home game,” said Crennel. “We hadn’t done that, so winning a home game was a big plus, and so I know all those guys in the locker room, they feel good about the win and the way that they fought for the whole game. And I think that that will help us going forward into this short week that we’ve got coming.”

The Texans go on the road to face the Detroit Lions on Thanksgiving at Ford Field. The last time the Texans played on Thanksgiving was 2012 when they beat the Lions 34-31 in overtime. Incidentally, the Texans that year would go on to win the AFC South, beat the Cincinnati Bengals in the wild-card round, and lose to the Patriots in the divisional.

Is the Texans’ trade of DeAndre Hopkins really Bill O’Brien taking a page from the Bill Belichick playbook?

Houston Texans coach and general manager Bill O’Brien trading DeAndre Hopkins seems like a page right out of the Bill Belichick playbook.

The Texans rocked the Houston sports scene on Monday when they announced the trade of three-time All-Pro receiver DeAndre Hopkins to the Arizona Cardinals.

“Veritatem dies aperit,” as the Romans use to say, translated to “time discloses the truth.” Over the days that unfolded, reports surfaced that coach and general manager Bill O’Brien didn’t like Hopkins’ influence on the locker room, and that Hopkins was threatening to hold out if his contract wasn’t reworked to reflect his talent level as one of the NFL’s best receivers.

In dealing Hopkins to the Cardinals for running back David Johnson and swapping draft selections, was O’Brien borrowing a page from Bill Belichick’s playbook? After all, O’Brien spent five seasons with the New England Patriots from 2007-11.

 

Winning power struggles is one of the first courses of action when a Belichick disciple gets to a new club. When Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels got to Denver in 2009, his only coaching gig to date, he wanted to bring in Matt Cassel and get rid of Jay Cutler. McDaniels also managed to alienate Pro Bowl receiver Brandon Marshall in the process. McDaniels was fired midway through his second season.

O’Brien hasn’t been as overt. In 2014, when he took over as coach, the Texans were coming off of a 2-14 season. Slowly, with AFC South titles, a playoff win over the Oakland Raiders, O’Brien showed to the McNair family that his way produces results.

Since consolidating power with the ouster of general managers Rick Smith and Brian Gaine, and taking over the reins himself, O’Brien has dealt with players who could have challenged his power in edge rusher Jadeveon Clowney and Hopkins with the most recent transaction the riskiest as it has the potential to yield the most negative returns.

Fun fact: among all Belichick assistants who took NFL coaching gigs, O’Brien is the most successful with a 2-4 playoff record, four division titles, and five winning seasons.

Texans coach Bill O’Brien doesn’t want to be like Bill Belichick

Houston Texans coach Bill O’Brien, a part of the Bill Belichick coaching tree, wants to be himself, not a replicant of the New England Patriots coach.

When being a branch on a coaching tree that belongs to one of the greatest pro football coaches of all time, there is a presumption that you want to be just like the trunk.

However, Houston Texans coach Bill O’Brien doesn’t want to be like New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick.

“I said this when I was at Penn State, I’ve said this here for the last six years: you have to be yourself,” O’Brien told reporters Wednesday.

O’Brien was an assistant coach with the Patriots from 2007-11 with his first season being a nebulous offensive assistant who was “grabbing coffees for everybody.” In 2008, O’Brien took over as receivers coach and had Randy Moss and Wes Welker under his instruction. From 2009-10, O’Brien was the Patriots’ quarterbacks coach, working closely with Tom Brady, and really got a feel for the entire offense and working with Belichick as New England’s offensive coordinator in 2011.

In 2012, O’Brien was hired as Penn State’s head football coach and was tasked with turning around a program that suffered a severe sex abuse scandal.

“You have to take the things that you learn there and you have to try to go into whatever situation it was, whether I was at Penn State or here in Houston and just, you have to be yourself,” O’Brien said. “But, you have to take some of the core beliefs that — when I was there, we won 60-plus games in five years, so there were a lot of thing that we did well.

“You take some of those things and then you go to your own spot and you try to do as best as you can to be yourself.”

Among the Belichick assistants who have left the Patriots to take coaching gigs, O’Brien is currently the most successful with four winning seasons, three AFC South titles, and a wild-card playoff win. In trying to be himself and not Belichick is perhaps why O’Brien has found some measure of success where others have failed after leaving New England.