The Houston Texans may believe they completed their coaching search with the best hire, but some critics aren’t impressed.
According to Cody Benjamin from CBS Sports, the Texans’ promotion of defensive coordinator and associate head coach Lovie Smith to the full-time job earned them a D grade in his rankings of all the coaching hires for 2022.
No offense to Lovie, who deserves all the credit for his Super Bowl bid with the Bears earlier in his career. But what is this hire? Drawing out a search is one thing. Drawing it out to basically hire the defensive equivalent of David Culley, the guy you just fired after one year in a rebuild? Smith, going on 64, doesn’t feel like a long-term building block for a program very much in transition. He oversaw one of the NFL’s worst defenses in 2021. Maybe a CEO role better suits him and better personnel will help. But he also hasn’t had a winning season as a head coach — either in college or the NFL — since 2012, posting a 43-77 record since his last playoff trip in 2010.
While the Texans’ defense was among the worst in the NFL in terms of yards (31st) and points allowed (27th), Houston was the only team with a losing record to finish in the top-10 in takeaways with 25. The ability to cultivate turnovers has always been Smith’s bread and butter, and he served the Texans well in 2021.
Skepticism surrounding the hire is understandable, especially since Smith’s last NFL coaching job was with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, going 2-14 and 6-10 in his two seasons with the NFC South club from 2014-15. However, Smith is bringing a plan to the Texans. Whether or not that plan is executed remains to be seen, but the former 2005 NFL Coach of the Year knows what to expect in his third go-around as the top man on the sidelines.