The Houston Texans have been struggling to find their identity for the past two seasons.
Whether it was the caliber of coach they hired or the issues at quarterback, the Texans didn’t have very many touchstones as to what defined their team.
General manager Nick Caserio has been front and center with the identity issues for the Texans as the last two coaches were hired on his watch starting with David Culley in late January 2021. Lovie Smith did not warrant any better results after being hired in February 2022, and Caserio knows failure has been more synonymous with Texans football during his time in the front office.
“There’s been a lot of work that we’ve put in over the last few years, and, quite frankly, there’s been some things that haven’t gone the way we would have hoped, but we’re excited about the opportunity in front of us,” Caserio said. “You have to start somewhere. You have to put your feet on the ground somewhere, and here’s where we are today. We have our feet on the ground.”
The Texans hired former San Francisco 49ers defensive coordinator DeMeco Ryans as the franchise’s sixth full-time coach. Ryans, a former Texans 2006 second-round linebacker, spent his entire coaching career with the 49ers. Kyle Shanahan hired him as a defensive quality control coach when he took the job in 2017, and San Francisco sustained two losing seasons before going to the Super Bowl at the end of the 2019 season. Since then, the 49ers have been to the NFC Championship Game twice in the past three seasons — both trips were with Ryans as defensive coordinator.
“We can’t wait to get started,” said Caserio. “We have a lot of work in front of us, but if we get the right people with the right process in place and then build it day-by-day, okay, week-by-week, month-by-month, that’s how you build sustainable success. It doesn’t happen overnight. I know everybody kind of sometimes gets caught up in kind of the quick fix. You have got to have purposeful intent action and do it consistently day after day.”
One of the ways the Texans will improve is through refining their fundamentals.
Said Caserio: “Honestly, it’s about doing simple things better. If you do simple well, okay, it’s like we talked about offensively, like philosophically. DeMeco has talked about it’s simple, but you create the illusion of complexity, right? So do something really well, kind of create the illusion of complexity. Whether it’s your formation is a certain way, your motion is a certain way, you cause the defender’s eyes to go a certain way. Figure out those things that we can do in the simple things and make sure our players understand that. And if you do it consistently over time, that’s how you’re going to build something that you can actually move forward with and have sustainable success. It doesn’t happen overnight.”
Ryans, 38, is the youngest coach in team history and is the first former player to take the coaching job since Houston’s 2002 origins.
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