The Texans and Cowboys are fighting a battle against recent history with a long-tenured coach

Bill O'Brien or Jason Garrett making a Super Bowl? History says doubtful

Bill O'Brien or Jason Garrett making a Super Bowl? History says doubtful
Photo by Scott Halleran/Getty Images

Raheel Ramzanali

Years with a Team Before an NFL Coach Coached in the Super Bowl

With Championship Sunday this weekend and Andy Reid just one game away from making it to the Super Bowl with the Chiefs AND Sean McVay one game away in his second year, I wanted to go back and look up what the average number of years a coach has been with a team before he makes the Super Bowl during the Brady Era (2002 - Present). The numbers are posted above and if you're a Texans fan, history isn't on your side. On average, if a coach doesn't make a Super Bowl by his third season, he is probably not going to make it since the average is 3.3 years of the 22 coaches that made an appearance for the first time with their respective teams.

Is There a Right Time To Move on from a Coach?

Two coaches made it to the Super Bowl past their fifth years. Andy Reid with the Eagles in year six after making it to the NFC title game four straight times and finally winning it the fourth. Mike Holmgren, playing with house money since he won a Super Bowl in Green Bay, made it to the Super Bowl in his seventh season with the Seahawks and had the longest leash of all the coaches on this list in terms of success in the playoffs with his current team and getting more years.

Here's the list of longest tenured coaches not to make a Super Bowl with their current team (Minimum five years):

  1. Jason Garrett (nine seasons),
  2. Andy Reid (sixth with the Chiefs)
  3. Bill O'Brien (five seasons)
  4. Mike Zimmer (five seasons)

Garrett and O'Brien have only reached the divisional round while Reid and Zimmer have reached their respective title games. Specifically speaking for the Texans, the contract extension last year for O'Brien is even more frustrating because by the end of it, it is more likely O'Brien will be closer to Marvin Lewis and Jason Garrett than Mike Holmgren since there's only a 10% chance a coach makes it to the Super Bowl after his fifth year with the same team.

The Defense For O'Brien
This is where the Franchise QB Argument comes in. O'Brien has never had a dynamic QB like Deshaun and that's the hope every Texan fan has for the next four years. Looking at just the numbers, it took Sean Payton and Drew Brees four years together before they cracked a Super Bowl. It took Russell Wilson and Pete Carroll two years before they made it to a Super Bowl. This is the one caveat with my post, O'Brien has a franchise QB to mold and get to Super Bowl levels.

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Everyone is talking about the Texans! Composite Getty Image.

How quickly things can change in a year. Just last April, Texans fans were on the edge of their seats hoping the organization would land their franchise quarterback in the NFL Draft.

Fast-forward to 2024 and the state of the Texans franchise is almost unrecognizable. NBC Sports' Mike Florio is making statements about how the NFL must love the Texans because they are the proof that any team can turn their franchise around in one year. Which makes the NFL Draft look even more important. Draft picks give fanbases hope, and unlike baseball and to some extent basketball, many of the top picks start right away.

More Texans love

Other national media members like Colin Cowherd are creating segments about which teams could be the 2025 version of the Texans. In fact, Cowherd praised the Texans last week for reaching out to him two years ago for information about Notre Dame safety Kyle Hamilton.

Post-free agency he picked the Texans to miss the playoffs, but it seems like he's rethinking his prediction.

Counterpoint

Some in the media have their concerns about the Texans trade for Stefon Diggs. Ross Tucker was a guest of the Rich Eisen Show and questioned if wiping the remaining years off of Diggs' contract was a good idea.

First, he thought trading a 2025 second-round pick was too much to give up for a player on a one-year deal. But his second point made us stop and think. He compared this situation to something he experienced in his playing career. He's worried that if Diggs isn't getting enough targets and production in a contract year, he might become a problem.

And the Texans have plenty of weapons to spread the ball to this year with Nico Collins, Diggs, Tank Dell, Dalton Schultz, Noah Brown, Robert Woods, Joe Mixon…you get the point.

So we did a little digging into the numbers. There's a scenario in which the Texans could have two receivers go over one thousand yards.

Everybody eats!

We can just look around the league and see that both the Eagles (AJ Brown, DeVonta Smith) and Dolphins (Tyreek Hill, Jaylen Waddle) did it in 2022 and 2023. The Bengals (Ja'Marr Chase, Tee Higgins) also had two receivers go over a thousand yards in 2021 and 2022.

CJ Stroud averaged 274 passing yards per game in 2023, if we multiply that number by seventeen games that puts CJ at 4,658 yards. Nico Collins had 1,297 yards in 15 games last season, and Stefon Diggs recorded 1,183 receiving yards. So that would leave 2.178 yards for the other pass catchers in the offense.

While it's unlikely Tank Dell gets to one thousand if everyone stays healthy, he could get fairly close. Stroud doesn't throw to his running backs all that often, and the Texans should have Dell, Diggs, and Collins together on the field more than fifty percent of the time.

Don't count him out

Texans quarterback CJ Stroud met with the Houston media this week and talked about the team's wide receiver room, which now includes Stefon Diggs.

One of the other names he brought up was receiver John Metchie III. Stroud said he's looking good in workouts, so he could be another mouth to feed in the Houston offense.

And considering how the season finished in Baltimore for the Texans, having too many receivers is a good problem to have. If we only look at the wide receivers and eliminate tight ends and running backs from the conversation, the picture becomes very clear. Collins led the wide receivers with 5 catches for 68 yards. Which receiver came in second, you ask? Robert Woods with 1 catch for 6 yards.

Bring on the receivers!

Don't miss the video above for the full discussion about Diggs, the Texans' new-look offense, and how they are being perceived by the media.

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