CAUSE FOR PAUSE
If you listen close enough, you can hear the Texans bungling this
Jan 18, 2022, 5:11 pm
It's hard to trust Nick Caserio after hiring David Culley. Photo by Bob Levey/Getty Images.
“She ys fals [is false]; and ever laughynge, with oon eye, and that other wepynge” - 14th-century English poet Geoffrey Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales.
“To laugh and cry both with a breath” – William Shakespeare in Venus and Adonis.
“We don’t know whether to laugh or cry” – Houston Texans fans listening to general manager Nick Caserio’s postmortem for the team’s dismal 2021 season.
They all say the same thing: we’d laugh if it didn’t hurt so much.
Most of Caserio’s press conference last week had the general manager clumsily defending why he hired David Culley as head coach and fired David Culley as head coach less than one year later.
Caserio repeatedly insisted that he thought Culley was the right man for the job a year ago, and stood by the hire. He said, “I think we’re in a lot better position now. I think that is because of the leadership and guidance that (Culley) provided. I have a lot of personal respect and appreciation and admiration for what he did for this team.”
But now Caserio had philosophical differences with Culley so the one-and-done coach had to go.
Is this any way to run an NFL franchise? The Pittsburgh Steelers have employed only three head coaches in the past 52 years. The Texans have had four head coaches in the last 15 months: Bill O’Brien, Romeo Crennel, David Culley and “who’s next?” The Texans still will be paying off O’Brien and Culley’s contracts this upcoming season. In Culley’s case, they’re on the hook for his money three more years.
Listening to Caserio’s deflective mumbo jumbo, I kept thinking … “You’re the guy who hired Culley. What’s your responsibility here? Munschausen by proxy much? You picked a guy who’s been in football more than four decades, 27 years in the NFL, without ever being named a coordinator let alone a head coach. You hired a guy who stood on the sidelines with a puzzled look on his face, who didn’t seem to comprehend football rules, who ran an undisciplined locker room, who failed to establish a presence in the community. Who inherited a 4-12 team and left a 4-13 team. And you think this is a ‘better position?’ You don’t see a glass half full, you must see the entire Waterford stemware collection.”
Culley’s biggest failure wasn’t in the NFL standings. He put a lackluster, dull, unimaginative and frustratingly predictable product on the field. They say the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s apathy. Well, the largest city in football-crazy Texas simply gave up on its team. Fans who spent thousands of dollars on tickets decided not to show up for games. They just stopped caring. That’s the opposite of love.
And things may get more frustrating next year. The Deshaun Watson dilemma may not be resolved with a simple trade for a haul of draft picks in the near future. Some legal analysts believe the 22 civil cases against Watson may be headed to court and if verdicts go against Watson he may end up on the NFL commissioner’s exempt list – still a Texan and sidelined for a second season.
The NFL coaching trend is toward younger, creative offensive minds and big personalities like Sean McVay, who was only 30 when the Los Angeles Rams hired him in 2017. Kliff Kingsbury was 39 when the Cardinals hired him in 2019. You might have seen McVay and Kingsbury battling in the playoffs Monday night. Packers coach Matt LaFleur is 42. Bengals coach Zac Taylor is 38.
Everyone says the same thing about Culley – he’s a nice guy. You know what they say about nice guys, right? They finish next to last in the AFC South, thanks to the Jacksonville Jaguars being even more dysfunctional than the Texans.
So far the Texans have interviewed recently fired Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores, Chargers offensive coordinator Joe Lombardi, Eagles defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon, former Texans QB Josh McCown, and former Steelers receiver Hines Ward. Others reportedly on the “to do” list: Patriots linebackers coach Jerod Mayo, Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels, Buccaneers offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich, and Bills offensive coordinator Brian Daboll.
Do you trust Caserio to make the right choice this time? The most important decision an NFL general manager makes is hiring a successful head coach. Caserio is a huge 0-1. Most of the Texans’ wish list candidates are being interviewed by other teams, too. There are eight head coach openings and the consensus opinion among NFL insiders is that the Texans position is the least attractive. Why? As ESPN’s Michael Wilbon so eloquently and bluntly put it, the Texans are a “fraud” and “the franchise is a joke.” But it hurts too much to laugh.
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Through 20 games, the Houston Astros have managed just six wins and are in last place in the AL West.
Their pitching staff trails only Colorado with a 5.24 ERA and big-money new closer Josh Hader has given up the same number of earned runs in 10 games as he did in 61 last year.
Despite this, these veteran Astros, who have reached the AL Championship Series seven consecutive times, have no doubt they’ll turn things around.
“If there’s a team that can do it, it’s this team,” shortstop Jeremy Peña said.
First-year manager Joe Espada, who was hired in January to replace the retired Dusty Baker, discussed his team’s early struggles.
“It’s not ideal,” he said. “It’s not what we expected, to come out of the shoot playing this type of baseball. But you know what, this is where we’re at and we’ve got to pick it up and play better. That’s just the bottom line.”
Many of Houston’s problems have stemmed from a poor performance by a rotation that has been decimated by injuries. Ace Justin Verlander and fellow starter José Urquidy haven’t pitched this season because of injuries and lefty Framber Valdez made just two starts before landing on the injured list with a sore elbow.
Ronel Blanco, who threw a no-hitter in his season debut April 1, has pitched well and is 2-0 with a 0.86 ERA in three starts this season. Cristian Javier is also off to a good start, going 2-0 with a 1.54 ERA in four starts, but the team has won just two games not started by those two pitchers.
However, Espada wouldn’t blame the rotation for Houston’s current position.
“It’s been a little bit of a roller coaster how we've played overall,” he said. “One day we get good starting pitching, some days we don’t. The middle relief has been better and sometimes it hasn’t been. So, we’ve just got to put it all together and then play more as a team. And once we start doing that, we’ll be in good shape.”
The good news for the Astros is that Verlander will make his season debut Friday night when they open a series at Washington and Valdez should return soon after him.
“Framber and Justin have been a great part of our success in the last few years,” second baseman Jose Altuve said. “So, it’s always good to have those two guys back helping the team. We trust them and I think it’s going to be good.”
Hader signed a five-year, $95 million contract this offseason to give the Astros a shutdown 7-8-9 combination at the back end of their bullpen with Bryan Abreu and Ryan Pressly. But the five-time All-Star is off to a bumpy start.
He allowed four runs in the ninth inning of a 6-1 loss to the Braves on Monday night and has yielded eight earned runs this season after giving up the same number in 56 1/3 innings for San Diego last year.
He was much better Wednesday when he struck out the side in the ninth before the Astros fell to Atlanta in 10 innings for their third straight loss.
Houston’s offense, led by Altuve, Yordan Alvarez and Kyle Tucker, ranks third in the majors with a .268 batting average and is tied for third with 24 homers this season. But the Astros have struggled with runners in scoring position and often failed to get a big hit in close games.
While many of Houston’s hitters have thrived this season, one notable exception is first baseman José Abreu. The 37-year-old, who is in the second year of a three-year, $58.5 million contract, is hitting 0.78 with just one extra-base hit in 16 games, raising questions about why he remains in the lineup every day.
To make matters worse, his error on a routine ground ball in the eighth inning Wednesday helped the Braves tie the game before they won in extra innings.
Espada brushed off criticism of Abreu and said he knows the 2020 AL MVP can break out of his early slump.
“Because (of) history,” Espada said. “The back of his baseball card. He can do it.”
Though things haven’t gone well for the Astros so far, everyone insists there’s no panic in this team which won its second World Series in 2022.
Altuve added that he doesn’t have to say anything to his teammates during this tough time.
“I think they’ve played enough baseball to know how to control themselves and how to come back to the plan we have, which is winning games,” he said.
The clubhouse was quiet and somber Wednesday after the Astros suffered their third series sweep of the season and second at home. While not panicking about the slow start, this team, which has won at least 90 games in each of the last three seasons, is certainly not happy with its record.
“We need to do everything better,” third baseman Alex Bregman said. “I feel like we’re in a lot of games, but we just haven’t found a way to win them. And good teams find a way to win games. So we need to find a way to win games.”