Texans expected to have second roughest season in 2022
The Houston Texans should be in for a rough ride in 2022.
So says CBS Sports’ Jason La Canfora from CBS Sports, who released his rankings of teams who should expect rough seasons in 2022. The Texans were second behind the Chicago Bears, and most of La Canfora’s analysis dealt with the serious flirtation with Josh McCown as coach.
It’s pretty clear that for the second straight year ownership/team officials really, really, really wanted to hire Josh McCown as head coach, but couldn’t bring themselves to do it, fearing significant backlash from the fanbase, the league as a whole and the league office as well, I presume. The optics would have been rough. Not to say McCown wouldn’t have worked, but when you have two straight circuitous and bizarre coaching searches, and to say nothing of the Deshaun Watson situation, well, these are trying times.
If La Canfora wanted to hit on how bizarre the Texans’ coaching search was, then the Lovie Smith angle would actually be more appropriate. The defensive coordinator and associate coach was providing his input on the candidates the organization was interviewing. Then, the club settled on promoting Smith to his third coaching job at the end of a month-long search.
The process may have been strange, but the results so far have been encouraging for Houston sports fans. A consensus of analysts have the Texans escaping the 2022 NFL draft with a B-plus grade, and Pro Football Focus indicated the club had an A-minus offseason in toto.
Maybe Davis Mills is the guy, but I’m not sure this is the way to find out. Yeah they have a bunch of draft picks in their pockets, but it also seems pretty clear that results in 2022 are not all that important. Again.
If the results weren’t important, the club would have kept David Culley around. By going with Smith, it indicates change, which is an acknowledgement from general manager Nick Caserio that pieces have to move to show improvement. Caserio is also on his second hire in as many seasons with the team. Even if results weren’t important in 2021, Caserio wants to at least compete once the rebuild is complete, not simply be a bridge to a better era.
Other teams expected to have rough seasons were the Atlanta Falcons, Carolina Panthers, and Washington.
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Toughest 5-game stretch the Houston Texans will face in 2022
