Skip to main content
Advertising

Bill O'Brien on plans to "fix things" for 2019 and beyond

The day after the Texans season ended, Bill O'Brien was focused on the future.

The head coach met with the media in a Sunday morning press conference at NRG Stadium. With "a lot of things obviously to fix," he gave an outline of what's next for him, his assistants, and the personnel department.

"First of all we've got to look in the mirror," O'Brien said. "What can we do better from a schematic standpoint? What can we do better to get these guys, whoever the players are, to execute better? It always starts with coaching."

Coaching aside, the Texans enter the 2019 offseason with much better Draft capital than this time a year ago. Depending on the outcome of Sunday's Wild Card Playoff games, the Texans will pick 22nd, 23rd or 24th overall in the first round. They'll also hold a pair of second-round selections: their own, as well as Seattle's, which they acquired in a 2017 trade.

Last April, Houston didn't pick until the third round. They'd traded away their 2018 first-rounder and second-rounder to the Browns in a pair of deals.

"Having some early-round picks, as long as we work hard at it and we all see it through the same set of eyes, obviously we make a pick of a guy that's a talented guy that loves football, is a great representative of the Houston Texans organization, then yeah, it's definitely good to have early picks," O'Brien said.

Having a quarterback in Deshaun Watson, who O'Brien said doesn't have a "ceiling" in terms of capabilities, makes the job of improving a little easier. He thinks Watson will "make tremendous strides" after turning in a regular season where he threw 26 touchdowns and just nine interceptions, and completed 68.3 percent of his passes for 4,165 yards.

General manager Brian Gaine and O'Brien have a busy few months ahead, and the process of improving the team has already begun.

"Brian and I always talk about the roster," O'Brien said. "Clearly there are some things that we need to do. We'll begin those discussions, right away, tomorrow. That's a long process. Months. Senior Bowl. Combine. Free agency. All the things that we're mapping out. We actually met this morning on the calendar, just to map out daily what we're going to be doing for the next few months to try to get this organization where we need to be, which isn't where it was yesterday, but I do believe it's in the right direction."

The NFL Draft begins Thursday, April 25 in Nashville.

The Houston Texans were cheered on by the best fans in the NFL as they took on the Indianapolis Colts.

Related Content

Advertising