The Texans roster has undergone a massive churn this offseason. The coaching staff has, too.
While many familiar faces in the player ranks remain, like Whitney Mercilus and Jon Weeks and Justin Reid, to name a few, there are a slew of new faces in the building competing for jobs.
On the coaching side, there are holdovers in offensive coordinator Tim Kelly, running backs coach Danny Barrett and defensive line coach Bobby King. But the rest of the staff is new to Houston. So far, they've meshed well under head coach David Culley.
"It's been great working with all those guys," Kelly said. "It's been really good for me to continue to grow and develop to get those different experiences and the different opinions in the room. Again, always trying to find different ways to improve our offense and put as many points on the board as possible."
Kelly is in his second year as coordinator, and he and the rest of the coaches are trying to maximize the players' respective talents. It's an area Hamilton, who's the quarterbacks coach and passing game coordinator, recognizes well.
"Without a doubt our staff understands that it's our job to do whatever it is our players do well and to ultimately put them in the position to be successful and score as many points as we can – in particular, one more point than the opponent this upcoming fall," Hamilton said. "I think we have enough experience and creativity on the offensive staff to come up with ways to give our guys a strategic advantage."
That creativity has been important, according to tight ends coach Andy Bischoff, who comes to town after spending the last five years with the Ravens.
"I think the first thing is the building here has been completely open to ideas," Bischoff said "Tim is a great leader that way in terms of acknowledging some of the things that we had success with. Everything we do here is going to start with the foundation of Tim's offense that becomes our offense. But from Campy (offensive line coach James Campen) to him, to anybody else, there's a real appreciation for what we did and there's talent in our room to be able to do some of those same things. Certainly excited to implement those things as we move along."
Barrett echoed Bishoff's view on creativity and collaboration on the new staff, and has liked the ideas some of the new coaches brought to Houston.
"You put the mix of what we've been able to do here with those guys, we should be a little bit different than what we were in the past and trying to build on that each and every day just talking through different things that they've had success with, what we've had success with," Barrett said. "It's been a great conversation each and every day and we'll continue to build on that as we move forward to training camp."
The Texans concluded Organized Team Activities (OTAs) last week, and will gather again for training camp at the Houston Methodist Training Center in late July.
