BRB GroupThink: Are You In Love With Lovie?

The masthead gives their thoughts on the Lovie Smith hire.

The Houston Texans are left scrambling to defend a coaching hire for a coach they never interviewed during their official process. Lovie Smith fell into the job and it will be his turn to coach the Texans.

What do you think of the Lovie Smith hiring? Do you think he can win football games and turn this franchise around?

L4BLITZER:

Really makes you wonder why they fired Culley in the first place, or why they didn’t just hire Lovie last year. Then again, it is the McEasterby Texans, so when given final options one or two, they will end up with choice J, with J being more inane than you could possibly imagine.

Perhaps if Flores doesn’t file the lawsuit, we get someone else. Then again, why the rush to hire a coach now? There’s no early recruiting period and no real advantage, given that the new league year doesn’t start until March. It all goes back to the McEasterby regime and how they are running things. Perhaps it would have been better to widen the next for any good post-Super Bowl coordinators. Then again, that would make too much sense…does not apply here.

As for Lovie the coach, at least he should be able to call his own games and not rely on Caserio in the booth. I am not optimistic that that team will be all that much better this coming season or the next. He might be patient, and he might foster an environment for player development, but I don’t see him lasting more than two to three seasons tops.

If he does, than this squad will have undergone a turn-around that would make the Bengals jealous…that, or Lovie is not Lovie, but an animatronic being that stands around looking from side to side and says a few programmed words…all while McEasterby waits for the right time to hire Josh McCown.

BIGFATDRUNK:

Lovie Smith is David Culley 2.0: Coaching, but now with experience!

Snark aside, I am genuinely happy for Lovie. Does he not have the best beard ever? I mean, even Santa Claus is like, damn, that’s a cool beard.

Wait, that was still snarky. KITTEN!

Snark aside, part duh, I am genuinely happy for Lovie. He had a great defensive football mind, and he’s a wonderful guy to root for. What he is not is the future of the Texans. Not unlike Culley, he’s there to keep the seat warm (probably for Josh “Unqualified AF” McCown). With Lovie at the helm, this team is still at least a couple of years from competitiveness, at best. Talent rules, after all.

Here’s what I hope for: I hope that #Failson gave him a massive, guaranteed contract, and I hope that Lovie can quickly pivot to being a talking head on the teevees once he is canned after 2023. Heck, give me a show with Lovie and Wade Phillips, and I will be all over that program.

KENNETH L.:

I agree. It puts into question the entire firing of Culley. Poor guy David. We ragged on him for everything but I truly didn’t believe he deserved to be fired.

My biggest question is, where is Pep Hamilton? Why isn’t he the coach? Or can’t he be the offensive coordinator? If you told me we were to hire a coach within our system, I would have put a legitimate amount of money that I don’t have on Pep.

It’s not that we didn’t make a good decision, Lovie is a fine coach, but it’s the way that we arrived at this result is horrific. If Smith was hired last year instead of Culley and Culley was simply brought in as a player’s coach, no one would have complained and many would have seen it as a smart choice. Now, it appears weak, lazy, and controlled. It’s obvious they couldn’t hire the guy they wanted in the current climate, but for the staff to shut it down and hire a guy from inside is cowardly.

Either Pep or Flores would have been nice to see. Alas, at every moment to step up this front office whimpers.

MIKE BULLOCK:

Read a rumor on Twitter earlier that one of the mandates for the head coach candidates was they had to keep Lovie Smith and Pep Hamilton as their defensive coordinator & offensive coordinator. When neither Jonathan Gannon nor Robert Flores would go for that, they just handed the gig to Smith. Yes, it’s just a rumor, but seems highly plausible based on Houston’s front office track record over the last five years.

Knowing all that inner dysfunction clearly isn’t stopping anytime soon, Smith is set up to fail. Bill Parcels in his prime couldn’t come into this situation and do great things.

If we’re lucky, Smith will elevate the team to middle of the pack and get all sorts of praise for how he turned this team around, but ultimately not even get back to where they were in 2009.