As interim head coach Romeo Crennel leads the team for the final nine games of the regular season, the Houston Texans have begun their search for the team's next head coach and general manager.
The Texans will turn to Jed Hughes, vice chairman for the Korn Ferry search firm, to help hire both, according to the team's Chairman and CEO Cal McNair.
"The leader in their group is Jed Hughes," McNair said in an interview with Texans Radio on Monday. "He'll only work for one club at a time and he's working for us. So he was a real expert in the field and we're excited to work with Jed and we're going to come out with a great result. His whole firm has tremendous resources and will help us make a great decision here."
After the 2020 season is over, the Texans plan to first hire their general manager and then head coach. Bill O'Brien, hired in January 2014 as head coach, also served as general manager since June 2019.
McNair is currently putting together an outside committee of experts to help in the hiring process. As the team searches for its fourth head coach and fifth general manager, McNair wants different perspectives on what the team needs heading into the 2021 season and its search for a championship.
"I think what we're going to do is put together sort of an ad hoc committee of maybe four or five experts outside of the Texans, but really leaders in football and in sports, possibly a former player, to get insights and wisdom on the process and how structures might look and people might fit in those structures and what the best way is to put this thing together," McNair said. "So we're going to look putting that together here real soon and maybe next time we visit, we can visit more about that."
In the meantime, McNair still plans to get input from within the organization, namely from Houston Texans team president Jamey Rootes, who has been with the team since its inaugural 2002 season. Interim general manager Jack Easterby, who joined the team in April 2019 as executive vice president of team development, will concentrate on football operations for 2020.
"Jamey is helping me tremendously," McNair said. "He's been through this process before on the search and he's done it even more on the business side as far as searches for executives. He knows the drills and is experienced and is a top executive in Houston. So, of course, I'll lean on him like I always do. Jack is really focused on the football. And so we'll let him focus on that. That's more than a full-time job for a couple of people, but he's doing that and then Jed's our expert in the field."
