Intelligence, innovation, and flexibility.
Those were the characteristics that general manager and executive vice president Rick Smith liked and saw in the Texans new head coach Bill O'Brien. As the third head coach in franchise history, O'Brien discussed how he hoped to implement those qualities in the Texans offense.
"As far as systems go, if you look at offensively, to me, I would describe our system as a game plan system," O'Brien said in his press conference Friday. "You have to have, in my opinion, a different game plan every week because you see so many different defense every week. It'll be a system that is adaptable and flexible. It'll be a system that the players will enjoy playing in."
O'Brien's offense in New England was dependent on the passing game. In 2011 the Patriots ranked second in the NFL in passing yards per game, averaging 317.8 yards, and in red zone percentage, scoring 65.28 percent of the time.
"Games are won and lost in the first five minutes of a game and, quite frankly, the last five minutes of a game," Smith said. "When you look back at our season, we didn't do that well. I think, if you look at the number of times that we scored in the first five minutes of a football game, we only did twice. And in the last five minutes, we scored five times, four of which were field goals and only one touchdown. So you've got to be able to have the toughness to finish football games."
O'Brien has not yet named an offensive coordinator or position coaches for his coaching staff. He will begin by evaluating the current coaches on Saturday before making any decisions.
"Let me start with the coaching staff, we're going to evaluate the whole process here," O'Brien said "We're going to start by talking to the coaching staff currently, the Houston Texans coaching staff that was here in 2013. Personally, I will meet with every one of those guys and we'll go from there."
Under Gary Kubiak and Rick Dennison, the Texans ran a run-heavy offense. Prior to their disappointing 2-14 finish in 2013, the Texans offense ranked second in the NFL with 62 combined rushing touchdowns and had produced the three best rushing seasons in franchise history.
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