Bill O'Brien spoke out on Wednesday morning.
The Texans general manager and head coach met with the media on a Zoom conference call, and shared his thoughts and emotions on George Floyd's death and the protests that have come in its wake. He acknowledged that statements alone "aren't enough", but "it's important to speak out."
While he's saddened and frustrated, he said the Texans organization will take steps toward improving race relations, and said one of those steps will happen next Tuesday.
"We will not virtually meet – whatever the hell that means – on June 9th, which I believe is the day of George Floyd's funeral," O'Brien said. "We will not meet on that day, so we will encourage the guys that are here in Houston to go to the funeral if we're able to go to that."
O'Brien also added that he will discuss the recent events with the players on Thursday.
"We'll talk to our players, we have a player call tomorrow, we'll talk to our players about it," O'Brien said.
Hired by the Texans in early January of 2014, O'Biren reiterated that he has his players back, and has told them in the last few days to take time for themselves if necessary.
"If they need resources from us to try to begin to heal, we've got to help them, we have a lot of resources here to do that, they will get it," O'Brien said. "Finally, if they just need someone to listen – maybe they don't want to talk to me about it, but we have plenty of people here that they can talk to about it."
Several current players, like quarterback Deshaun Watson, outside linebackers Jacob Martin and Peter Kalambayi, and center Zach Fulton, along with Texans legend Andre Johnson, took part in Tuesday's march for Floyd.
