Don't Be Confused

There is a reason why he isn't making plays like we are all used to. He's a busy man , keeping 2-4 out of the play and on him. There has to be a better way for the others on the D to manipulate this new normal. With power you will have resistance to harness that power and keep it chained. I have no doubt they will find the magic setup. It's just trying to be patient and keep positive as a fan while they figure it all out. Something will click and it will fall into place at some point. #FaithInScience

Here is part of the problem for Watt. He has little chance on alignment alone. Teams wont leave him one on one. pic.twitter.com/spRfwxODHd

— PDS (@PatDStat) October 14, 2015

Texans History - Head Coaches

Houston Texans History - Coaches: Past to Now
The Building of Bulls on Parade

(And Thoughts of A Fan)

  I'm a very optimistic fan. I understand that it takes a long time to build a good team. There is so much that goes into achieving one that can hold it's own. I also believe that achieving this with an added respect for not only the rules of the game, but honor in how the teammates act makes it wholy more difficult. However, I am a firm believer that with patients from we the fans and supporters it can happen. I personally think the Texans are on the right track. I think the glue that can hold all this together is not only the owner, but the head coach.

 Here is a little history on who, so far, has been in this position for the Texans team. I know, history, Ugh! Bare with me for a while here. In order for us to truly understand what the owner, Mr. Bob McNair, seems to want to see from this team we should understand the history of the backbone of the Texans first. I, too, am just learning more about the history of my team even if I was blessed to be in the Houston area from the beginning of the Oilers dismal departure to just a few months ago after the 2015 season end. So, lets start with the what can be found on the history of the Texans.

Dom Capers - (2001-2006)

  Our first coach was Dom Capers. He had some background with the USFL before he went to the NFL being picked up by the New Orleans Saints. One heck of a work ethic. The man seemed to never sleep, always working. I remember the quiet optimism around the city when he was chosen for our first head coach. He seemed to have extensive knowledge in the defensive avenues of coaching and it truly showed. At the end of the 2002 season, many announcers often mentioned this fact. In the end, his offensive play calling showed that he seemed to be out of the balanced element a head coach seems to need. The calls on offense seemed to be fragile. I remember thinking that much of the offensive players turned to a type of porcelain when they got on the field. No urgency either. However, I thought to myself, "This is a newborn. They will be fragile." To many regards this thought is true. It does take time after all. The first two seasons were brutal, but to be expected in some ways.
 
  By 2004, it was looking better. Nervousness wearing off from the coaches and players. Everyone seemingly to be feeling a bit more relaxed in this new home of theirs. Unfortunately the fragile offense continues into the 2005 season and the wins became far too little and the feeling around the city became gloomy and in January of 2006 Mr. Capers was fired and moved on to the Dolphins back to his defensive roots as a coordinator there. He was good for us; It was good he left when he did. We, fans of a newly birthed team, learned a lot. It separated the faithful to the band-wagoners. It also helped the faithful fans have much tougher skin from when the team started. I know it made me understand my patience much more and also made me realize I was going to be a long term devoted fan.

Gary Kubiak - (2006-2013)

  Gary Kubiak holds the longest-tenured head coach for the Texans to date (2015) and one of my favorite coaches. Hey, I'm an Aggie's granddaughter after all. I have to have faith in them Aggies! We needed the refreshing Kubiak and his skills on the offensive side of the ball. We fans, again held a ligh roar of positive feelings with this choice. He had spent his NFL playing career as John Elway's backup after all. Went to work back at his alma mater as the running back coach for a short while , seemingly mentoring Greg Hill (to whom was picked up by the Chiefs in the first round of the '94 draft) before moving on to the NFL .
 
  In 1994, being the quarterback coach for the 49ers (remember that MVP guy named Steve Young?), went to and won the Super Bowl in his new coaching slot. I think this man knows something.
In '95, he headed back to his NFL playing home, the Denver Broncos, as a double threat. Entering in as the team's offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach until 2005. Helping lead the Broncos towards two Super Bowl titles in '97 and '98. He seemed to be an offensive coaching beast! Coaching 14 different Broncos to whom made it to the Pro Bowl. Name drop Terrell Davis! That other MVP guy back in '98! Yeah, he coached him too! What's not to like about this man? The more I learned about Mr. Gary Kubiak, the more I was excited for the upcoming season. So what if he was sort of dormant for the past few years there. Look at his history though! (Texans are my team! I have to be positive! We can win with this guy! ... I'm such a fangirl ...)
 
  In 2006, the Texans finished off in the AFC South with a 6-10 record. There was more work to be done. Then 8-8 in 2007 and again in 2008! Fans were holding their chests a bit higher. The ride was nice, being a Texans fan. What's that sound? I hear wagons in the distance! 2009 ends with a 9-7 finish, missing the playoffs on a tiebreaker with the New York Jets. On February 2, 2010, with a year left on the original deal he signed, the Texans' signed Kubiak to a three-year contract extension through 2012*. (*Wikipedia) 2010, the season with a high start and a cliff drop 6-10 in the end. Goodbye wagons. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out. Porcelain fans shattering again as the dedicated become stronger. The strength was gifted with a 10-6 regular season record and the franchise’s first division crown, playoff berth and playoff win in 2011. Kubiak also being named the AFC Coach of the Year.
 
  2012 started off dismal but bounced back in the end a 12-4 franchise-best. We fans were becoming intoxicated with the thoughts of going to the top and into the Super Bowl. But not once did I hear talks of a dynasty except from some half drunk announcers and fully drunk fans at the occasional bar. All in all, the fans may have been proud and dedicated, but they are far from stupid. Most of us know what it takes to get to the top of the top. This is no easy ride. Nor should it be. We had scares to come in the near future to deal with. We didn't know how frightening it would be at the time. At least we had the tough skin to bare through it when the time came.
 
  2013: The test of a fans faith, the wake up call of a coaches health and the stress of it all falls upon the Texans and Kubiak this year. The year Kubiak has a transient ischemic attack as he was walking off the field at halftime during a game with the Colts. I still remember the concern and panic I had seeing this man drop to one knee and wave someone over, knowing he was in trouble. You just knew in the back of your mind that changes had to come, for Texans and Kubiak, after this. It seemed stressful on him lately if you watched the press conferences. There was more to this. but the average fan really didn't know what it was. That was something for the insiders to know. We, the fans, just wanted it fixed. We wanted him healthy and happy. I did anyhow. Unfortunately the ending of his carrer coaching the Texans ended with three games left in the season. He was fired December 6th with a season record of 2-11. Defensive coordinator Wade Phillips, son of Bum and longtime friend of Kubiak, took over coaching for the remainder of the season. What a heartbreaking way to watch your coach leave the team. It hit us all hard after so much hope. But, to be honest, his place was with us then. He needed to get back to his Denver roots. He's a better coach for it. I'm still proud of him. he will always be one of my favorite coaches.

Wade Phillips - (2013, 3 games)

  Really not much to say as a head Coach of the Texans. He knew his place there was to be fill in and I think he prefered that it be kept that way. He came in to the Texans as the defensive coordinator in 2011, replacing Frank Bush. He made vast improvements in our defense when he was there. Points allowed, yards per play, yards allowed were all better when he took over. Watt, during this time, was quickly blooming into the well balanced man that he's now become. I have no doubt that Wade Phillips had some part in that. I don't know for sure, but I'd like to think he did anyhow.
 
  On 6 November 2013, the Texans, and Kubiak decided to temporarily hand Phillips the head coaching duties, and named him the interim head coach until Kubiak was medically cleared to return. Exactly one month later, Kubiak was fired after his team had lost 11 games in a row. Once again, Phillips served as interim head coach for the Texans until the end of the season. He's a good man in my book.

Bill O'Brien - (2014 - present)

  What a present he is. O'Brien had previously served as head coach at Penn State and as offensive coordinator under Bill Belichick with the New England Patriots. So now we seemingly to have become balanced. Not just the defensive "Bull on Parade" anymore. There is a spark to other sides of the team that, I feel, should come to closer to the forefront soon with O' Brien as head coach. He has a lot of experience, 20+ years in fact, that he's brought with him as head coach. Personally, I see this kid-like spark in him that I never saw with our other coaches. I love it too! It's almost as if he's almost constantly having to hold himself back from jumping out on the field and playing. We need that spark of enthusiasm and excitement for our team.
 
  Bill O'Brien began coaching in 1993. Coaching more than a decade in the collegiate ACC (Atlantic Coast Conference) wherein 2007 he joined the Patriots. Starting his NFL career there and, in 2011, started serving as their quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator. It was short lived however when he moved to Penn State as head coach. Having to deal with the after-effects of that messy scandal up there. He did well with the stress of it all. He led the team to an 8-4 record and got the nations attention when he won the National Coach of the Year Award by ESPN. However, it seems the NFL was not far from his thoughts. However, the man made a good moral choice in staying with Penn State a bit longer. It had to be a difficult decision for him, but a decision this fan respects and is proud of.
 
  On December 29, 2013, he met with the Texans on further discussion of the head coaching job for the Texans. The Texans finished 2–14 in the 2013 NFL season, and owned the first overall selection in the 2014 NFL Draft, which they used on South Carolina defensive end Jadeveon Clowney. O'Brien was officially introduced as the Texans head coach on January 2, 2014. In his 1st season as the Texans coach, he finished with a 9-7 record, narrowly missing the playoffs.* (*Wikipedia)
I see things coming together a bit more now. No, it's not because of Hard Knocks. That was fun and interesting to watch. I enjoyed it as much as any fan of the team would. However, I see things coming together a bit more because I try hard to learn facts. I put them all in a box and I try my hardest to stand back and look from a distance. What I see now is Bill O'Brien making hard decisions, making them in a timely manner and learning from his mistakes so far. I'm proud of this head coach. I want to see things go well with him and the Texans GM, Rick Smith (to whom I have personal views that I will leave for another day) and hope for a good mutual and respectful relationship between them both.

A Few More Personal Thoughts

  In closing, I worry, yet i'm extremely hopeful for what I see. To me, 2015 is a new birthing of the team in many ways. All the history, as important as it is to know, is behind us and the new seeds are starting to rise from the soil. It's beautiful to watch nature rise from the ground. There is no doubt that I will also feel a similar inspiring awe as we get to watch this franchise bloom into a hearty oak ... filled with mean ass bulls bursting out of the bark with blood on their horns, slobbering foam, snorting fire!!! Yeah! ...
... I mean good guys with tough skins and the knowledge they need to help their fellow teammates to a win they all deserve. And I'll be a proud fan watching their assent, no matter the time it takes.

-I love this team!

Teammate's Corner - Bill O'Brien

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Heavy Shoulders

 Today is a tough day for the team. From owner down to the players, nerves have to be sensitive. Today is the day 15 will walk out the Texans doors to find other paths in their life. I wish them all well.

 Coach O'Brien, as I write this, is talking with other coaches in the team and picking those that must leave. His shoulders weigh heavy today I'm sure. I wouldn't ever want this part of the job. Nor any of the others. I'm proud to be where I am being a fan and enjoying watching this team mold into what they will become.

 As a fan, I have faith in this coach. He will weigh all options and go with his instincts on how to best mold this team and it's players. He seems to constantly be thinking about it. Even in press conferences you will see his eyes dart to the left of the podium (usually) and all of a sudden he's in that thought process again, sometimes having to ask the reporters to repeat their question. I love this about him. It's showing that he is not taking this job lightly and, even better, he seems to love his job. 

 

  Coach O'Brien seems to have a good hold of his balance on  being a coach and still wanting to play the game himself. I can imagine that he sometimes tends to place himself in a situation he sees going down on the field and what he would do differently to make that play better. That's a damn good quality in a coach as far as I'm concerned. Opening your mind to your imagination in situations like that only helps survey the situations at hand. 

  There is much I am starting to enjoy about having Bill O'Brien as my teams head coach. The previous are just a few. I'm glad he's at the helm today. I'm proud of him. I'm sure his family and the team, as a whole, is too. I look forward to 3 pm today. It will be fun seeing the puzzle coming a bit less cluttered and a bit more put together.

 ... Oh, what a picture this will become.

Katrina: The Storm that Changed Lives Forever - Ten Years Later

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Remembering Katrina: Ten Years Later

   Early in the morning on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast of the United States. When the storm made landfall, it had a Category 3 rating on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale–it brought sustained winds of 100–140 miles per hour–and stretched some 400 miles across.

  I remember April of that year vividly. That's when the owner of the New Orleans Saints, Tom Benson, halted lease negotiations with the state of Louisiana until after the completion of the 2005 NFL Season, due to a stadium dispute. Big news down here in the south. At the time, I followed the Saints almost as much as I did the Texans. I was proud of my local team then, just not secure in if I was able to pour my heart out to any franchise yet. I was still hesitant. When the Oilers left Houston it effected me. It hurt so many fans. The ultimate betrayal to a sports fan. Pick up and leave them behind, waiving their banners for a team that no longer existed. Now it seemed that New Orleans would have the same fate. 

   They have had this happen before with other teams. This time you could hear their screams all the way over to their neighbors here in Texas. All the rumors of where the Saints may go, to me it was heartbreaking. 

  I became a fan of the Saints when I met an ex of mine. His family was from the New Orleans and Baton Rouge areas. He had a warm passion for that team. It filled me and I became intoxicated with the Saints after not only seeing his excitement, but the everyday fans of the team. They were fun loving, party hard, eccentric people with a zest for life. I saw this first hand when we would visit Chalmette, Louisiana and we would take a day or two with the family to head to the French Quarter. Oh, I fell in love immediately with that city. A 20-something girl walking down a city street with streetcars on one side and dancing, singing people on the other. Artists on the sidewalks, voodoo priestess in one building and hand carved kids toys in another. The food was amazing everywhere you went. You just couldn't help but to fall in love with the people and the city.

  Time began to pass for me. Changes happened within me and I went my own way, in a path that didn't have that wonderful family in it. I still think of them often, the family from New Orleans that imprinted passion and love for things I never thought existed. I still love that family even if the are no longer a part of my own.

 Soon I was living a completely different life. Two little girls, ages 3 and 1, the other life far behind me. Trying to keep up with young kids when the news began to turn head on towards that wonderful city I fell in love with years before. This was sure to be a hectic time for the families and community. I've seen those levees with my own eyes, towering far higher than the small, broken down homes that were right alongside them. Those pictures with others of the marsh lands, Chalmette's main street and memories of my old family telling me about how it was when Hurricane Camille came on land in August of 1969. Top winds of 210 mph and a 23-foot storm surge at Pass Christian, Miss., sideswiped St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes with storm surges of 15 feet, causing $250 million in damage and killing nine in Louisiana. The days after that storm, my old family were the only ones in their area that had working phones. They had people lined up down the street to use their phone to call loved ones to let them know they were safe and alive. Neighbor caring for neighbor. As I thought back on those stories, it wouldn't be much longer that I would see that again in my own community. neighbor caring for neighbor, caring enough to let them in their own home to weather the aftermath of a storm that destroyed not only their homes and livelihood,  but their family members, animals and communities.

  Flash forward: I-10 traffic was at a standstill. Not just in one or two towns. No, no. Two states long, stop and go traffic. I lived near that highway and 90. Both in a mess. Locals in my community handing out water to cars in the traffic as they passed through our small towns to Houston, just as they did later as Rita hit close by. Neighbor helping neighbor. Even 10 years later, it's all so vivid in my mind. The Astrodome was opened up to the evacuees of Hurricane Katrina. So many people fleeing the Louisiana area that cities as far sound as Corpus Christi and beyond starting opening up their own homes to those in need. A mass exodus from the city that I fell in love with so many years ago. These people lost everything.

 We all needed some football to take away the pain of what we were seeing every day. But, no one more than the evacuees fleeing from their lives back in Louisiana. And although the season games had yet started for the Texans, we began to see the team, cheerleaders and franchise come out to the forefront. They had been helping in many ways since the exodus began. Now that the city of Houston had settled in a little. The new chaos that was the now the new norm, the average person started seeing what was happening  outside the box piece by piece. 

HoustonTexans.com Remembering Hurricane Katrina: 10 Years Later 

  This is when my love for my home team became something more. I felt they were more than just a team trying to make money on a game and it's fans. They cared. The whole franchise cared for that community beyond words could ever express. They not only cared for their own, but the opened their lives and hearts to their neighbors. They didn't have a cocky attitude about it. They didn't boast about it. They just wanted to help in any way they could. From the cheerleaders and players going out in the city and surrounding areas to help boost morale, to other in the franchise donating what they could to help aid those that needed our help so desperately. I found my team. I found out what it was like to support a group of people that deserved my passion and thought. 

  The Saints owner left all that talk behind. He knew now that the city of new Orleans needed them. It would be the glue that kept that city from becoming a swampy wasteland and help return some of the families back home where they wanted and needed to be.

  ... And that is why I'm forever a Houston Texans Fangirl. No matter where I live, Irving, Texas or Chicago, Illinois.  These players, cheerleaders, coaches, owners and whole franchise give me a reason to be a fan. Thank you for showing me people will still help their neighbor. I love you for it. 

#Respect 

Mallett, Hoyer & Mental Toughness

Tracy0h's Twitter Status

  Bill O'Brian seemed so hopeful that Ryan Mallett to back up Brian Hoyer with respect and enthusiasm. I think we all, as fans, hoped for the same. Unfortunately, the recent actions have caused all of us to rethink our support for Mallett to act professionally in this very stressful time for the whole team. 

  Listen, I get it. You deserve it the first depth chart, Mallett. I really do get it. We all do. Well, we used to get it until your decision to oversleep. There are certain things that you can not do in a position that you are in, a job that you have. Oversleeping is a huge wrong. You know it, O'Brian knows it, your whole team knows it and we, the fans, know it. 

  Time for some direct talk. You know, as well as we all do, that Hoyer will most likely be hurt this season. What makes you think that your recent actions will help us believe in you to back him up? Do you realize that when you make decisions like this you not only distance yourself from your fans, but your teammates. Yeah, you know it. You feel it when you see them on the training field, now don't you? I pray that you do. That only shows that you are smart enough to come back from this dark place you're in right now. Next time, keep professional and keep the darkness to yourself and your family. It will pass. You will find the fun in the game again. I hope, as a fan of yours, it's soon. You have the mental toughness, Mallett. We need to see it from you now. Your teammates and coach need to see it from you most of all. Pick yourself up. You got this.

  There is no surprise to me that O'Brian picked Brian Hoyer for starter. There is no doubt to me that this was a tough decision at the time. I was thrilled that #7 was called up to 1st. After seeing how the team focused on him when he would talk to them on the sidelines and huddles, he shows the authority and passion to keep the team set on the goals at hand. I want to see that from Mallett. It's important to this team to have a quarterback that holds the their attention. Going to really need that when times get tough and they begin to rethink their abilities on the field on days when they are getting hammered on the field. And it going to happen. A lot. That mental toughness is going to be key to keep the morale high. I have faith in this man. I'm excited to see him excel and learn. Let's hope, for the sake of the franchise, Mallett will follow suit. I want to be excited about his toughness again as well.

Link: Bill O'Brian's Monday Press Conference: Aug 24, 2015

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