Are the Houston Texans deserving of last in power rankings post-Super Bowl?

Are the Houston Texans the worst team in the NFL post-Super Bowl?

In a national power rankings list, the Houston Texans dropped to last place after hiring Lovie Smith as their new head coach, but are the Texans deserving of being considered the worst team in the entire NFL?

In Pete Prisco’s national NFL column for CBS Sports, he dropped the Texans four spots to last place in his post-Super Bowl power rankings this week, even moving the Jaguars ahead of them after Jacksonville hired Doug Pederson as their new head coach.

In that same time frame, the Texans hired Lovie Smith as their new head coach, promoting him from defensive coordinator to the top coaching job in the franchise, so even though some might not believe this, Smith is a credible head coach and could be the right person for the next few years to help get things sorted out with this franchise.

Sure, the Texans have won just eight games in the past two seasons with records of 4-12 in 2020 and 4-13 in 2021, but their play in ’21 in the final few weeks of the season were much better than what a majority of their season showed the football world, except for the rushing game, which was bad all season long.

Back to Prisco’s power rankings, here is what the veteran NFL columnist wrote about the Texans and dropping them four spots to 32nd overall in his power rankings list:

"“Their coaching search ended up on defensive coordinator Lovie Smith as their head coach, his third chance running a team in his career. Why not just keep David Culley?”"

The reason the Houston Texans chose Smith over Culley might have been he has more experience as a head coach at both the NFL and collegiate level, and Smith once over a decade ago took a team to a Super Bowl in Chicago with his quarterbacks being Rex Grossman and Kyle Orton.

Plus the goal of the Texans must be grooming Davis Mills as the starting quarterback, and that’s where new offensive coordinator Pep Hamilton comes into play, while Smith works on repairing the defense with general manager Nick Caserio and the rest of the defensive staff of the Texans.

Maybe once the Texans “hopefully” bring in some depth with free agency, and they do well with the players they select in April’s 2022 NFL Draft, that will garner them a little more respect from a national level. Plus there is the whole Deshaun Watson situation to get to a resolution for.

Sure, the Texans aren’t a great football team, and they do need to make many improvements, but they aren’t worse than the Jaguars at this point in time, and that’s even with Pederson as their head coach.

The post-Super Bowl power rankings by Prisco are for the most part fun to read and agreeable with as the Super Bowl participants are No. 1 and No. 2 on the list, but we can agree to disagree with the Texans being the worst team in the rankings.

That’s said since the Houston Texans have owned the Jaguars on the field in recent memory, even during their consecutive four-win seasons in the past two years.