Houston Texans have hand forced, waste no time in firing Lovie Smith

Just this morning, we weighed the pros and cons of the Houston Texans firing Lovie Smith. It appears that the team’s front office did much of the same thing and decided that it would be better if the two sides parted ways.

The announcement itself is not all that surprising. After all, the Houston Texans actually put up a worse record in Lovie Smith’s first season than they did a year ago. There was also the argument to be made that the roster was quite a bit better than it was in 2021. And those that were returning, such as Davis Mills, were a year older and wiser.

There will be time enough to do a full post mortem on the season and what went wrong later. However, it’s clear that something was jibing from the very beginning with this version of the Houston Texans.

It’s possible that Lovie Smith’s old school approach was part of what just wasn’t meshing. He was hired last year in part to be someone who could shepherd a team through a growth process, but the team didn’t do a ton of growing. That despite the fact that there were some bright spots, especially in the form of rookie running back Dameon Pierce.

In the end, the bright spots weren’t enough. Even with the team playing better toward the end of the season. In fact, after near wins over the Dallas Cowboys and Kansas City Chiefs, the Houston Texans snapped an eight-game losing streak by beating the Tennessee Titans. They followed that up with a bad loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars and then finished the season 3-13-1 by toppling the Indianapolis Colts.

The win on the regular season’s final day might have forced the team’s hand. The victory moved them out of the number one pick slot. That was a spot they seemingly clinched just a few weeks earlier.

Now that the Houston Texans will be looking for their fourth head coach in four years, the offseason seems like it’s going to be quite the rollercoaster.