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- The Houston Texans had Josh McCown’s name circled to become their next head coach.
- According to a report, the team didn’t hire him due mostly to the optics surrounding the hire.
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The Houston Texans have their new head coach in Lovie Smith, but it’s no secret that he wasn’t exactly at the top of their most-wanted list when the search began. Josh McCown seems to have been Houston’s top target, which begs the question of why didn’t the Texans sign him?
Optics.
McCown has never coached one second of football at the NFL or college level. That fact alone raised red flags, but then you add Brian Flores’ lawsuit alleging racial discrimination in the NFL on top of the fact that Houston just fired David Culley after just one season, and Houston could find itself in a storm.
It doesn’t exactly take a genius to realize that if Houston went out and hired McCown, a white man with zero coaching experience when Flores himself was a reported finalist for the job, the optics wouldn’t be too great.
John McClain of the Houston Chronicle reported just that. Houston wanted to hire McCown but ultimately decided to go with Smith given the optics and timing around the hire. Smith was already on the Texans’ coaching staff as well.
Houston promoting him from within is one of the things Flores’ lawsuit encourages, therefore the Texans checked the ‘good optics’ box instead of hiring a white coach out of nowhere with literally zero experience.
Simply put, Smith was both the easiest and most sensible hire the Texans could make given the current climate the NFL is currently operating in.
Now things will get interesting if Smith can’t improve on Houston’s 4-13 record from a season ago. He doesn’t exactly take over in Houston with momentum seeing as how he went 8-24 in Tampa Bay during his last head coaching stint from 2014-2015.