BRB GroupThink: You don’t know Jack

There are growing rumors that Jack Easterby is no problem for the Houston Texans. The problems he caused were due to Bill O’Brien being in over his head and being Nick Caserio’s ship.

Have your thoughts on Easterby changed at all? Is he still a distraction or a detriment to the team? If he still is, do you think the Texans will ever fire him, to free us from this world?

These are the questions I asked the masthead. Here are our answers:

MAT WESTON:

The Houston Texans have always been an underperforming team with Bill O’Brien as their head coach. Rick Smith banked first-round draft picks. The team had the best talent year after year, but were let down by the quarterback position, crippled by Brian Hoyer, Ryan Mallett, NAME DELETED, Tom Savage and others, thanks to the decisions Smith and O’Brien made together. Then they traded for Deshaun Watson and that all changed.

The Texans should have been a superbowl competitor with Watson on his rookie contract. Smith lost the power struggle and quit once his wife was diagnosed with cancer. Brian Gaine didn’t go all out on free agency when he got the chance. O’Brien ran a heavy offense, who did what it took to win games at times, with a great occasional game plan that took teams by surprise, but overall it was lackluster and never limited the talent they had on the roster. Overall, they went 24-0 over Kansas City, blew it, and that was the highest height they had reached.

Jack Easterby came onto the scene in 2019. He arrived to lead the team’s culture and football operations. The following offseason, DJ Reader and DeAndre Hopkins were absent, and Brandin Cooks, David Johnson and Eric Murray arrived. General manager Bill O’Brien didn’t have time to be head coach and general manager, so things like contract management and personnel decisions were shared by their flat organizational structure. Then came the ruin of the team. 0-4 to 4-12. Watson wanting out before sexual assault allegations. 4-13 last season.

The Texans found themselves in this mess because of the summer of 2019. Easterby met his former New England Patriots Friends, and spoke to Nick Caserio, reportedly about the Texans general manager job. This is from one of two Sports Illustrated articles. The Texans fired Gaine, attempted to hire Caserio, and were accused of tampering, rescinded the offer, which forced O’Brien into the GM role.

After O’Brien’s departure in 2020, the Texans hired Caserio as general manager. The same man who had tried to be attracted to Easterby the year before. So that’s where we are. Easterby is still there as vice-president of football operations. Caserio is the general manager. Watson is on the list. And the Texans are trying to find a new head coach.

I can’t imagine that Texans era without Easterby in the hold. He will be there as long as Caserio is there, and probably vice versa. Caserio defended Jack at his last press conference, never really explained what he does or doesn’t do, and he was the one who worked to get Caserio the job. The Texans will try to win, and win the right way, with the right players in the meantime, which will limit the talent pool available to them.

For this reason, it is impossible for me to care more about Easterby. If I did, I couldn’t watch, or care about the team, until his dismissal happened. In the meantime, we’ll watch and see if it works or not, creating game opportunities for Rex Burkhead, Jamie Collins and Devin McCourty in the meantime.

BIGFATDRUNK:

Jack “Rasputin” Easterby has been running a publicity campaign for a few months now to improve his and Bill O’Brien’s appearance (for some reason!). It really hurts Easterby that most people with a functioning brain don’t think of him as a footballer first and foremost.

So, in order to make himself look better, he was willing to smear proven pros such as Amy Palcic, Jamey Rootes, DeAndre Hopkins and JJ Watt. Could you imagine stooping to help spread unfounded rumors to make these four look bad and turn Easterby, along with BOB and #Failson, into a superhero? Well, it’s happening.

Besides trying to save his job, this is all a ploy to give himself greater influence in the day-to-day operations of the Houston Texans. That works. The mere fact that someone like Easterby’s best friend Josh “The Wrong” McCown is seriously considered as a head coach by the team completely blows up the idea of ​​Nick Caserio running the team.

Easterby has #Failson and Hannah’s ears, not Caserio.

Besides being a street corner preacher or a failed stand-up comedian in 1984, I’m not sure what Easterby is professionally qualified to do. He’s not a ‘football guy’ as he would like. He’s definitely not fit to lead an NFL team. Yet here we are.

No matter how many VICTORY VICTORY VICTORY tweets he does, Jack Easterby is an unskilled manipulative spit lick who harms Texans every day he goes to Kirby for work.

MCCOWN RIVERS:

lol why are you asking that

L4BLITZER:

That I even know Jack Easterby’s name is bad enough. Unfortunately, you can’t discuss the state of the Texans over the past two years without seeing his name. There was hope that with Caserio taking on the role of GM, and perhaps the first person qualified to do GM-type things since the end of the Rick Smith era, Easterby would fade into the background . While he would still be a powerhouse within the organization, at least with him out of the CEO’s office (officially), he wouldn’t continue poor staff decision-making and would stay on as Executive Vice President of football operations… out of the spotlight and with less impact on my fandom. Whether he really qualifies to be executive vice president of football operations is another debate for another time (I think we know the answer to that one).

However, recent developments with Head Coaching research are bringing Easterby and all his baggage back into our consciousness. Justified or not, the Texans fired Culley. The expectation was that with Caserio as general manager, the team would then sift through the various Patriots alumni phone books to find the next head coach, perhaps the one Caserio really wanted (or needed) . They reached out to a few. Yet other names began to appear on the list, names that had little connection to the Patriots Way or truly genuine consideration/qualification for an NFL head coaching gig. In particular, Josh McCown’s name began circulating as a legitimate candidate for the Texans head coach job. The same McCown who has an extensive collection of team jerseys from all of his NFL employers…and absolutely zero years/months/weeks/days of NFL (or college) coaching experience from any kind whatsoever. Apparently his best qualification for the job, if reports from multiple sources have any credibility, is that Easterby is in love with him as a leader and an individual.

I’m sure McCown is a real good guy and could become a good coach (it would be nice if he came in as a QB coach working with the new OC) but you’re not just taking a guy with no coaching experience and let him run an NFL team. The last guy had at least decades of coaching experience in the NFL, if only as a positional leader. If the Texans are serious about making McCown head coach, and there are multiple scenarios where that could happen, that would mean Easterby is still a driving force in personnel decisions. As if his experience as interim co/GM weren’t proof enough of his poor quality at this type of work, the team would double down on a potentially worse bet.

Unfortunately, until the McNair family relinquishes control of the team and Cal does something else with his legacy, Easterby isn’t going anywhere. This likely means that head-scratching personnel decisions with predictably poor results from the team are also likely to continue. It also means the Texans will continue to do the impossible: make football-crazed Texas football fans apathetic about a professional football team.

Mike Bullock:

First of all, I’m with Rivers…why even ask that?

There is a common mantra among politicians as they grow in experience and “skills”. Say what people want to hear and do what you want. People pay much more attention to what is said and repeated publicly than to what you actually do if you have a good PR firm to spin it.

This is EXACTLY what is coming out of NRG right now.

Nick Caserio has a press conference where he tries to show Jack’s deleterious impact on the team, and soon after Houston interviews Jack’s best friend for a role he’s clearly not qualified for. .

At this point, I’m much more inclined to believe Andre Johnson, the guy who takes money out of his own pocket every year to take the kids Christmas shopping, among his other charitable feats, than a guy who took his ‘NFL OWNER WHISPERER’ skill and turned it into salary and promotion in a role far above his skill set. And then uses it to enrich himself and his friends instead of doing what is right by the hand that feeds him.

Easterby should have been promoted ex-Texan when O’Brien came out. Nothing that has happened since changes that fact.

Let’s get to you. Has your opinion of Jack Easterby changed? If so, what do you think of this organization with him in his current role?