{"id":6063,"date":"2019-08-19T11:16:11","date_gmt":"2019-08-19T11:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/?p=6063"},"modified":"2019-08-19T11:16:20","modified_gmt":"2019-08-19T11:16:20","slug":"has-bill-obrien-hit-a-ceiling-in-houston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/nfl\/has-bill-obrien-hit-a-ceiling-in-houston\/","title":{"rendered":"Has Bill O’Brien Hit A ‘Ceiling’ In Houston?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This is our third and final preview of a candidate for the NFL prop betting<\/a> odds market on ‘First Coach to Be Fired or Resign’. Unlike the previous two, this coach has been successful at the NFL level but has he been successful enough? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

FIRST COACH TO BE FIRED OR RESIGN 2019 NFL SEASON<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

BILL O’BRIEN\/HOUSTON TEXANS:<\/strong> The previous two coaches that we’ve featured in our analysis of the ‘First NFL Coach to Be Fired or Resign’ prop are hard to defend in their coaching acumen. A frequent question about both is a simple ‘Why were they hired?’. That’s not the case with the subject of this preview. Houston Texans’ head coach Bill O’Brien can legitimately claim one of the most amazing head coaching performances in college football history. He took over at Penn State in the aftermath of the Jerry Sandusky scandal at a time when recruits didn’t want to play there, current players wanted to transfer and certainly no one wanted the tough coaching job and the task of following Joe Paterno. Throw in some serious NCAA sanctions including a loss of scholarships and a bowl appearance ban and it looked to be a ‘no win’ gig. O’Brien somehow got a depleted and dispirited program back on their feet in record time and took them to two winning seasons at a juncture when they were expected to lose on a weekly basis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This run with the Nittany Lions is what got him hired by the Houston Texans and deservedly so. He’s now heading into his sixth season as Houston’s head coach and while he’s been successful he might not have been successful enough to stay there for the long term. In O’Brien’s first three years in Houston the team went 9-7 three times. Twice this was good enough for the AFC South title. The team suffered through an injury plagued campaign in 2017 dropping to 4-12 but rebounded in 2018 to go 11-5 and once again win the AFC South. Unfortunately, they’ve had minimal success in the playoffs during O’Brien’s run going 1-3 and getting no further than the AFC Divisional round.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O’Brien received a four year extension in January of 2018 but in November of that year founding owner Bob McNair died. The team is now owned and run by his wife wife, Janice McNair, and his son, D. Cal McNair. McNair’s widow has taken on a fairly large role in the operations of the team and might not have the same vision of long term continuity that her husband did when he extended O’Brien. About the same time that O’Brien received his extension the Texans hired Brian Gaine as General Manager. He was fired 17 months later in June 2019. There were allegations of discriminatory treatment of minority employees but they were never substantiated and he quickly found another front office job. The team will go through the 2019 season without a General Manager though they hope to have one in place for the 2020 season. Chris Olsen, the team’s senior vice president of football administration, will be in charge of football operations this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So how does all of this impact Bill O’Brien? When the Texans got off to an 0-3 start to begin the 2018 campaign there was speculation that O’Brien was on the ‘hot seat’. That became a non-issue because Houston went on an improbable 9 game winning streak to finish 11-5. O’Brien has never been considered a great game or clock manager and it’s hard to make the case that he was responsible for the turnaround. A more likely catalyst? Variance or if you prefer ‘dumb luck’. The Texans did well in a number of statistical areas that are considered to be a ‘coin flip’ by mathematicians. These include turnover ratio, lost fumbles and even performance in close games. During the Texans 9 game winning streak they had 5 single digit wins, 4 wins by 3 or less and 2 OT victories. They also had a +13 turnover differential. They could repeat this type of form in 2019 though from a statistical perspective it’s unlikely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Houston has a great young quarterback in Deshaun Watson but he spent much of the 2018 season running for his life behind one of the worst offensive lines in the league. The team focused on improving the OL in the draft but the efficacy of that remains to be seen. The defense definitely took a step back with the loss of cornerback Tyrann Mathieu. Things could get even worse if star linebacker Jadeveon Clowney continues his holdout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can make a case that the three other teams in the AFC South improved during the off season. That’s tough to do with the Texans. With a new GM regime set to be hired in the off season should things not go well for Houston it would be an easy decision to change coaches as well. O’Brien could survive but there’s at least several scenarios in which he doesn’t. At +1200, he’s a good value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BET ADAM GASE FIRST COACH TO BE FIRED OR RESIGN +1200<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get the latest NFL football odds and information–follow BetOnline.ag on Twitter<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is our third and final preview of a candidate for the NFL prop betting odds market on ‘First Coach…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":6064,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[129],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nfl"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6063"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6065,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6063\/revisions\/6065"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}