David Culley, with his status unresolved and still under review, per league sources not authorized to speak publicly, stood inside the Texans’ practice facilityMonday afternoonand reiterated that he hasn’t been informed about his future with no meetings or conversations held or scheduled currently with chairman and CEO Cal McNair and general manager Nick Caserio.
Although the Texans’ head coach is still awaiting word on whether he’ll remain in that job for a second season afterfinishing 4-13with an overhauled roster during his first season as a head coach at any level, Culley stayed busy Monday with exit meetings with players.
“As far as I know, I’m the head coach of the Texans right now,” Culley said during aMonday afternoonpress conference. “Moving forward with that.I don’t even think about questions about my status.”
Culley emphasized that he has no plans to initiate meetings with management. Ultimately, he’ll let them come to him and inform him of their plans.
None of the coaches, including Culley, have been told what’s next in the process and they’ve tried not to make any assumptions based on speculation about their job security, according to league sources.
The Texans are conducting their due diligence on Culley and his entire coaching staff as well as keeping track of a growing number of head coaching vacancies, including the Miami Dolphins, Chicago Bears, Minnesota Vikings, Denver Broncos, Las Vegas Raiders and Jacksonville Jaguars’ jobs all open.
Should the Texans move on from Culley, which is being contemplated, per source, then New England Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels is not expected to pursue the job. Another potential replacement candidate with ties to Caserio and executive vice president of football operations Nick Caserio is Patriots inside linebackers coach Jerod Mayo, who’s expected to interview with the Broncos.
Culley has received endorsements from players publicly and privately, which he appreciates.
“I’d hope they would, and expect them, too,” Culley said. “But I’m not surprised with that. They’ve been all in from the word ‘go’.”
Culley had never been a coordinator before taking this job. He was previously an assistant head coach, passing game coordinator and receivers coach for the Baltimore Ravens after stints with the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs coaching receivers and the Buffalo Bills coaching quarterbacks.
“I thought coach Culley did a great job his first year as a head coach,” Texans veteran center Justin Brit said. “Kind of the situation we had here in Houston wouldn’t have been easy for anybody. I feel like his leadership was consistent and who he was was consistent, and that’s what we needed here as a leader, someone to run this team.
“ I hope he gets another shot. I hope he gets to kind of showcase who he is, what he does, how he does it here, because it would be really interesting to see the jump he takes with the team next year. If everything was right, it would be cool to come back.”
That said, there’s a chance Culley is out. The fact that he hasn’t been endorsed by management obviously isn’t a great sign.
“You’re talking to a guy that has been traded a lot, so it’s a business,” wide receiver Brandin Cooks said. “He’s a great coach. He meant well to us this year and had a lot of energy and did a lot of positive things. But, as we all know in the business, things happen.”
“I think the biggest thing that I saw was, I wouldn’t necessarily call it growth, I would say his consistency and who he was every single day coming in here and keeping that standard high. He didn’t change no matter what was going on. You have to have a lot of respect for a guy like that to be able to do that in your first year as a head coach.”
The Texans struggled mightily on offense while trying to compete with a roster and an acknowledgement from Caserio at the start of the season that this year would be more “process oriented” than about “outcomes.”
The Texans finished last in the NFL with 83.6 rushing yards per game and averaged just 16.5 points per contest while averaging only 276.5 yards of total offense per game.
Despite the struggles, Culley embraced the experience.
”I enjoyed every minute of it,” he said. “Learned a lot, a lot of things in that coaching manual I had to go through that weren’t in there, but that’s okay. Always something new happening that was a learning experience for me, but for the most part I just kind of used all the experience that I’ve got working with all the different head coaches, all the situations they’ve been through.
“You’re judged every year. Basically, you’re judged on wins and losses, and if you judge it on wins and losses I’m not happy with four wins at all. I expected to get more than four wins and felt like we should have got more than four wins. This is a bottom-line business, and I wasn’t happy with the number of wins we got.”
If Culley is back, he expects a lot of improvement. The Texans won only four games for the second consecutive season
“We’ll expect a big jump,” Culley said. “Very disappointed in the fact that we only won four ballgames. Expected to win more, thought we should have won more. We didn’t. But you always expect a big jump, and it’s no different than with players..
“It’s the same way with this football team. We’ll add some more pieces through the draft, and obviously Nick will add some people through free agency. We kind of know what we need to do to keep moving forward, and just looking forward to doing that.”
Texans passing game coordinator and quarterbacks coach Pep Hamilton is being requested to interview for the Carolina Panthers’ offensive coordinator vacancy after his success developing rookie quarterback Davis Mills
Just like Culley, the coaches aren’t assured of their return.
“As far as I’m concerned, their future is now,” Culley said. “They’re here, and they’ll be coaching with me.”
After Caserio admitted the reality that the team might not win as much as they hoped to, the Texans exceeded low expectations at times. That included an upset victory over the Los Angeles Chargers. They also endured an eight-game losing streak.
“The expectations were to win as many football games as possible,” Caserio said. “We went in with that. We knew the situation with all the new people coming in, but the expectation was to go out and win. This is the NFL, and you’re expected to go out and win.
“I used to always make suggestions. I had to make decisions this time. When I made those decisions, that decision affected a whole bunch of people, affected an entire football team. I learned that before I made those decisions, or whatever they might have been, that I had to see the big picture. It wasn’t about a particular guy or it wasn’t about a particular coach, it was about the football team.”
If Culley is one-and-done, he’ll walk away knowing he got to be one of 32 NFL head coaches to fulfill a life-long dream for the Tennessee native.
“I loved every minute of it, I mean, every minute,” Culley said. “I did not like the losses, nobody likes the losses, but I loved this job. Again, like I said, I don’t consider this work. I know sometimes whenever you don’t win enough ballgames, people start, and I had people tell me that they feel sorry for me. Feel sorry for me? Do you know what I do? I’m the head coach of the Houston Texans, regardless of what the record is, and that’s a beautiful thing.”