HOUSTON – Sunday’s game was not pretty.
It started out the way Texans fans hoped. Up 24-0 on a Patrick Mahomes-led Chiefs team, eyeing their first trip to an AFC Championship game in franchise history. But then, well, you know.
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On Monday, Head Coach Bill O’Brien addressed the media.
Here were some of the main takeaways.
ON KICKING A FIELD GOAL INSTEAD OF GOING FOR IT ON FOURTH DOWN
“I think with any decision, you’re always – in the moment, you’re trying to make the best decision for the team. Sometimes those decisions are the right decisions and sometimes they’re not," said O’Brien. “I don’t really want to comment on one specific decision. It’s just something that we’ve got to work hard to keep improving on. I feel like we did a lot of good this year relative to some of those decisions, but there’s some things that we need to improve upon.”
ON GETTING BETTER IN THE OFFSEASON
O’Brien wasn’t specific on how the Texans would like to improve.
“We start that process today a little bit, get going on that,” O’Brien said, alluding to the meetings that take place with players. “What the coaches are doing right now, after today, after they meet with their players, now we’ll start the postseason evaluations of everything. Player evaluation, scheme evaluations, all those different things, and that’ll help us determine where we need to go relative to your question.”
ON IMPROVEMENTS HE NEEDS TO MAKE AS A COACH
"I think we’re going to work here for a while, I’m going to take some time off, and those are things that I’m going to really think about – what we can do better, what I can do better, what we can do better as a coaching staff, what I can do better. We’ll work hard to try to improve in a lot of areas, but I wouldn’t be able to answer that specifically right now. I’ve got to really put more thought into that.”
ON DESHAUN WATSON’S VOCAL SUPPORT OF HIM AS A COACH
“I think when you spend so much time with somebody and you have so much respect for who he is, for how he works. I know he respects the way we work and what we try to do to help the team win. He’s just a great person," O’Brien said of the 24-year-old quarterback. “We’re fortunate to have him here. I think he really understands what we’re trying to do here, he understands the work that it’s going to take, and we have so much confidence in him.”
ON WHETHER OR NOT THE FRANCHISE WILL HIRE A GENERAL MANAGER
O’Brien said he hasn’t yet met with Texans owner Cal McNair.
“I would be remiss by answering that question, but I feel like where we are right now, the way that I see it right now, it stays the way it is,” said O’Brien. "We have, again, a great group of people that meet daily, that talk about the team, the roster, all the support staff, the subprograms that we have here and try to make the best decisions for the team.”
ON LETTING THE FANS DOWN
“We feel like we have a really good culture here, we’ve got a good group of core players here. We’re working hard to make the next step to get to where everybody wants us to get to, and where we want to get to. It just didn’t go that way yesterday,” O’Brien said. “We want to tell our fans to stay with us, to understand that we have a great group of core players here that we really believe in, we’ve got an excellent young quarterback that’s just completed his third season and we feel like we have a really bright future here."