Bill O’Brien, SUPERGENIUS
By 
I thought Danny Kelly’s roundup of the draft was good overall, and I wouldn’t pick on this point if it wasn’t such a common view, but I really don’t get this:
Watson is a big-game playmaker and an extraordinary leader who gives the Texans their first exciting option at quarterback since O’Brien took over in 2014. The respected quarterback whisperer — who has done shockingly well with a combination of Ryan Fitzpatrick, Case Keenum, Brian Hoyer, Ryan Mallett, T.J. Yates, Brandon Weeden, Osweiler, and Savage under center — at last has a high-upside passer to mold.
I honestly have no idea what the basis for the claim that O’Brien has done “shockingly well” with QBs in Houston is. In 2014, the team finished 18th in passing DVOA, getting a decent season out of Ryan Fitzpatrick — who was, however, significantly better the next year working with transcendent offensive mastermind Chan Gailey. The next year, working with two hand-picked Patriots castoffs, they dropped to 22nd. And then last year, with a QB in which the team made a yoooge investment, they had the 3rd-worst passing attack in the league, finishing ahead of only the Jets and Rams. The drop in Osweiler’s performance is particularly instructive — Kubiak’s reputation as a QUARTERBACK GURU is actually justified. Call me crazy, but when a team is so desperate to get rid of a QB they had invested a lot in that they’ll give another team a good draft pick to take his contract, the lesson I would draw from this would not be that the head coach is brilliant at developing quarterback talent.
I’m not saying O’Brien should be written off yet, and it’s true enough that he hasn’t had much to work with, but during his tenure in Houston he’s gotten mediocre performance out of mediocre QBs and replacement-level performance (or sub-replacement in the case of Osweiler) out of replacement-level QBs. In New England, he got Hall of Fame performance out of an already-established Hall of Fame QB. If any member of the Belichick coaching shrub deserves credit for the Texans’ success the last two years, such as it is, it’s Crenell.
The such as it is is a critical qualifier, because the 2016 Texans were one of the worst teams to make the playoffs since the merger. It’s easy to understand why the Texans traded up for Watson. They were 9-7 last year despite by far their most valuable player missing most of the year. So they figure Watt coming back is worth a win or two, and it would be a bitter disappointment indeed if Watson wasn’t better than Osweiler, so…hey, looks like 12-4!
The problem, as Barnwell says, is that the 9-7 record was highly misleading and the team is not particularly close to contending:
All of those factors are true, but fans who start with the Texans in their heads as a 9-7 team and then apply those arguments to push them into the 11-win sphere are fooling themselves. It’s far more likely that the Texans are a 7-win team getting the benefit of those improvements, and they’re doing so in a division that should be better in 2017. The Titans outplayed Houston by advanced metrics and supplemented their roster with two first-round picks. The Jaguars grossly underperformed their point differential, going 3-13 with a 5.9-win Pythagorean expectation, and made massive upgrades in free agency. Even the Colts managed to invest in their defense as part of the transition from Ryan Grigson to Chris Ballard, and they still have the best quarterback in the division.
Nine wins might not be enough to win the AFC South next season, and Watson might not even be enough to get the Texans there. You can’t blame Houston general manager Rick Smith for throwing resources at what continues to be his team’s biggest problem, and Watson could very well end up as the next Marcus Mariota, but the Texans themselves might be their own worst enemy. They’ll need to defy the history of teams who dominate in close games and O’Brien’s recent track record of developing quarterbacks to keep Watson playing for championships in the years to come.
Watson is a decent prospect, but it’s hard to imagine someone who through 17 picks in the NCAA immediately becoming an above-average starter, and if O’Brien has any special ability to develop quarterbacks we haven’t seen it so far. And if they aren’t a playoff team this year, that 2018 1st rounder is an awful lot to give up.