The Houston Texans may believe they completed their coaching search with the best hire, but some critics aren’t impressed.
According to Cody Benjamin from CBS Sports, the Texans’ promotion of defensive coordinator and associate head coach Lovie Smith to the full-time job earned them a D grade in his rankings of all the coaching hires for 2022.
No offense to Lovie, who deserves all the credit for his Super Bowl bid with the Bears earlier in his career. But what is this hire? Drawing out a search is one thing. Drawing it out to basically hire the defensive equivalent of David Culley, the guy you just fired after one year in a rebuild? Smith, going on 64, doesn’t feel like a long-term building block for a program very much in transition. He oversaw one of the NFL’s worst defenses in 2021. Maybe a CEO role better suits him and better personnel will help. But he also hasn’t had a winning season as a head coach — either in college or the NFL — since 2012, posting a 43-77 record since his last playoff trip in 2010.
