Come one, come all, for this story. Like football, this story goes on for longer than it needs to: it has breakdowns and pauses, it has players who don’t do what you want or need, and its meaning breaks the bounds of simply being just a sport. This story is about football, but it’s not actually about football. It’s about how football is played from the top; how football is a game within a game, a sports game that people play within the game of power, money, and control.
I watch football because I like it, and I like to see good football being played. I also love drama. And sports is so dramatic. So, so dramatic. Here is your context for why I wanted to compile this story about Jack Easterby playing the game of the Houston Texans.
Jack Easterby is the current Executive Vice President of the Houston Texans, an NFL team who are going through a lot of strife at the moment. This strife stems from a lot of bad decisions being made by the Front Office, or the administrative and scouting portion of an NFL team. it also stems from a lot of poor play on the field by the coaches and players, who recently finished off the 2020 season with a 4–12 record. That is four wins and 12 losses, which is especially bad because they had Deshaun Watson at quarterback, one of the better QBs in the game at the moment. Easterby was appointed as the interim General Manager in October of 2020 after the Texans fired then-GM and head coach Bill O’Brien. Since then, the Texans have hired Nick Caserio for the role in 2021, with Easterby moving to be Executive Vice President of Football Operations. CEO and owner Cal McNair does all the hiring and firing, but mostly he loses himself within the power struggles of Men Who Convince Him of Things.
Here are four men who have made their lives through football.
Deshaun Watson is an player who, after an epic first 3 years in the NFL, signed a 4-year, $160 million dollar contract with the Texans on September 5, 2020. A few months later, Watson was the talk of the trade world in the NFL. He wasn’t happy with the Texans and other teams were clamouring to phone Dave Culley, the new Texans coach, as of the 29th of Jan 2021. Culley was insistent that he wasn’t going to trade Watson, a move that could bite him in the ass since Watson has since been accused of sexual harassment by over 20 women. Awful behaviour aside, Watson’s trade value has plummeted because he will likely face at least a suspension from the league, if not criminal charges.
Bill O’Brien was hired as the Head Coach of the Texans in 2014 under then-GM Rick Smith, who left and was replaced with Brian Gaine in 2018. The Texans also extended Bill O’Brien’s contract. Unusually, they fired Brian Gaine in 2019 after only one year and made a failed run for the Patriots executive Nick Caserio as a new GM — keep this name in mind, he’ll be important later. I mention all this because the relationship between the Head Coach and the GM is an important one. This is the relationship that ties together the Front Office and what actually happens on the field. It is important that the two people see eye to eye but also that they balance each other out in terms of decision making. Which is why it was so weird that when the Texans fired Brian Gaine in 2019, they didn’t hire another GM, they just allowed Bill O’Brien to be the Head Coach AND act as GM. And then they officially gave him both positions in 2020.
Cal McNair is the son of the man who created and owned the Houston Texans until his death in 2018, Bob McNair. Since 2008, Cal was the vice-chairman to his dad, and then became the chairman after Bob’s death. The chairman/owner makes the major decisions about who to hire as GM, and has a lot of say in other hiring decisions. Some owners have way too much involvement, like Jerry Jones (Cowboys), but most of the time the narrative about owners is silent if it’s going well and critical if it’s not. It’s not going well for Cal McNair.
And last but not least, the main character, Jack Easterby. He has a degree in theology and worked as a “character coach” for a few different sports until he worked as a chaplain for the Kansas City Chiefs, and then moved to the New England Patriots in 2013.
While many NFL teams have chaplains who lead weekly Bible studies and talk to the team on game days, Easterby’s job goes way beyond that
New England is the only team in the NFL with a paid position devoted to a character coach. Easterby has a spot in the team’s media guide and an office by Bill Belichick, who he talks with on a daily basis and considers a good friend. He sits in on meetings and is on the practice field catching passes in practices.
- At the Pats, he knew he “had little chance of landing a personnel role under Belichick, who does not deviate from his belief that scouts and coaches should rise from the lowliest of ranks within an organization.” That’s because the Pats knew a guy who doesn’t know about football probably shouldn’t be put in charge of all the football. But he was still weirdly involved in the organisation in ways that character coaches hadn’t really been seen in before:
During a game this season against the Buffalo Bills, Easterby was shown on TV trying to calm quarterback Tom Brady during a disagreement with offensive coordinator Josh McDaniel.
- He left for the Texans to serve in a player personnel capacity on April 2, 2019, and Brian Gaine was fired as the Texans GM soon afterwards. Remember that weird timing? I wonder why that was…
Apparently, some Pats coaches were furious that Easterby had left. Partly because they lost a great character coach, and partly because they saw this as a power grab:
“Jack likes power. And maybe even more than that, he likes being around power,” said a Patriots source. “He gets influence because he is someone (who is) trustworthy and knows how to connect with people so that they listen to him and so that they will communicate with him. He’s good at his job, which is having his finger on the pulse of the program and knowing how to connect with people.”
Just a regular character coach who loves the dudes he’s coaching because he’s a great guy!
And, for Easterby, [his desires include] being a general manager or even higher within an NFL organization. And it’s that understated lust for power — and his desire to be around power — that has left many feeling Easterby is a bit of an opportunist with an agenda.
Well. Let’s look at the opportunities to solidify power, shall we?
- Fire Brian Gaine
As mentioned earlier, the Texans fired Brian Gaine in 2019, 2 months into Easterby’s tenure. It was an out of the ordinary move, and there’s a lot of speculation about just how Easterby was involved in the firing:
One thing that should be made clear: Gaine didn’t deserve this fate — and I think even O’Brien and Easterby would probably concede that. Gaine signed a five-year deal in January 2018. He got Tyrann Mathieu in on a discount in free agency. Despite not having first- or second-round picks in the 2018 draft, he got production from a rookie class that included promising receiver Keke Coutee and safety Justin Reid. The Texans went 11–5 and won the AFC South.
Now, add that up. The Texans hardly face-planted under Gaine, who’s got a strong rep in scouting circles and is very well-liked, nor was there massive philosophical disagreement on any one move. But — and this is a big but — in January 2018, when Gaine was hired, it looked like Easterby was going to Indianapolis with McDaniels, and the Patriots denied the Texans permission to talk to Caserio.
2. Don’t get done for tampering, but start to tamper with other things
The Texans have clearly had their eye on Caserio for years, since before hiring Brian Gaine. They tried to talk to him for the 2018 hiring, but the Patriots refused. They tried to talk to him after the 2019 firing of Brian Gaine, but the Patriots refused the talks and filed tampering charges against them.
Basically, the story goes that Jack Easterby and Nick Caserio were catching up at the Patriots gathering to receive their superbowl rings for the previous season. Nothing too out of left field, but the Patriots felt that the timing of the chats between Caserio and Easterby and the timing of the firing of Brian Gaine, a day later, was a bit weird. They opened up a tampering charge against the Texans. Jack Easterby got Brian Gaine fired so that they could hire Nick Caserio, but then he accidentally let the Pats in on the plan by being so obvious about it that the Patriots could stop it before it happened.
The Pats dropped the tampering charge after the Texans stopped trying to talk to Caserio:
“When we started the process to interview Nick Caserio for our EVP/GM position, we consulted the league office on numerous occasions, followed the procedures outlined in the league’s rules and believed we were in full compliance,” Texans CEO Cal McNair said in a statement. “We have now been made aware of certain terms in Nick’s contract with the Patriots. Once we were made aware of these contract terms, I informed Mr. Kraft that we would stop pursuing Nick.”
The Texans also dropped any intention to hire anyone else for their GM position other than Caserio, apparently. Easterby and O’Brien simply worked with Chris Olsen, salary cap manager, Matt Bazirgan, director of player personnel, James Liipfert, a player scout, to make the major decisions.
The issue with this is that the GM makes a lot of decisions about players. Now, without a GM, there’s no focus in mind for how the team should go about trading players and bringing in new players during the offseason. The Texans traded a third round pick for an old running back, Duke Johnson, and let one of their great defensive players, Jadeveon Clowney, to Seattle for peanuts (and one of the greatest player names ever, Barkevious Mingo).
3. Become a clubhouse star
It’s pretty clear from all the quotes about Easterby that people like him. They say he’s smart, has good energy and is great at giving advice, and players trust…ed him.
[In 2019] Deshaun Watson answered a question by publicly linking Easterby with McNair and the team’s head coach/offensive playcaller/de-facto general manager. The association was 100-percent correct. But Watson was originally asked about new left tackle Laremy Tunsil, not Easterby, which tells you how much influence the Texans’ executive vice president of team development already has on the organization.
“O’B and Mr. McNair and Jack are just trying to make sure that this team is where we want to be and they know exactly what we need in that locker room,” Watson said.
The Laremy Tunsil connection is beautiful here, because for those in the know, after Easterby’s hiring, Bill O’Brien traded for Tunsil to protect his QB. Tunsil is very good at his job, but most people aren’t sure he was worth the 2020-first round draft pick and 2021 first and second round picks that the Miami Dolphins got from the Texans. The thing about trading draft picks is that you don’t necessarily know what your draft pick will be, because the season hasn’t been played yet. The worst team of the previous season gets the highest pick (1) and the winner of the Superbowl gets the lowest (32). Essentially, in the 2020 draft, the Texans traded the 26th pick out of 32 teams to the Dolphins, which is fine. The Dolphins were bad that previous season, and had the 5th pick themselves. However, in 2020, the Texans went 4–12 and ended up trading the 3rd pick to the Dolphins with this Laremy Tunsil trade. Bill O’Brien had essentially bet that his team would be so good with Tunsil that it wouldn’t matter that they would no longer have those picks, and he lost that bet.
Whatever, at least they have Jack Easterby, right?: “some called the 37-year-old a guiding force in their lives, a beloved minister and mentor who shepherded two NFL franchises through difficult times and became part of the foundation of the Patriots’ late-dynasty years, earning him a rare spot in Bill Belichick’s inner circle.”
When Deshaun Watson signed his contract extension, Jack Easterby said about him: “He has a gift of presence when he’s with other people. His gift of being a good listener. He listens to his teammates really well. A gift of being consistent because he’s a consistent person so people know what they’re going to get out of him.”
4. Remove anyone in the way
In January 2020, the Texans fired Chris Olsen as any part of the Texans organisation.
Firing Olsen means more shakeup in the front office, and it could be more influence from the part of executive vice president of team development Jack Easterby, who helped evaluate the Texans from an organization standpoint during the 2019 offseason, even when the club’s nine-week workout program started in April.
Eleven days after the Texans fired Chris Olsen, they named Bill O’Brien the GM and Head Coach of the Texans. This move was widely criticised, and has lead to some of the weirdest trades in NFL history.
In the biggest trade of the year, one of the best wide receivers at the moment, DeAndre Hopkins, and a 2020 fourth-round pick, were traded from the Texans to the Cardinals for running back David Johnson, a 2020 second-round pick, and a 2021 fourth-round pick. I’m not joking about it being the biggest trade. At the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference which has been running since 2013, they awarded the Cardinals the award for “Best Sports Transaction of the Year”, and honour that a team in the NFL has never received.
The connection between QB Deshaun Watson and WR DeAndre Hopkins was beautiful. It was fun to watch because Watson threw ridiculous balls and Hopkins caught ridiculous balls. They were suited for each other. They bested the Pats and stopped Tom Brady winning one more Superbowl with the Pats in 2019/20.
Watson, a brilliant QB, can’t be the most brilliant QB if he has no one to throw to. And that’s basically what happened. The Texans hadn’t started the season with 4 losses since 2008, but that’s what happened. Their fourth loss in a row came against the struggling Vikings, who were 0–3 at the time. Despite doing the rounds about how he wasn’t worried about his job, Bill O’Brien was fired by Cal McNair as coach and GM of the Texans on the 8th of October 2020. They hired Romeo Crennel as the new coach, and — surprise surprise — didn’t hire a GM. They won their first game with Crennel against the worst team in the league, the Jacksonville Jaguars. But there was no plan, no focus, no goal in mind and you could tell by the way the Texans played: Get the ball to Watson, he’ll figure it out.
The Texans lost close game after close game, and Deshaun Watson, who had previously loved the idea of putting the franchise on his back, clearly began to feel the pressure when he fumbled a go-ahead touchdown against the Colts to go to 4–8 and lose any hope of getting to the postseason.
5. Squeeze the life out of the clubhouse
By the time Bill O’Brien had been fired, people were well on the way to realising just how good of a job Easterby was doing at consolidating power around him and removing anyone who disagreed. Sports Illustrated wrote a great piece on him which they began writing in October, just after O’Brien’s firing. What did Easterby get up to during the 2020/21 season? Let’s check:
Undermining other executives and decision-makers, including the head coach who helped bring him to Houston.
The team’s holding workouts at the head strength coach’s house during the COVID-19 pandemic after the NFL had ordered franchises to shut down all facilities, shortly before a breakout of infections among players.
Advocating for a trade of star receiver DeAndre Hopkins soon after arriving in Houston — one season before Hopkins was sent to Arizona in a widely panned deal.
Fostering a culture of distrust among staff and players to the point that one Texan and two other staffers believed players were being surveilled outside the building.
Sounds like a man I want around my millions of dollars worth of contracted players.
Texans colleagues describe Easterby as a talented speaker, presenting his ideas with energy and dramatic flair. But some also noticed that he often speaks in vague terms. One former staffer says that when Easterby is asked for specifics about a subject on which he’s out of his depth — not uncommon considering his scope of responsibilities and limited NFL experience — he’ll artfully deflect and move on to a new topic. They watched curiously as Easterby’s responsibilities expanded well beyond the role for which he was hired — in some cases, outside his areas of expertise. As another colleague puts it, “Jack was basically doing everything O’Brien was doing, except for calling plays.”
Easterby weighed in on the handling of injuries and how the post-practice nutrition shakes should be prepared and distributed. He began giving input into the team’s daily agenda, which sometimes resulted in confusion: The schedule texted to players and the football operations division each night was often different from what was on the TVs when they arrived for work at the stadium the next day. To some, Easterby cast this as a mix-up; but others suspect his intention was to test the team, like some sort of Belichickian mind trick. Some of Easterby’s colleagues who have worked for other NFL clubs describe a constant scramble that devolved into a dysfunction unlike any they have experienced, complicating even routine tasks, such as compiling an injury report.
The rest of the 2020/21 season was a write off for the Texans, and their only hope was that Deshaun Watson wouldn’t get hurt. They couldn’t look forward to the future with their high draft picks because they had traded them away. They had also already traded away most of their great players — except Deshaun — so they couldn’t get any more draft picks in return. They had no one but Jack Easterby and Deshaun Watson.
While Easterby aspires to be a transformational leader, guided by religion and morality, people who have worked alongside him in Houston have increasingly come to see him as transactional. Says a colleague: “If you combine a faith-healing televangelist with Littlefinger, you’d get Jack Easterby.”
6. It can’t get any worse
It gets worse. On November 11, 2020, Jack Easterby (let’s be real, it is his organisation now) fired long time staff member and VP of communications Amy Palcic:
Palcic was the first woman to serve as the top PR contact for a team. Well respected around the league and within media circles, Palcic’s team won the 2017 Pete Rozelle award, presented annually by the Pro Football Writers of America to the best PR staff.
She was highly respected around the league and within the team, and it’s no surprise that Easterby might’ve made the rest of her tenure an awful time.
Even one of the Texans players, defensive star JJ Watt, commented on the situation. This would have been more scandalous if it wasn’t clear that the Texans weren’t going to resign Watt, who’s best playing days are behind him but is still a massive presence in any defensive line:
The Texans fired their brilliant PR star at a time when they had the worst PR in the league.
Easterby and Watson were beginning to butt heads, and in the search for a new coach and GM, Watson believed:
“We just need a whole culture shift. We just need new energy. We just need discipline. We need structure. We need a leader so we can follow that leader as players. That’s what we need.”
Pretty interesting that they brought in a guy who was known for being great for team culture who then necessitated an entire culture shift.
So what did Easterby do? He managed to get the guy he wanted all along: Nick Caserio. On Jan 5, 2021, Caserio was hired as GM of the Texans.
This is what Cal McNair had to say about how the relationship between Caserio and Easterby, who had been working as Executive VP since January 2020, would function:
“Jack is very gifted in a lot of different areas, and those areas would be things that [general manager] Nick (Caserio) will need as he moves into his role as GM,” McNair told reporters on Jan. 8 at Caserio’s introductory press conference. “It won’t be roster. It won’t be free agency. Like I said before, those are the GM jobs that Nick is doing, and he will look to Jack to do some of these other things that Jack has done really well in the past.”
However, McNair and Easterby ruffled Watson’s feathers in the process, not even considering any of Watson’s preferred GM choices which left him “extremely unhappy” with the hire:
At the same time, Easterby was angry about the growing reports around his bop to the top:
Easterby came from the Patriots, where he was a “character coach,” and while coach Bill Belichick likes him he said in November he didn’t expect him to be running a front office.
“Jack’s not a personnel person,” Belichick said. “No.”
After SI’s first report in December, Easterby pushed back and alleged that he planned to sue SI for defamation and therefore had the names of all of the media outlet’s sources inside the building. SI said both of these are untrue.
He also levied accusations at the Patriots and the Kraft family, which owns the team. He said they were the reason for the negative press and incorrectly alleged the family funding the reporting.
7. Watson wants out
Deshaun Watson, QB of the Texans and top-5 QB in the league, was so unhappy with the way that the team was being managed that reports began circulating about how he wanted out of the team. His relationship with Easterby had begun to get strained, even as the Texans and Easterby were more and more focused on him:
[After the Texans season finale loss] Easterby delivered a speech that was described in multiple direct accounts as a lengthy missive intended to be rousing. The discourse centered almost entirely on Deshaun Watson, the Texans’ star quarterback at the end of a historically great — if wasted — season. Easterby, those sources said, was effusive in his praise for the quarterback, but to the dismay of many, he did not extend the same attention to: J.J. Watt, the team leader and greatest player in franchise history, who was on the verge of completing only his second healthy season in the past five years; the turmoil that engulfed the organization; the midseason firing of coach Bill O’Brien; or the future of a franchise seeking new leadership.
Easterby, in answering emailed questions from Sports Illustrated via a team spokesperson, described it as a “brief intro speech” and that “afterward, I was thanked by many players and coaches for my words.” But multiple players texted their representatives that night to describe a meandering address unlike any they’d heard. Others, one source said, left the meeting “pissed off,” believing Easterby’s only intention was to curry favor with the quarterback. Watson, if anything, was embarrassed by the show, two sources said.
Watson had asked the Texans to interview Eric Bieniemy, the brilliant offensive coordinator of the Kansas City Chiefs, who was expected to land a Head Coaching role in 2021 but for many reasons (some, likely, racist), wasn’t offered any jobs. However, the Texans missed the window for interviewing opportunities, and the Caserio hire on top of this, Watson felt patronised by Easterby’s attempt to smooth things over. Other Texans players and ex-players knew what the play was:
On the 29th of January, the Texans hired David Culley, ex-Ravens WR coach as their Head Coach.
To be blunt, the biggest thing Culley might do is help keep Deshaun Watson in Houston for a few more years. Watson is clearly fed up with the organization, and it has been reported that he has demanded a trade from the team. A team he just signed a huge extension with that included a “no-trade clause” [a clause that allows the player to reject a trade].
Watson will carry a $40 million cap hit if he is on the roster in 2021, and the Texans would love to keep him but only will if he will actually play. Watson already got his money, he can afford to sit out if the Texans refuse to trade him.
And this is where Culley might come in. The reason that John Harbaugh loved the guy so much? Culley is a culture guy. He is a team guy. He is an energy guy. He is a guy who can get a locker room fired up about doing one thing and one thing only: their job.
The reports of Easterby’s power were not greatly exaggerated. The man had torn down the organisation on his way up, and it was still going to get worse for the Texans. On the 4th of February 2021, the entire equipment staff were let go as well as the equipment manager:
A week later, it was announced that the Texans President Jamey Rootes was resigning, a move which he had wanted to make since ages ago:
In a style that absolutely everyone could have seen coming, Easterby began replacing these people with people who he liked and who liked him. People who would help him keep power. People who he…had been in videos with when he was a character coach in 2013 (see thread):
8. Watson’s future
During this whole time, teams had been calling up the Texans hoping to pry an unhappy Deshaun Watson away from a failing organisation, prompting some people to suggest that the NFL step in and stop Cal McNair from doing whatever he was going to do next. In January, people estimated that Watson’s trade value might enter the realm of three first round picks. There were only a few teams with that sort of draft capital: the NY Jets and the Miami Dolphins. The Jets are at the start of a rebuilding phase with new Head Coach Robert Salah, and the Dolphins’ future is looking up because of the coaching and draft capital they have managed to acquire over the last two years. The Carolina Panthers were another team that was making moves to try to pry Watson away from the Texans, a strategy that looked better and better after the 49ers completed a trade with the Dolphins for the third pick in the 2021 draft (the one that the Dolphins got from the Texans for Laremy Tunsil). With the presumptive first pick of the draft being a QB for the Jaguars, the second presumptive pick of the draft being a QB for the Jets (or something they could trade to Texas for a QB), now it looks like the third pick will also be a QB for the 49ers.
Then, on March 16 2021, a civil lawsuit was filed against Deshaun Watson alleging that he assaulted a massage therapist during a session:
Summary:
The plaintiff accuses Watson of civil assault during a massage at her home last March. Watson reached out to her on March 28th to schedule an appointment. The plaintiff had been working hard to grow her small business since 2018. Plaintiff was excited and encouraged that a local sports star was seeking out her services.
Via text, Watson asked the plaintiff if she was “comfortable with certain areas [his] organization was making [him] get worked on”.
Watson also asked her “Am I expecting to see someone else there? Is it just you.”. This gave the plaintiff pause, but she was able to justify it to herself by assuming Watson just wanted privacy.
During the massage, Watson began to aggressively dictate the massage and complain that she was not doing what he wanted. The plaintiff began to think that Watson only wanted sex.
There are more details and a break down of the actual assault here, where a reddit user has summarised all the cases against Watson, the 20+ other accusations. All of the accusations follow a similar pattern. The time between the last alleged assault and the filing of the civil case was only 11 days. One woman has since dropped her case against him.
- A lot of these women are not trained in massage therapy. Many are cosmetic-businesses owners, a few are licensed estheticians, one is a licensed personal trainer. Deshaun Watson was seeking out a lot of women who did not typically give massages. It seems like Watson was more likely to get further with these women because they were unfamiliar with the boundaries professional massage therapists expect.
- Deshaun Watson is the one that initiated either direct or indirect contact with all sixteen women. All of these women should be able to prove this as he reached out over social media 13/16 times, and he reached out through her employer for the other three.
- Deshaun Watson sent a lot of texts making sure that he and the women would be alone.
- The defense is lying about not knowing the names of these women. Every lawsuit is dated, all Watson has to do is check his phone.
- I think Buzbee [lawyer] is dragging his feet on giving the JANE DOE names to the court, because as of right now, there are only two groups on Earth that know the names of all of these women — Buzbee’s team and Watson’s team. If these names are leaked to the media, Buzbee is going to know exactly who did it. He loses that power the second a third party has the names (the district court).
The lawsuits have obviously stalled any interest in Watson for now, and puts the Texans in a much worse position than they ever were. Not only do they not have any real capital from their main star, they don’t have anyone to credibly lead the organisation in any “culture change” attempts in the future. Watson has been dropped by Nike, Beats by Dre, and Reliant Energy (a Texas company). Maybe the Texas energy companies have had enough bad press for the decade. There might be a criminal charge coming for Watson, and there will definitely be at least a suspension from the NFL… you hope:
The NFL has been here before. Star quarterback, accused of repeated and revolting sexual assaults. Ben Roethlisberger was even on one of the league’s signature franchises. And what did he get? A reduced suspension of four games from six, because he wasn’t accused of flagrantly raping anyone in the meantime, essentially. Since then, any coverage of Roethlisberger, from at least the NFL-associated outlets, has swept all that under the rug. He’s gone on to make millions more, and even win another Super Bowl. Everyone was at the ready with redemption stories. And for anyone who doesn’t drink the Kool-Aid, those stories were pretty sickening.
Since Roethlisberger’s suspension in 2010, it’s not like the NFL hasn’t had far too many players involved in sexual assault and domestic violence. The idea of “punishment,” at least as the NFL is concerned (though other entities as well), isn’t just punitive measures against the offender. It’s supposed to be a deterrent to others. How’s that working out?
The Texans organisation aren’t saying anything about Watson yet. The line is that they’re not speculating on anything because of the legal process. But you know they’re kicking themselves for taking the trade when the price was three first round picks. Even if this all somehow goes away, how do you rebuild your organisational culture change around a guy who was accused by over 20 women? What do you trade him for, to get him out of your organisation? The Jets are likely taking a QB with the 2nd pick and the Panthers have picked up the Jets’ old QB. There is potential for him to still be traded, but now you’re stuck with Jack Easterby, a pastor running a football team; Nick Caserio, a GM with a career tied to Easterby and if he goes down they all go down; and David Culley, a “culture guy” not an “x’s and o’s” guy, who is meant to rebuild the team from scratch; and Cal McNair, the owner who can’t seem to catch a single gust of air.
The advantage for Easterby about all the Watson news is that it is taking the heat entirely off him for the outcome of all these poor decisions. No one will ever know how badly things would have run on just Easterby’s watch. For at least the next four years if not longer, he has a get out of jail free card to wave around whenever anyone questions what he’s done in the past, and likely, what he will do in the future. This has only strengthened Jack Easterby’s hold on power in the Texans organisation.
