Bill O’Brien held a 24-point lead over the in the playoffs in January and found himself unemployed before Halloween of the same year. No one needed more evidence about how weird 2020 has been, but throw it in the file anyway. The news of by the was so shocking it happened before I could finish writing my Week 4 recap about Bill O’Brien trending heavily toward the hot seat in Houston. Cal McNair acted quickly in this instance: the Texans started the year 0-4 and there was no one in the building to actually fire Bill O’Brien, who had accumulated so much power for the Texans he was holding the title of head coach and general manager.O’Brien’s tenure in Houston is absolutely wild when you start to dig into the transactional decisions and internal power struggles the Texans faced over the last half decade or so. Everything paints the picture of a wildly dysfunctional organizationIn the end, O’Brien probably fired himself — after all, it was the roster construction that created the i sues for Houston in 2020, with the Texans ranking in the bottom half of the league in every major offensive and defensive category.Things got so bad that, following an 0-3 start — one fueled by an admittedly impo sible schedule against Kansas City, Baltimore and Pittsburgh — in a matchup against the , a shell of Mike Zimmer’s typically stout defense, Emmanuel Mudiay Jersey O’Brien said he was taking more ownership on playcalling. The result was by far the most disappointing lo s of the season, a 31-21 wilting in Minnesota that featured an embarra singly slow start, highlighted by 16 net yards on 12 total plays during the team’s first three drives. Houston eventually clawed back into the game with a chance to tie things late, but it was more of a by-product of how the Vikings played the game (a whole lot of , trying to ice the game) than some concerted effort on Houston’s part to storm back.On the very first play of the game, had a chance to bounce the ball outside with a gaping hole and room to run. Instead, he tried to burst through a tiny, quickly evaporating hole between the tackles.If he ran the play that was called, fine. But NBA Utah Jazz Jeresy one could certainly wonder why O’Brien keeps feeding Johnson with runs up the middle when his specialty over the course of his career has been getting in space. Another play in the third quarter, with the Texans trailing 17-6, was equally perplexing. Bounce this run outside and DJ is picking up at worst like five yards. Instead, he sort of runs into a clot of his own offensive linemen.Something is failing here in the application. O’Brien may have realized Johnson isn’t the same player — after getting more than 80 percent of the offensive snaps in Week 1, . This notable, of course, that sent to Arizona this offseason (more on that in a second).The pa sing game doesn’t look any more cohesive. Instead of catering to Watson’s strengths (get him on the move by design!), O’Brien seemed content to run plays with minimal pa s-catching options. When the Jordan Clarkson Jersey Vikings dropped their linebackers back into zone Watson was extremely hesitant to pull the trigger and instead ended up running for his life. This isn’t on the protection. Watson had plenty of time. It’s on the play-caller, the quarterback … or both? Watson was awful early in this game. He held the ball too long (a bad trait of his) and his ball placement was abysmal, costing the Texans at least two first-down conversions.Credit Zimmer for the gameplan. Dropping his linebackers into zones caused Watson to hesitate both to take off running and to try and force anything into tight windows early on. The Texans have been abysmal on third down all season, falling under 35 percent for the year (fourth-worst in the ) after converting just 3-of-12 against the Vikings.This offense was lethargic through four games. Undoubtedly it contributed to O’Brien being fired this early into the season. Expect a pretty severe Dead Cat Bounce from the Texans in Week 5 against Jacksonville. When a coach is fired midseason, you oftentimes see the team play really well the following week. But it wasn’t O’Brien’s coaching that got him fired. He won a bunch of games in Houston. If you did a Mt. Rushmore of the Texans, you might even name O’Brien the Texans coach upon the fictional mountain.What got O’Brien fired was some unbelievably bad personnel decisions. O’Brien has been managing personnel matters for the Texans over the last two years, give or take. He’s made some extremely aggre sive decisions in the trade market, giving up multiple first-round picks for , trading away while paying his salary and this offseason swapping out DeAndre Hopkins for David Johnson and then snagging from the .O’Brien has allowed his frustration as a coach to bleed into decision-making as a general manager. He cut after a single week in 2019, a $34 million extension. The Clowney and Hopkins deals both felt personal to a degree; they wanted more money and O’Brien wasn’t able to separate the relationships. Tunsil — without an agent — negotiated a contract with O’Brien that paid him more than $5 million above the market value for left tackles. The result is a group of skill-position guys that don’t seem to mesh and an offensive approach that’s left Watson looking more like an average quarterback than one of the truly elite guys of the NFL. O’Brien seems hell-bent on force-feeding Johnson, a once-dynamic player Udoka Azubuike Jersey for the who appear to have lost his burst and isn’t see the field the way he did during his prime in Arizona.All of these decisions since right before the 2019 NFL season become more interesting when you consider the way things shook out in the front office in Houston. O’Brien was hired on New Year’s Eve of 2013. At the time, Rick Smith was the Texans GM — Smith had been in the role for a long time already. The two co-existed for several years but there were rumblings about battles occurring in the building. Following the 2017 season, amid reports O’Brien was ready to make between the coach and the GM moving forward. O’Brien ended up staying on, obviously, and in January of 2018, to be the team’s next general manager. That didn’t last what you would call long — despite signing a contract that ran through 2022. Worth noting: in between Gaine’s hiring and firing, Bob McNair pa sed away, leaving his son . The younger McNair i sued the statement firing Gaine and at the time buzz built that exec Nick Caserio could be a candidate to take the GM role. , Dante Exum Jersey the former Patriots chaplain, having serious influence on who would be the next general manager. After emerged — against the Texans — the Texans eventually decided to operate in 2019 *without a GM* running the team.Eventually, of O’Brien to general manager and the promotion of Easterby to VP of Football Operations. That is the duo, ostensibly, that engineered the trade of Hopkins, the over-market Tunsil signing, the trade for Brandin Cooks and everything else that led to the current Texa