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Texans random thought of the day

CloakNNNdagger said:
I listened to part of Casserio's press conference this morning. Most of the time you cannot hear the questions that are asked........and the Texans speakers never routinely repeat the questions before answering them. I've written to the Texans in the past regarding this problem, with no evident response.

It is unbelievable to me that the Texans can spend multi-millions on everything, but can't afford to spend $1000 to purchase a professional broadcast directional amplified microphone and have an employee point it to the media person asking the question. But obviously that would be too much to ask for enhancing the "fan experience."
Click to expand...
I watched a youtube video they posted that had a Ryan's press conference that didn't start for the first 50minutes of the video and the conference only lasted for about 15 minutes.

HC DeMeco Ryans addresses the media

Just ridiculous. Added this in the comments.

1693471024633.jpeg
 
Interesting note. It seems several teams wanted Nick Broeker.

www.profootballrumors.com

Five Teams Placed Claims On WR Elijah Higgins

Elijah Higgins was a popular name on the waiver wire yesterday before he ultimately landed with the Cardinals. According to …
www.profootballrumors.com www.profootballrumors.com

Per Fields, Higgins was one of only two players to earn more than two waivers claims. The other was new Texans lineman Nick Broeker, who also drew interest from the Cardinals, Titans, and Giants.
 
heavy.com

Bills Taking Heat After Losing 2023 Draft Pick on Waivers

The Buffalo Bills are coming under fire after guard Nick Broeker, a seventh-round pick this year, was picked up on waivers.
heavy.com

As The Athletic’s Joe Buscaglia noted on Twitter, the Bills made a failed attempt to keep Broeker from being seen at the conclusion of the preseason.

“It looked like the Bills attempted to hide Broeker by not giving him a single offensive snap in the preseason finale. To no avail,” Buscaglia wrote.
 
We're #12 in Forbes annual eval of teams monetary value. You know who remains in the penthouse.
www.forbes.com

NFL Team Valuations 2023

The average NFL team is now worth a record $5.1 billion, 14% more than last year, powered by more television money and the $6.05 billion sale of the Washington Commanders—at 11 times revenue—to a group led by billionaire Josh Harris in July.
www.forbes.com www.forbes.com
 
badboy said:
I don't remember Seeing this video in March of 2023?
Click to expand...
Billy wasn't involved with that, that is a lie. Lance exaggerates a bunch of ****, and the longer he talks the more he makes stuff up.

Cal gave Jack the power to do job evals on everybody, and of course he gave Gaine a crappy eval to get him fired because Jack got elevated and huge pay raise with Brian gone.

Cal was in the draft room with Gaine, Brian fumbled and hesitated and missed out on numerous trades. It was bad, and Cal saw it. He was inclined to move on, his dad settled on Brian because he was too sick with cancer to do any more. Brian absolutely was not the guy. He's all height/weight/speed, could not evaluate the person at all. Brian is so stiff personally, some questioned whether he was on the autistic scale.

It's true Lovie didn't like Jack. But it took Cal and Hannah seeing how Nick operated in the building for them to realize Jack was whack. Nick told an LP that Jack was on his way out before Lovie was hired. Hannah came over to Nick's side, and she convinced Cal he had to get rid of his little buddy. Jack the dumbass at one point tried to convince Cal against Hannah. Dead serious.

Lovie fought with Nick whenever Nick suggested perhaps he could modernize his defense just a little. Lovie clapped back at that big time, out loud in front of others. Lovie pressing probably got Jack fired a couple of months early, but he was gone. Just took Cal time to come around.

And the race stuff, Brian fired a few black employees. One was a guy who had been defrauding the Texans with payroll and expense submissions. He filed suit. Jimmy Raye of course was leaving, he was a temp. Mike Martin got a job with Panthers, he was Slick Rick's guy and a decent scout. Panthers later fired Martin and Detroit hired him.

There's one person that still talks to Jack regularly... that is Aaron Wilson. He and Jack are buds. And Wilson also trolls the league for new clients for Mulugheta. Wilson is the person who hooked Steven Nelson up with Mulugheta recently. Can't confirm if he's getting financial kickbacks for that.
 
The infamous Hannah-organized "fan committee." It's a sad commentary when a blowhard like "Larry from Stafford" who loves to hear himself talk essentially becomes a main figure spokesperson for the Texans, and influencer.

********************************************************************
After turning fans off with 2 years of dysfunction, Cal McNair and Texans brass intent on wooing them back

There was so much to be said. At last, there was a place to say it. The original Texans season-ticket holders filed into the NRG Center, nearly 500 of them, and rode the escalator toward a conference room stocked with food, beer and two long sections of chairs bracketed by two microphones on stands.

Two lines began to form. It was a town hall-style meeting. Predetermined questions had been ditched. The two faces of year two of the franchise’s rebuild — general manager Nick Caserio and head coach Lovie Smith — sat at the front of the room, hands pointing to the microphones. Ask anything. Unfiltered. No limits.

It was an emotional 90 minutes, those who attended the June meeting say. Questions that had festered for two miserable seasons finally found a source, the kind of questions that had been aired out only in private conversations, call-in radio shows and comment sections.

Some people just spoke their mind. These were the franchise’s most loyal supporters, the ones who’d kept their season tickets after the controversial DeAndre Hopkins trade; after the city’s long-awaited franchise quarterback, Deshaun Watson, left in a lewd legal battle; after observing front office enigma Jack Easterby roam the sideline too tightly; after watching the one-and-done David Culley coach a 4-13 season while sitting on their couches at home because that was the only leverage against the Texans they had.

There’s a fallacy in an empty stadium. The network cameras didn’t pan away from Kirby Drive last season, flow in an Indiana Jones-style line for a few miles and zoom in on the house of

Larry Stafford, a 54-year-old original Texans season-ticket holder who screamed at his television, slammed the front door shut, and took his dog for a walk to try to calm down.

There wasn’t a parabolic microphone directed at Stafford and his football friends of two decades, who’d witnessed the Texans come agonizingly close to their first AFC title game berth in 2019 only to dive into disaster, who’d watched their tailgating group split up, who’d learned season-ticket holders in their section gave up their seats and knew it was too late for them to do the same.

“We just had to make the choice about not showing up,” Stafford says. “Even though I’ve committed to my tickets, it was just money that I was throwing away, because the product on the field and the way that the organization was making the fans feel like we didn’t matter … it was just too much for us to bear.”

Why not give up the tickets now? Why tax emotions any further? Part of it is familial legacy, Stafford says. He wants to give his 16-year-old son something Stafford’s own parents were unable to pass down. Part of it is because he still believes a Houstonian self-identifies with his city and that a city’s identity is intrinsically tied to its pro football team. Part of it is because he’s seeing that Texans leadership is starting to show they believe this too.

So as Stafford joined the others in line at the town hall, he began crafting the question he felt ultimately mattered. He thought about being a kid and watching Earl Campbell’s Monday Night Football run against the Dolphins in 1978, the sort of national attention the Texans recaptured with Watson, Hopkins and J.J. Watt. He thought of Texans season-ticket holders who’ve died in the last 20 years. He thought about how Houstonians are still staring at a decades-old door that former Oilers coach Bum Phillips once famously said they’d kick in.

Complexities formed into a simple question. Stafford approached the microphone.

“When are we going to win the Super Bowl?”

Extreme makeover

Pardon the hammers and electric drills. The construction of the Texans’ new business office isn’t quite done yet. This conference room will have to do, but please mind the plastic covering billowing from the third wall’s incomplete paneling.

There’s Cal McNair and his wife, Hannah, on one side of a conference table. Down the hall is an open and sleek office space, a nearly complete renovation project that temporarily displaced the Texans’ business operations staff to a rented unit in the Galleria district.

Now, Texans employees are back. It’s a modernized work environment. Everyone and everything is within view. Soon, a mannequin football player will stand on one end of the room next to a small billboard that has on it Cal’s personal mantra, a phrase that people who’ve worked with the franchise’s CEO and chairman say defines his gradual but persistent process since taking over the day-to-day operations after his father, Bob McNair, died in November 2018.

“I want to challenge us to be great,” Cal says. “I want us to take that next step and challenge everyone, empower them and give them what they need to go there.”

It’s a foundational philosophy rooted in his family. Cal was one of his father’s first employees at Cogen Technologies, where he helped oversee the construction of the three major power plants that made the fortune that enabled the late McNair to front the $700 million expansion fee in 1999 to bring another NFL franchise to Houston.

Cal officially joined the Texans as the organization’s vice chairman in 2008, and his responsibilities increased as his father’s battle against skin cancer intensified. Bob had built a contender by the time of his death, and Cal adopted his father’s low-key approach to trust his general manager and head coach to make decisions related to the football team.

Bill O’Brien was a winning coach, albeit a power-hungry executive. He jockeyed about personnel decisions even with his close friend Brian Gaine, whose one-year tenure as general manager ended in a surprise firing in June 2019 after his relationship with O’Brien boiled over. The coach’s influence filled the void unofficially in a season that produced a deep playoff run, which followed Houston’s backed-off pursuit of Caserio when the Patriots filed tampering charges against the Texans.

McNair had two realistic options: Empower O’Brien or fire him. The latter would have been bold.

The Texans were back-to-back AFC South champions at the time, and even in the wake of
Houston’s divisional-round meltdown to the Chiefs, firing O’Brien would have carried risks, particularly considering his relationship as a play-caller with Watson, who had two years remaining on his rookie contract.

So McNair officially named O’Brien general manager. Easterby, hired months before Gaine’s departure, had worked closely with O’Brien on personnel decisions, and the trades and contracts they executed over their two seasons together spiraled the Texans into a disastrous cap space and draft capital situation that could not address the roster’s eventual deficiencies.

McNair fired O’Brien after an 0-4 start in 2020, hired Caserio, whom the Texans unsuccessfully had attempted to lure away from New England twice before, then transferred his trust to a tenured football executive who requested the patience and financial support for a massive overhaul.

That capital was granted. McNair is still paying substantial sums for players Caserio cut loose. The 2022 dead money hits from former linebacker Zach Cunningham ($12.8 million), defensive end Whitney Mercilus ($7 million), cornerback Bradley Roby ($4.6 million) and wide receiver Randall Cobb ($3.5 million) exceed all but 12 of the cap hits associated with players actually on this season’s 53-man roster.

Caserio secured six draft picks, including three first-rounders, by trading Watson to the Browns in March, but the former quarterback’s dead money hit ($16.2 million) won’t clear the books until next offseason. Only then can the Texans become big spenders in free agency.

For now, Houston’s roster again embodies frugality. All nine drafted rookies plus three undrafted free agents make up just under a fourth of the team, which underlines just how swiftly new players can overtake the old.

“The McNair family has been supportive from the beginning of what we’re doing from a football perspective,” Caserio says. “So we have a fiduciary responsibility to try and make the right decisions, try to make smart decisions. And certainly grateful for the opportunity to do that.”

Meanwhile, season-ticket holders kept at bay in 2020 by mandated stadium restrictions amid the coronavirus pandemic returned a year later to a dreadful on-field product still associated with Watson, who’d issued a trade demand, then was sued by 24 women who alleged he sexually assaulted them in massage therapy sessions.

The Texans were later added to the lawsuits, which alleged the franchise enabled Watson, and the McNair family settled claims with 30 women in mid-July, calling the action “a clear stand against any form of sexual assault and misconduct.”

Watson’s 11-game suspension marks Cleveland’s Dec. 4 game at NRG Stadium as the quarterback’s debut, a reminder to Houstonians of a situation Stafford says “really almost broke me.” Add that to a 2021 season Stafford called “complete misery,” and he says several season-ticket holders were wondering how much longer their support could last.

Two Texans employees caught up with Stafford as he was leaving the town hall event. They said team president Greg Grissom wanted to meet him. People were still mingling. Raffle prizes were being given away. Grissom approached. He’d been listening to Stafford’s radio calls and reading his social media posts. He’d been moved by Stafford’s question at the microphone.

“I know who you are,” Grissom told him. “I don’t agree with you all the time. But I love your passion.”

There has been a sincere engagement between the Texans and their supporters since the start of the year, Stafford says. That they held a town hall meeting at all is part of the “massive change” in the franchise’s approach to mend its relationships with people who felt abandoned.
Grissom says the catalyst behind the evolution is McNair. Grissom, who was promoted in March 2021, says one of the first conversations he had with McNair about his new role contained a clear message: “We need to evolve. We need to change. We need to try new things.”
Sometimes little things can magnify larger issues. One year, Stafford says, the Texans gave him and his wife a phone charger as their gift for being a season-ticket holder. This year, they received a packed box that included a team hoodie and a personalized blanket.

Then there are larger changes. Perhaps most notably, the Texans overhauled their season-ticket program. They allowed people to pay over 10 months instead of twice annually. They gave members a 10 percent discount on concessions, a 30 percent discount on team shop purchases, and the ability to swap tickets for other games on the schedule.

The program incentivized retention by offering up to a 15 percent discount on season tickets for those who renewed by May 5, and those who renewed by Feb. 4 would pay the same price for their 2023 tickets. They’ll also be included in special events throughout the year. The Texans held a draft watch party at Miller Outdoor Theater for the first time, and they moved their annual preseason luncheon to a nighttime dinner on Aug. 27.

“It was a lot of reflection. A lot of talks,” McNair says. “A lot of conferences and getting together and brainstorming. Just being honest about where you are and where you want to be and knowing that it’s a journey and we want to take this journey together.”

Still, the Texans are selling Houstonians on a football team. An improved outreach can foster a welcoming atmosphere, but it’s winning that creates wait lists.

When the franchise began its series of playoff runs 10 years ago, its season-ticket waiting list had more than 19,000 names. Before the 2021 season, over 12,000 people on that list passed on buying tickets. The team’s 20-season sellout streak ended. The Texans averaged over 5,000 fewer paid attendees than NRG Stadium’s 72,220 capacity last season, and the fans who actually showed up were usually far fewer.

The game itself carries more emotional swing than anything, Stafford says. The bar is not walking out of the stadium more miserable than when you walked in. The Texans lost 14 games by an average of 16 points last season and were shut out twice. McNair approved the firing of Culley, whose one-year tenure came with a $22 million price tag.

What followed was a confounding 25-day head coaching search that nearly resulted in the Texans hiring former quarterback Josh McCown, whose lack of college and professional coaching experience provoked more questions than answers.

“If they would’ve hired Josh McCown, I would’ve given up my season tickets at that point,” Stafford says. “At that point, you’re telling your fan base that you’re not serious about winning football games.”

That Houston instead pivoted to Smith also projected dysfunction. He’d served as defensive coordinator in 2021 and wasn’t officially interviewed until after finalist Brian Flores filed a racial-discrimination lawsuit against the NFL.

Caserio denied the lawsuit affected the Texans' hiring process and downplayed how close they were to reaching terms with McCown. But Stafford and other supporters interpret Houston’s head coaching search as stumbling into a potential blessing with Smith, a third-time NFL coach who led the Bears to Super Bowl XLI.

Caserio and Smith have since characterized their relationship as lockstep. They’ve complimented each other’s professional experience, and the franchise’s draft haul contained fingerprints from both of their football philosophies. They sat together at the June town hall event and formed a more accessible bond with a city that shares their ultimate goal.

“Everybody wants to see a winning team that they can support and be proud of,” Caserio says. “Our job is to try and do that to the best of our ability.”

How much hope can be mended in what is expected to be another rebuilding season? The Texans open up as eight-point underdogs against the Colts at home Sunday, and the franchise isn’t favored by oddsmakers in any of its 17 games. Still, the Texans finished training camp with 60,000 season-ticket renewals, McNair says.

“I’m being patient in the sense that I have to trust that Lovie Smith, Nick Caserio and Cal McNair have finally decided that they want to put a winning product out on the field for the deserving fans who have been patient for over 20 years,” Stafford says.

McNair believes the Texans can be competitive this year. He knows he’s “being a little hopeful,” but when the end of the regular season is approaching, he wants to be running through calculations of what it would take to land a wild-card playoff spot. He has communicated his standard.

“We’re committed to winning,” McNair says. “If we have to make changes that are sometimes difficult, we’re willing to do that because we want to win. We want the fans to know we want to win. We know the fans want to win. We’re all on the same page there.”
 
CloakNNNdagger said:
The infamous Hannah-organized "fan committee." It's a sad commentary when a blowhard like "Larry from Stafford" who loves to hear himself talk essentially becomes a main figure spokesperson for the Texans, and influencer.

********************************************************************
After turning fans off with 2 years of dysfunction, Cal McNair and Texans brass intent on wooing them back

There was so much to be said. At last, there was a place to say it. The original Texans season-ticket holders filed into the NRG Center, nearly 500 of them, and rode the escalator toward a conference room stocked with food, beer and two long sections of chairs bracketed by two microphones on stands.

Two lines began to form. It was a town hall-style meeting. Predetermined questions had been ditched. The two faces of year two of the franchise’s rebuild — general manager Nick Caserio and head coach Lovie Smith — sat at the front of the room, hands pointing to the microphones. Ask anything. Unfiltered. No limits.

It was an emotional 90 minutes, those who attended the June meeting say. Questions that had festered for two miserable seasons finally found a source, the kind of questions that had been aired out only in private conversations, call-in radio shows and comment sections.

Some people just spoke their mind. These were the franchise’s most loyal supporters, the ones who’d kept their season tickets after the controversial DeAndre Hopkins trade; after the city’s long-awaited franchise quarterback, Deshaun Watson, left in a lewd legal battle; after observing front office enigma Jack Easterby roam the sideline too tightly; after watching the one-and-done David Culley coach a 4-13 season while sitting on their couches at home because that was the only leverage against the Texans they had.

There’s a fallacy in an empty stadium. The network cameras didn’t pan away from Kirby Drive last season, flow in an Indiana Jones-style line for a few miles and zoom in on the house of

Larry Stafford, a 54-year-old original Texans season-ticket holder who screamed at his television, slammed the front door shut, and took his dog for a walk to try to calm down.

There wasn’t a parabolic microphone directed at Stafford and his football friends of two decades, who’d witnessed the Texans come agonizingly close to their first AFC title game berth in 2019 only to dive into disaster, who’d watched their tailgating group split up, who’d learned season-ticket holders in their section gave up their seats and knew it was too late for them to do the same.

“We just had to make the choice about not showing up,” Stafford says. “Even though I’ve committed to my tickets, it was just money that I was throwing away, because the product on the field and the way that the organization was making the fans feel like we didn’t matter … it was just too much for us to bear.”

Why not give up the tickets now? Why tax emotions any further? Part of it is familial legacy, Stafford says. He wants to give his 16-year-old son something Stafford’s own parents were unable to pass down. Part of it is because he still believes a Houstonian self-identifies with his city and that a city’s identity is intrinsically tied to its pro football team. Part of it is because he’s seeing that Texans leadership is starting to show they believe this too.

So as Stafford joined the others in line at the town hall, he began crafting the question he felt ultimately mattered. He thought about being a kid and watching Earl Campbell’s Monday Night Football run against the Dolphins in 1978, the sort of national attention the Texans recaptured with Watson, Hopkins and J.J. Watt. He thought of Texans season-ticket holders who’ve died in the last 20 years. He thought about how Houstonians are still staring at a decades-old door that former Oilers coach Bum Phillips once famously said they’d kick in.

Complexities formed into a simple question. Stafford approached the microphone.

“When are we going to win the Super Bowl?”

Extreme makeover

Pardon the hammers and electric drills. The construction of the Texans’ new business office isn’t quite done yet. This conference room will have to do, but please mind the plastic covering billowing from the third wall’s incomplete paneling.

There’s Cal McNair and his wife, Hannah, on one side of a conference table. Down the hall is an open and sleek office space, a nearly complete renovation project that temporarily displaced the Texans’ business operations staff to a rented unit in the Galleria district.

Now, Texans employees are back. It’s a modernized work environment. Everyone and everything is within view. Soon, a mannequin football player will stand on one end of the room next to a small billboard that has on it Cal’s personal mantra, a phrase that people who’ve worked with the franchise’s CEO and chairman say defines his gradual but persistent process since taking over the day-to-day operations after his father, Bob McNair, died in November 2018.

“I want to challenge us to be great,” Cal says. “I want us to take that next step and challenge everyone, empower them and give them what they need to go there.”

It’s a foundational philosophy rooted in his family. Cal was one of his father’s first employees at Cogen Technologies, where he helped oversee the construction of the three major power plants that made the fortune that enabled the late McNair to front the $700 million expansion fee in 1999 to bring another NFL franchise to Houston.

Cal officially joined the Texans as the organization’s vice chairman in 2008, and his responsibilities increased as his father’s battle against skin cancer intensified. Bob had built a contender by the time of his death, and Cal adopted his father’s low-key approach to trust his general manager and head coach to make decisions related to the football team.

Bill O’Brien was a winning coach, albeit a power-hungry executive. He jockeyed about personnel decisions even with his close friend Brian Gaine, whose one-year tenure as general manager ended in a surprise firing in June 2019 after his relationship with O’Brien boiled over. The coach’s influence filled the void unofficially in a season that produced a deep playoff run, which followed Houston’s backed-off pursuit of Caserio when the Patriots filed tampering charges against the Texans.

McNair had two realistic options: Empower O’Brien or fire him. The latter would have been bold.

The Texans were back-to-back AFC South champions at the time, and even in the wake of
Houston’s divisional-round meltdown to the Chiefs, firing O’Brien would have carried risks, particularly considering his relationship as a play-caller with Watson, who had two years remaining on his rookie contract.

So McNair officially named O’Brien general manager. Easterby, hired months before Gaine’s departure, had worked closely with O’Brien on personnel decisions, and the trades and contracts they executed over their two seasons together spiraled the Texans into a disastrous cap space and draft capital situation that could not address the roster’s eventual deficiencies.

McNair fired O’Brien after an 0-4 start in 2020, hired Caserio, whom the Texans unsuccessfully had attempted to lure away from New England twice before, then transferred his trust to a tenured football executive who requested the patience and financial support for a massive overhaul.

That capital was granted. McNair is still paying substantial sums for players Caserio cut loose. The 2022 dead money hits from former linebacker Zach Cunningham ($12.8 million), defensive end Whitney Mercilus ($7 million), cornerback Bradley Roby ($4.6 million) and wide receiver Randall Cobb ($3.5 million) exceed all but 12 of the cap hits associated with players actually on this season’s 53-man roster.

Caserio secured six draft picks, including three first-rounders, by trading Watson to the Browns in March, but the former quarterback’s dead money hit ($16.2 million) won’t clear the books until next offseason. Only then can the Texans become big spenders in free agency.

For now, Houston’s roster again embodies frugality. All nine drafted rookies plus three undrafted free agents make up just under a fourth of the team, which underlines just how swiftly new players can overtake the old.

“The McNair family has been supportive from the beginning of what we’re doing from a football perspective,” Caserio says. “So we have a fiduciary responsibility to try and make the right decisions, try to make smart decisions. And certainly grateful for the opportunity to do that.”

Meanwhile, season-ticket holders kept at bay in 2020 by mandated stadium restrictions amid the coronavirus pandemic returned a year later to a dreadful on-field product still associated with Watson, who’d issued a trade demand, then was sued by 24 women who alleged he sexually assaulted them in massage therapy sessions.

The Texans were later added to the lawsuits, which alleged the franchise enabled Watson, and the McNair family settled claims with 30 women in mid-July, calling the action “a clear stand against any form of sexual assault and misconduct.”

Watson’s 11-game suspension marks Cleveland’s Dec. 4 game at NRG Stadium as the quarterback’s debut, a reminder to Houstonians of a situation Stafford says “really almost broke me.” Add that to a 2021 season Stafford called “complete misery,” and he says several season-ticket holders were wondering how much longer their support could last.

Two Texans employees caught up with Stafford as he was leaving the town hall event. They said team president Greg Grissom wanted to meet him. People were still mingling. Raffle prizes were being given away. Grissom approached. He’d been listening to Stafford’s radio calls and reading his social media posts. He’d been moved by Stafford’s question at the microphone.

“I know who you are,” Grissom told him. “I don’t agree with you all the time. But I love your passion.”

There has been a sincere engagement between the Texans and their supporters since the start of the year, Stafford says. That they held a town hall meeting at all is part of the “massive change” in the franchise’s approach to mend its relationships with people who felt abandoned.
Grissom says the catalyst behind the evolution is McNair. Grissom, who was promoted in March 2021, says one of the first conversations he had with McNair about his new role contained a clear message: “We need to evolve. We need to change. We need to try new things.”
Sometimes little things can magnify larger issues. One year, Stafford says, the Texans gave him and his wife a phone charger as their gift for being a season-ticket holder. This year, they received a packed box that included a team hoodie and a personalized blanket.

Then there are larger changes. Perhaps most notably, the Texans overhauled their season-ticket program. They allowed people to pay over 10 months instead of twice annually. They gave members a 10 percent discount on concessions, a 30 percent discount on team shop purchases, and the ability to swap tickets for other games on the schedule.

The program incentivized retention by offering up to a 15 percent discount on season tickets for those who renewed by May 5, and those who renewed by Feb. 4 would pay the same price for their 2023 tickets. They’ll also be included in special events throughout the year. The Texans held a draft watch party at Miller Outdoor Theater for the first time, and they moved their annual preseason luncheon to a nighttime dinner on Aug. 27.

“It was a lot of reflection. A lot of talks,” McNair says. “A lot of conferences and getting together and brainstorming. Just being honest about where you are and where you want to be and knowing that it’s a journey and we want to take this journey together.”

Still, the Texans are selling Houstonians on a football team. An improved outreach can foster a welcoming atmosphere, but it’s winning that creates wait lists.

When the franchise began its series of playoff runs 10 years ago, its season-ticket waiting list had more than 19,000 names. Before the 2021 season, over 12,000 people on that list passed on buying tickets. The team’s 20-season sellout streak ended. The Texans averaged over 5,000 fewer paid attendees than NRG Stadium’s 72,220 capacity last season, and the fans who actually showed up were usually far fewer.

The game itself carries more emotional swing than anything, Stafford says. The bar is not walking out of the stadium more miserable than when you walked in. The Texans lost 14 games by an average of 16 points last season and were shut out twice. McNair approved the firing of Culley, whose one-year tenure came with a $22 million price tag.

What followed was a confounding 25-day head coaching search that nearly resulted in the Texans hiring former quarterback Josh McCown, whose lack of college and professional coaching experience provoked more questions than answers.

“If they would’ve hired Josh McCown, I would’ve given up my season tickets at that point,” Stafford says. “At that point, you’re telling your fan base that you’re not serious about winning football games.”

That Houston instead pivoted to Smith also projected dysfunction. He’d served as defensive coordinator in 2021 and wasn’t officially interviewed until after finalist Brian Flores filed a racial-discrimination lawsuit against the NFL.

Caserio denied the lawsuit affected the Texans' hiring process and downplayed how close they were to reaching terms with McCown. But Stafford and other supporters interpret Houston’s head coaching search as stumbling into a potential blessing with Smith, a third-time NFL coach who led the Bears to Super Bowl XLI.

Caserio and Smith have since characterized their relationship as lockstep. They’ve complimented each other’s professional experience, and the franchise’s draft haul contained fingerprints from both of their football philosophies. They sat together at the June town hall event and formed a more accessible bond with a city that shares their ultimate goal.

“Everybody wants to see a winning team that they can support and be proud of,” Caserio says. “Our job is to try and do that to the best of our ability.”

How much hope can be mended in what is expected to be another rebuilding season? The Texans open up as eight-point underdogs against the Colts at home Sunday, and the franchise isn’t favored by oddsmakers in any of its 17 games. Still, the Texans finished training camp with 60,000 season-ticket renewals, McNair says.

“I’m being patient in the sense that I have to trust that Lovie Smith, Nick Caserio and Cal McNair have finally decided that they want to put a winning product out on the field for the deserving fans who have been patient for over 20 years,” Stafford says.

McNair believes the Texans can be competitive this year. He knows he’s “being a little hopeful,” but when the end of the regular season is approaching, he wants to be running through calculations of what it would take to land a wild-card playoff spot. He has communicated his standard.

“We’re committed to winning,” McNair says. “If we have to make changes that are sometimes difficult, we’re willing to do that because we want to win. We want the fans to know we want to win. We know the fans want to win. We’re all on the same page there.”
Click to expand...
Why are you posting a year old article as if it's new?
 
CloakNNNdagger said:
The infamous Hannah-organized "fan committee." It's a sad commentary when a blowhard like "Larry from Stafford" who loves to hear himself talk essentially becomes a main figure spokesperson for the Texans, and influencer.

********************************************************************
After turning fans off with 2 years of dysfunction, Cal McNair and Texans brass intent on wooing them back

There was so much to be said. At last, there was a place to say it. The original Texans season-ticket holders filed into the NRG Center, nearly 500 of them, and rode the escalator toward a conference room stocked with food, beer and two long sections of chairs bracketed by two microphones on stands.

Two lines began to form. It was a town hall-style meeting. Predetermined questions had been ditched. The two faces of year two of the franchise’s rebuild — general manager Nick Caserio and head coach Lovie Smith — sat at the front of the room, hands pointing to the microphones. Ask anything. Unfiltered. No limits.

It was an emotional 90 minutes, those who attended the June meeting say. Questions that had festered for two miserable seasons finally found a source, the kind of questions that had been aired out only in private conversations, call-in radio shows and comment sections.

Some people just spoke their mind. These were the franchise’s most loyal supporters, the ones who’d kept their season tickets after the controversial DeAndre Hopkins trade; after the city’s long-awaited franchise quarterback, Deshaun Watson, left in a lewd legal battle; after observing front office enigma Jack Easterby roam the sideline too tightly; after watching the one-and-done David Culley coach a 4-13 season while sitting on their couches at home because that was the only leverage against the Texans they had.

There’s a fallacy in an empty stadium. The network cameras didn’t pan away from Kirby Drive last season, flow in an Indiana Jones-style line for a few miles and zoom in on the house of

Larry Stafford, a 54-year-old original Texans season-ticket holder who screamed at his television, slammed the front door shut, and took his dog for a walk to try to calm down.

There wasn’t a parabolic microphone directed at Stafford and his football friends of two decades, who’d witnessed the Texans come agonizingly close to their first AFC title game berth in 2019 only to dive into disaster, who’d watched their tailgating group split up, who’d learned season-ticket holders in their section gave up their seats and knew it was too late for them to do the same.

“We just had to make the choice about not showing up,” Stafford says. “Even though I’ve committed to my tickets, it was just money that I was throwing away, because the product on the field and the way that the organization was making the fans feel like we didn’t matter … it was just too much for us to bear.”

Why not give up the tickets now? Why tax emotions any further? Part of it is familial legacy, Stafford says. He wants to give his 16-year-old son something Stafford’s own parents were unable to pass down. Part of it is because he still believes a Houstonian self-identifies with his city and that a city’s identity is intrinsically tied to its pro football team. Part of it is because he’s seeing that Texans leadership is starting to show they believe this too.

So as Stafford joined the others in line at the town hall, he began crafting the question he felt ultimately mattered. He thought about being a kid and watching Earl Campbell’s Monday Night Football run against the Dolphins in 1978, the sort of national attention the Texans recaptured with Watson, Hopkins and J.J. Watt. He thought of Texans season-ticket holders who’ve died in the last 20 years. He thought about how Houstonians are still staring at a decades-old door that former Oilers coach Bum Phillips once famously said they’d kick in.

Complexities formed into a simple question. Stafford approached the microphone.

“When are we going to win the Super Bowl?”

Extreme makeover

Pardon the hammers and electric drills. The construction of the Texans’ new business office isn’t quite done yet. This conference room will have to do, but please mind the plastic covering billowing from the third wall’s incomplete paneling.

There’s Cal McNair and his wife, Hannah, on one side of a conference table. Down the hall is an open and sleek office space, a nearly complete renovation project that temporarily displaced the Texans’ business operations staff to a rented unit in the Galleria district.

Now, Texans employees are back. It’s a modernized work environment. Everyone and everything is within view. Soon, a mannequin football player will stand on one end of the room next to a small billboard that has on it Cal’s personal mantra, a phrase that people who’ve worked with the franchise’s CEO and chairman say defines his gradual but persistent process since taking over the day-to-day operations after his father, Bob McNair, died in November 2018.

“I want to challenge us to be great,” Cal says. “I want us to take that next step and challenge everyone, empower them and give them what they need to go there.”

It’s a foundational philosophy rooted in his family. Cal was one of his father’s first employees at Cogen Technologies, where he helped oversee the construction of the three major power plants that made the fortune that enabled the late McNair to front the $700 million expansion fee in 1999 to bring another NFL franchise to Houston.

Cal officially joined the Texans as the organization’s vice chairman in 2008, and his responsibilities increased as his father’s battle against skin cancer intensified. Bob had built a contender by the time of his death, and Cal adopted his father’s low-key approach to trust his general manager and head coach to make decisions related to the football team.

Bill O’Brien was a winning coach, albeit a power-hungry executive. He jockeyed about personnel decisions even with his close friend Brian Gaine, whose one-year tenure as general manager ended in a surprise firing in June 2019 after his relationship with O’Brien boiled over. The coach’s influence filled the void unofficially in a season that produced a deep playoff run, which followed Houston’s backed-off pursuit of Caserio when the Patriots filed tampering charges against the Texans.

McNair had two realistic options: Empower O’Brien or fire him. The latter would have been bold.

The Texans were back-to-back AFC South champions at the time, and even in the wake of
Houston’s divisional-round meltdown to the Chiefs, firing O’Brien would have carried risks, particularly considering his relationship as a play-caller with Watson, who had two years remaining on his rookie contract.

So McNair officially named O’Brien general manager. Easterby, hired months before Gaine’s departure, had worked closely with O’Brien on personnel decisions, and the trades and contracts they executed over their two seasons together spiraled the Texans into a disastrous cap space and draft capital situation that could not address the roster’s eventual deficiencies.

McNair fired O’Brien after an 0-4 start in 2020, hired Caserio, whom the Texans unsuccessfully had attempted to lure away from New England twice before, then transferred his trust to a tenured football executive who requested the patience and financial support for a massive overhaul.

That capital was granted. McNair is still paying substantial sums for players Caserio cut loose. The 2022 dead money hits from former linebacker Zach Cunningham ($12.8 million), defensive end Whitney Mercilus ($7 million), cornerback Bradley Roby ($4.6 million) and wide receiver Randall Cobb ($3.5 million) exceed all but 12 of the cap hits associated with players actually on this season’s 53-man roster.

Caserio secured six draft picks, including three first-rounders, by trading Watson to the Browns in March, but the former quarterback’s dead money hit ($16.2 million) won’t clear the books until next offseason. Only then can the Texans become big spenders in free agency.

For now, Houston’s roster again embodies frugality. All nine drafted rookies plus three undrafted free agents make up just under a fourth of the team, which underlines just how swiftly new players can overtake the old.

“The McNair family has been supportive from the beginning of what we’re doing from a football perspective,” Caserio says. “So we have a fiduciary responsibility to try and make the right decisions, try to make smart decisions. And certainly grateful for the opportunity to do that.”

Meanwhile, season-ticket holders kept at bay in 2020 by mandated stadium restrictions amid the coronavirus pandemic returned a year later to a dreadful on-field product still associated with Watson, who’d issued a trade demand, then was sued by 24 women who alleged he sexually assaulted them in massage therapy sessions.

The Texans were later added to the lawsuits, which alleged the franchise enabled Watson, and the McNair family settled claims with 30 women in mid-July, calling the action “a clear stand against any form of sexual assault and misconduct.”

Watson’s 11-game suspension marks Cleveland’s Dec. 4 game at NRG Stadium as the quarterback’s debut, a reminder to Houstonians of a situation Stafford says “really almost broke me.” Add that to a 2021 season Stafford called “complete misery,” and he says several season-ticket holders were wondering how much longer their support could last.

Two Texans employees caught up with Stafford as he was leaving the town hall event. They said team president Greg Grissom wanted to meet him. People were still mingling. Raffle prizes were being given away. Grissom approached. He’d been listening to Stafford’s radio calls and reading his social media posts. He’d been moved by Stafford’s question at the microphone.

“I know who you are,” Grissom told him. “I don’t agree with you all the time. But I love your passion.”

There has been a sincere engagement between the Texans and their supporters since the start of the year, Stafford says. That they held a town hall meeting at all is part of the “massive change” in the franchise’s approach to mend its relationships with people who felt abandoned.
Grissom says the catalyst behind the evolution is McNair. Grissom, who was promoted in March 2021, says one of the first conversations he had with McNair about his new role contained a clear message: “We need to evolve. We need to change. We need to try new things.”
Sometimes little things can magnify larger issues. One year, Stafford says, the Texans gave him and his wife a phone charger as their gift for being a season-ticket holder. This year, they received a packed box that included a team hoodie and a personalized blanket.

Then there are larger changes. Perhaps most notably, the Texans overhauled their season-ticket program. They allowed people to pay over 10 months instead of twice annually. They gave members a 10 percent discount on concessions, a 30 percent discount on team shop purchases, and the ability to swap tickets for other games on the schedule.

The program incentivized retention by offering up to a 15 percent discount on season tickets for those who renewed by May 5, and those who renewed by Feb. 4 would pay the same price for their 2023 tickets. They’ll also be included in special events throughout the year. The Texans held a draft watch party at Miller Outdoor Theater for the first time, and they moved their annual preseason luncheon to a nighttime dinner on Aug. 27.

“It was a lot of reflection. A lot of talks,” McNair says. “A lot of conferences and getting together and brainstorming. Just being honest about where you are and where you want to be and knowing that it’s a journey and we want to take this journey together.”

Still, the Texans are selling Houstonians on a football team. An improved outreach can foster a welcoming atmosphere, but it’s winning that creates wait lists.

When the franchise began its series of playoff runs 10 years ago, its season-ticket waiting list had more than 19,000 names. Before the 2021 season, over 12,000 people on that list passed on buying tickets. The team’s 20-season sellout streak ended. The Texans averaged over 5,000 fewer paid attendees than NRG Stadium’s 72,220 capacity last season, and the fans who actually showed up were usually far fewer.

The game itself carries more emotional swing than anything, Stafford says. The bar is not walking out of the stadium more miserable than when you walked in. The Texans lost 14 games by an average of 16 points last season and were shut out twice. McNair approved the firing of Culley, whose one-year tenure came with a $22 million price tag.

What followed was a confounding 25-day head coaching search that nearly resulted in the Texans hiring former quarterback Josh McCown, whose lack of college and professional coaching experience provoked more questions than answers.

“If they would’ve hired Josh McCown, I would’ve given up my season tickets at that point,” Stafford says. “At that point, you’re telling your fan base that you’re not serious about winning football games.”

That Houston instead pivoted to Smith also projected dysfunction. He’d served as defensive coordinator in 2021 and wasn’t officially interviewed until after finalist Brian Flores filed a racial-discrimination lawsuit against the NFL.

Caserio denied the lawsuit affected the Texans' hiring process and downplayed how close they were to reaching terms with McCown. But Stafford and other supporters interpret Houston’s head coaching search as stumbling into a potential blessing with Smith, a third-time NFL coach who led the Bears to Super Bowl XLI.

Caserio and Smith have since characterized their relationship as lockstep. They’ve complimented each other’s professional experience, and the franchise’s draft haul contained fingerprints from both of their football philosophies. They sat together at the June town hall event and formed a more accessible bond with a city that shares their ultimate goal.

“Everybody wants to see a winning team that they can support and be proud of,” Caserio says. “Our job is to try and do that to the best of our ability.”

How much hope can be mended in what is expected to be another rebuilding season? The Texans open up as eight-point underdogs against the Colts at home Sunday, and the franchise isn’t favored by oddsmakers in any of its 17 games. Still, the Texans finished training camp with 60,000 season-ticket renewals, McNair says.

“I’m being patient in the sense that I have to trust that Lovie Smith, Nick Caserio and Cal McNair have finally decided that they want to put a winning product out on the field for the deserving fans who have been patient for over 20 years,” Stafford says.

McNair believes the Texans can be competitive this year. He knows he’s “being a little hopeful,” but when the end of the regular season is approaching, he wants to be running through calculations of what it would take to land a wild-card playoff spot. He has communicated his standard.

“We’re committed to winning,” McNair says. “If we have to make changes that are sometimes difficult, we’re willing to do that because we want to win. We want the fans to know we want to win. We know the fans want to win. We’re all on the same page there.”
Click to expand...

Did Hannah write this piece?

The Texans were contenders? That's news to me.

They are listening to Larry in Stafford. This is their target audience. Good luck with that. But hey the stadium is full and that's what counts.
 
CloakNNNdagger said:
1] It was never posted on this forum
2] As a reminder for those who forgot about "the Fan Council" that Canah talked about "collaborating with the team on decisions that will help influence aspects of the organization"
Click to expand...
I would love to know if the fan council recommended drafting a QB?
 
steelbtexan said:
I would love to know if the fan council recommended drafting a QB?
Click to expand...
Pretty sure all of the sports world KNEW the Texans NEEDED A QB after seeing Mills regress in his 2nd year compared to how he ended his 1st year...not only that but he failed to show improvement on several of his throws to certain routes...and frankly that wasnt going to cut it.
Everyone knew the Texans were in dire need of a franchise QB...whether the council recommended it or not doesnt matter. It was the Texans BIGGEST and most GLARING NEED after getting rid of DW4 and the Mills experiment failing.
And Im sure you would be singing a different tune if that 2nd Selection would have been brice young...who just happens to be a QB....so like I said whether the council recommended it or not...QB WAS A NEED going into the draft.
 
CloakNNNdagger said:
1] It was never posted on this forum
2] As a reminder for those who forgot about "the Fan Council" that Canah talked about "collaborating with the team on decisions that will help influence aspects of the organization"
Click to expand...

Have you ever had to sell something? I mean really sell something on a daily basis.

Texans sell tv time, merchandise and tickets. So do the 31 other NFL franchises so this isn’t a unique issue to the Texans.

When your returning customers are not buying from you anymore after years of consistent business you have to do something to find out what is going wrong, what is most important to fix, and letting important customers have their voices heard.

This isn’t too different than a round table with the top customers.
 
sprtsfanatic said:
Pretty sure all of the sports world KNEW the Texans NEEDED A QB after seeing Mills regress in his 2nd year compared to how he ended his 1st year...not only that but he failed to show improvement on several of his throws to certain routes...and frankly that wasnt going to cut it.
Everyone knew the Texans were in dire need of a franchise QB...whether the council recommended it or not doesnt matter. It was the Texans BIGGEST and most GLARING NEED after getting rid of DW4 and the Mills experiment failing.
And Im sure you would be singing a different tune if that 2nd Selection would have been brice young...who just happens to be a QB....so like I said whether the council recommended it or not...QB WAS A NEED going into the draft.
Click to expand...
Agreed they needed a franchise QB. They needed to build the team out before they got they're franchise QB and that's if you think Stroud can become a top 5 QB. Their impatience to build a winner took precedence over setting the team up to be contenders for yrs to come.
 
steelbtexan said:
Agreed they needed a franchise QB. They needed to build the team out before they got they're franchise QB and that's if you think Stroud can become a top 5 QB. Their impatience to build a winner took precedence over setting the team up to be contenders for yrs to come.
Click to expand...
Have they ever agreed with your opinion?
 
TexansBull said:
Have you ever had to sell something? I mean really sell something on a daily basis.

When your returning customers are not buying from you anymore after years of consistent business you have to do something to find out what is going wrong, what is most important to fix, and letting important customers have their voices heard.
Click to expand...
All the things in your post would have been turned around by concentrating on improving the product. With a "business" as large as the Texans franchise, a franchise with multimillions in assets..............a franchise with so large a pool of executive and consulting minds available.............and already given 21 years of "experience" and time for improving the product................it is beyond ludicrous to have to turn to "customers" to find those answers. Again, all the things in your post would have been turned around long before now if the Texans would have put all their concentrated efforts into IMPROVING the PRODUCT..............NOT the MARKETING!
 
TexansBull said:
Have you ever had to sell something? I mean really sell something on a daily basis.

Texans sell tv time, merchandise and tickets. So do the 31 other NFL franchises so this isn’t a unique issue to the Texans.

When your returning customers are not buying from you anymore after years of consistent business you have to do something to find out what is going wrong, what is most important to fix, and letting important customers have their voices heard.

This isn’t too different than a round table with the top customers.
Click to expand...
Agree. And maybe I’m old fashioned but I would guess a full stadium is actually a motivator for the Texans players. Thirty one other teams strive for it. All this other crap should be left for the ladies at the hairdresser.
 
CloakNNNdagger said:
Again, all the things in your post would have been turned around long before now if the Texans would have put all their concentrated efforts into IMPROVING the PRODUCT..............NOT the MARKETING!
Click to expand...
Agreed. I wish Carstereo was as good at his job as Hannah was. Now, it's about time Hannah started infringing on Carstereo's gig, because he wasn't doing as good a job as she has been.
 
A true player's coach.

***************************

DeMeco Ryans encouraged Texans to stay in contact with cut teammates
Mark Lane
September 3, 2023 10:19 am CT


What makes DeMeco Ryans the ultimate players coach is that he was once a player.

The former Houston Texans 2006 second-round linebacker spent six seasons with his original draft team before finishing out his last four seasons with the Philadelphia Eagles. As Ryans experienced his first cut day as a coach, the experience brought him back to when he was first starting out in Houston.

“Before having to give the bad news to guys, I went back to being a young player and understanding you’ve battled with all these guys in training camp through preseason games, and now you come in one day and the locker room is different,” Ryans told reporters Aug. 30. “It’s a little quieter in the locker room, some guys are missing, and I remember the shock that it gave me as a young player, because everywhere you’ve played — from high school to college — no one ever tells you, ‘No, you can’t be on the team.’ So, it’s hard to deliver that news and say, ‘No, not at this time,’ so I reflect back to me being in that position as a young player, how it affected me.”

Along with any encouraging messages Ryans may have for players lost in the numbers game, the 39-year-old expressed to the remaining players how they could still continue to be good teammates with the players technically no longer in the organization.

Said Ryans: “So, when I talk to our team, I just make sure that guys who are on our team, that they realize, still, we need you to reach out to our other brothers, and make sure we’re connecting, make sure you’re checking on the guys, making sure they’re okay. We’ll have some guys come back eventually for practice squad, but make sure those guys feel that you care about them because of the special bond that you guys have built throughout OTAs and training camp.”
 
Texans willing to allow OL solutions to develop from within
Mark Lane
September 2, 2023 5:23 pm CT

The Houston Texans’ offensive line was a position of strength, but a rash of training camp injuries relegated the unit to black hole that has sapped resources.

The Texans will have question marks at left guard, center, and right tackle when they take the field against the Baltimore Ravens Sept. 10 at M&T Bank Stadium.

General manager Nick Caserio told reporters Aug. 30 the club believes they have the solutions within the organization to address the offensive line.

“We still have more than capable players that, if the player is in the building, we feel good about them,” Caserio said.

The Texans traded for guard Kendrick Green, tackle Josh Jones, and signed tackle George Fant.

Houston also claimed guard Nick Broeker off waivers from the Buffalo Bills after final cuts.
Continuing to go outside the organization, particularly at this juncture, could be costly for the Texans.

“There’s a cost of everything that you do, so there’s a financial cost, there’s a draft capital cost if you want to go down that road, so it is what it is,” said Caserio. “There’s nothing we can do about it. We can make some modifications and changes on the fringes, see if we can upgrade the depth, and I’d say there’s a lot of teams that are dealing with the same problem or situation, so we feel confident with the players that are in the building.”
 
CloakNNNdagger said:
The Fan Council meets every quarter. The council meets quarterly "with executives and staff" to review materials, presentations, briefs and other team-provided subjects.
Click to expand...

Listening to a fan council is a great way to go about bringing a Lombardi to Kirby. When are fans going to wakeup and realize what's important to the McNair's. Things like fan councils should make this as clear as day. But it wont.
 
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