My guess is what's going on is that the Texans will "distance" themeselves from the Cowher talk. They'll float a lot of names of HC candidates and interviewees like Hue Jackson, Troy Calhoun, Mike Sherman, plus several more. That way the fanbase will really be scratching their heads and not wanting those so when its announced Phillips will replace Bush as DC and Kubiak will stay, the fanbase will be more accepting of it than if everyone was led to believe Cowher was a possibility. Damage control, slight of hand, manipulation, mind control... these guys are jedis working on Kirby.
Another similar possibility is this:
Cowher, it has been perceived, has been angling for the Texans job since last year. And the rumor persists to this very day.
At first, Bob said we were on the right track (after the Ravens game). But all of a sudden, following the Broncos debacle, things are looking different.
Some names have been floated out there. Names none of us believe could be an honest-to-goodness accurate list of candidates for replacing Kubiak. The names don't fit, in our opinions, because of various situations...most importantly because Rick Smith would be rolling the dice on a replacement HC who has to 100% get this team to the playoffs. None of the guys on this current list of potential candidates gives us confidence in a happy ending.
It's been almost a decade since Bob McNair kick-started this team. He hasn't made any sort of big splash with personnel. OK, maybe Casserly was a popular well-known NFL guy we can say was a "splash." That's still a stretch, IMO. A "splash' would be a former Super Bowl winning head coach who had a honest-to-goodness LEGACY at Pittsburgh. That, my friends, would be a splash.
Now comes the slight-of-hand, smoke and mirrors act. If you are Bob McNair, you can't just fire Kubiak on Monday and hire Cowher on Tuesday. Hell, you can't even hire Cowher that same week IMO. Why? Because Cowher was angling for this job last year, the rumors persisted all the way through this season, and you just fired Kubiak. And turned around and immediately hired Cowher. That's going to be flagged for 15 yards by the image consulting department at Reliant. You can't be perceived as potentially havingyour guy in the bag well before the end of the season.
In fact, it could also be that Cowher himself wants it done this way. He wants to make sure the season is over, the dust has settled, and Kubiak is well out of the picture before entering Reliant facilities and doing all the interviews with all the sports media.
It is possible that the plan has been cooked up for quite some time, and these names being floated out there is just one part of the image-sustaining effort by McNair & Cowher. They both want to avoid the ugliness if they can.
I'm not saying this is how it is. Just saying that if Bob McNair is a smart man, he fires the majority of the staff (based on Cowher's recommendations, obviously) and then he hires a proven winner and allows him to rebuild the coaching staff and draft HIS players to fix the mess on defense and add some stuff to the offense as he also sees fit.
That's IF McNair is a smart man. If he's not, then we'll see what Troy Calhoun or Bobby McDungledorf or Tommy Fingerlicker can do with a 10-year-old EXPANSION team. Surely Bob's not a dope to the point that he thinks he can go low-key on HC for a third-straight time? LOL. We'll see.