It's on both, but the coaches have not been able to help the existing players succeed. That's a coach's job. Not to loaf around because he has so much talent on his roster that the players are like robots and the coach can sip iced tea and let things happen on their own. And even with "talent" on the roster, there would have to be some real, 100% player leadership among the players in order to make a coachless team succeed in the NFL. In short: There would have to be a perfect storm in order for a coachless team to survive in the NFL.
In the book "First, Break All The Rules," we learn that great managers find ways to help their employees succeed. The example they gave was a diner where they had hired a mentally-challenged man to help with the transition of the meats from the meat delivery truck to the kitchen area. Part of his responsibility was to cut up the meat before giving it to the cooks. But he was failing miserably at it. It was slowing up the process. Instead of firing the young man, due to incompetence, they devised a plan to help him succeed. They contacted the meat provider and asked if he could have the meat pre-cut ahead of time. 'Sure," the man said, "We can do that." Problem solved. Everything got back on track, and they didn't have to fire the young man and find a reliable replacement.
HOW THIS APPLIES TO THE TEXANS: OK, so you don't have world-class talent at some positions. Deal with it. Find a way to support the inferior players and mitigate the damage. Use some wisdom in how you go about the strategies of gameplanning each week. Is our Free Safety failing at getting to the area where he can properly support the CB on a pass play? OK, then let's find ways to use that weakness as a strength--Let's actually bait the QB into throwing that same pass and let's adjust so we can pick it off. Except we see that McCourty of the Patriots did that very concept against Holmes in the Pats-Jets MNF game...the same pass that the Jets burned us on, to set them up for the winning TD play later on, the Pats picked it off and we gave it away completely. Uncontested. This has been happening all season. No coach is seeing this and adjusting to it. Unless we're facing Rusty Smith. Which isn't even a proper variable in the equation of our problems.
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Coaches have to treat their players the same, yet differently. That's another concept from "First, Break All The Rules." People are unique, but they are also the same. It's a contradiction, for sure, but it's applicable to a work environment in the sense that you must remember that not everyone is "just like you" in how they function and what motivates them...nor should we forget that each person does have the same attributes such as "a need to be accepted," etc.
HOW THIS APPLIES TO THE TEXANS: Kubiak doesn't think outside the box. Therefore, other teams know what we're going to do. Only other teams who are as vastly incompetent in this area as we are tend to get beaten by us. But you find a good strategist who makes his team learn new things each week, to face a new opponent who has different strengths and weaknesses and overall tendencies as the previous opponent you just faced, and I'll show you a coach who makes Gary Kubiak look verrry verrry unprepared and outmatched. This is not speculation. This is fact. The Patriots this past week, IMO, found a way to outguess and outwit the Jets. Rex Ryan is good at adjusting to other teams...but he's on a lower tier than Belichick. As time goes by, I bet Rex Ryan figures some of that same stuff out himself. Our guy? LOL. Yeah....well, whatever.
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In addition, the book says that BAD managers promote their employees to the level of the employees' incompetency. Good companies provide what's called a "parachute" meaning that if the person is promoted up tyhe ladder and then gets to the point that he's now unable to do his job, he should be given a way to eject and yet stay with the company and go down one rung on the ladder (back to the highest level of his competency). Why? Why not fire the guy? Because BAD companies don't realize that people have limits.
HOW THIS APPLIES TO THE TEXANS: Frank Bush. And we could even say that Gary Kubiak has been promoted to HIS own level of incompetency. Great OC, but not so great at being an HC. Look at Belichick. It took him years of failure, of being promoted to his level of incompetency, before he figured things out. He kept getting his opportunities, kept learning from them, and has finally found a way (via video recording and torturing his players) to get the proper results. I hope Gary Kubiak leaves here, takes his lumps from the experience, and figures things out. And I hope we, the Texans, find our next head coach to be the person who has already done that routine and now knows what he's got to do to succeed.
I think some coaches are just not going to try and mix things up to the degree that they exhaust all of their resources in order to find a winning solution. They're going to do what they know how to do, and do it in the ways that they feel most comfortable, and let the chips fall where they may. To me, this is what intrigues me about Mike Leach. Because he is very unconventional, very cerebral. He'll play a patsy, as if he's a loon or a bumpkin, but it's a show. Belichick is very cerebral too. I think Kubiak is, as well, but to a limit. His schtick is identifying and obtaining guys who can work within his system of offense, but there's no freedom in expression (by, and for, the players) and there's a predictability and a stagnant nature to what he does. The competent opponents we face have got him figured out. And he isn't adapting to it. Because he's too "in the moment" and doesn't have, IMO, the separation from the situation that getting fired and having the "away time" can give a coach.
Even then, he'd have to be like Belichick (and like Coughlin, who recently admitted he had to change things up in how he does things and goes about life) and admit he needs to adapt. I don't know if Gary can do that, though.
This coaching staff did a good job of stopping the bleeding from the previous coaching regime. But we need more than a clotting technique now. We need that next level. Don't we?
