Payne and Pendergast discuss the latest on the Texans' offensive coordinator search.
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00:00The Texans O.C. search is still ongoing.
00:04The new names that have entered into it, we know they interviewed Nick Kaley
00:10yesterday. Nick Kaley, the passing game coordinator for Sean McVay in L.A.
00:15The two new names, one was a name that if you're a football fan you're probably familiar with,
00:20Brian Johnson, especially because he's from here.
00:24A Tex O.C. interview list, he's interviewing with the team reportedly today.
00:29He's in football circles, in NFL circles at least, probably, unfortunately for him,
00:34best known for getting fired after one year in Philadelphia in 2023.
00:38Philly goes to the Super Bowl with Shane Steichen as their O.C. in 2022.
00:44They elevate Brian Johnson, who'd been the quarterback's coach there the previous two
00:47years. We should point that out. It was an in-house promotion, so he was part of the
00:51success too as Jalen Hurts' position coach. He gets elevated to O.C. and it just didn't work.
00:58It didn't work out. The Eagles bottomed out.
01:00They were stuck in the mud offensively in the later parts of that season and in the playoffs.
01:06Jalen Hurts looked like he wanted to be anywhere but in a Philadelphia Eagles uniform at times
01:10towards the end of the year. So Brian Johnson gets fired and now the Eagles are back in the
01:14Super Bowl this year. The optics of that obviously don't really play very well for him.
01:18Well, if you take an offense that was operating really well, you get a new offensive coordinator,
01:23the offense looks atrocious, you get another offensive coordinator,
01:26and the offense looks good again. I guess that's just the sum total of it.
01:31Yeah, and the offensive coordinator for this group is Kellen Moore, who's in line to get a
01:34head coaching job imminently, it would appear, with the Saints. Now, Kellen did have Saquon Barkley,
01:40whereas Brian Johnson did not. Honestly, that is an excellent, excellent point.
01:45I don't think we brought up that at the beginning.
01:46We did not earlier. Yeah, so they did make some changes to the actual personnel
01:52touching the football. So, but anyways, he's-
01:55I'll give up a Jason Kelsey if I can get a Saquon Barkley who's still very much in his pride.
01:59It's a good trade, yeah. So, Brian Johnson is getting an interview,
02:06who's already interviewed. This is like, oh yeah, by the way, this guy interviewed yesterday,
02:10and I'd not heard of him before, I will admit. Grant Udinski, I don't go scouring the coaching
02:15staffs of NFC teams to see who their assistant OC and assistant QB coaches are, but Grant Udinski
02:22I hope I'm pronouncing that right, in case he gets hired, is the- he's the Minnesota assistant
02:27OC and assistant QB coach. He interviewed yesterday. Now, in doing some background checking
02:31on him, he's 28 years old. He got into coaching in 2019, so he's not even been- he was a graduate
02:38assistant for Matt Rule at Baylor in 2019, and then quickly got into the NFL. Like, he was,
02:46you know, he was on NFL staffs pretty quickly after that. So, he's not been doing this very long,
02:50but the key quote that I saw about Grant Udinski, 28-year-old wonderkind on the Minnesota Vikings
02:58staff, is that when he was interviewing for his job that he got when Kevin O'Connell hired him,
03:04Kevin O'Connell said he felt like he was talking to somebody who knew how to build a car
03:09that was interviewing for a job at a car wash. Yeah, yeah, which is sometimes a bad hire,
03:15you know? You don't want to hire a guy that's going to be unhappy in his job or his role,
03:20because you- I'm thinking about the actual car wash scenario. Yeah, but if he is indeed that
03:26smart, and if he is like a Sean McVay type, that would be interesting. Now, Sean McVay got his
03:31first turn as a coordinator underneath Mike Shanahan, which is a whole different scenario
03:36than doing it, you know, underneath the defensive-minded head coach. 28 years old is-
03:42it's really, really young to be a coordinator. You'd have to be damn smart. Although,
03:48for whatever it's worth, they interviewed him and not Josh McCown that we know of.
03:52Yeah, we- I mean- And Josh, who's working on that same staff in Minnesota.
03:56He's the actual QB coach on that staff in Minnesota with Sam Darnold. Yeah, and to be fair,
04:01we don't know if they requested an interview with Josh McCown, you know, like we did,
04:04you know, or if Josh McCown is taking inter- do we know? Is he- has McCown been interviewing for
04:09Josh? I'm not sure. I don't think I've seen, yeah. Yeah. Wait, where am I? Who is this guy?
04:13Exactly. The other- the other quote I thought you were talking about, and the most- this is
04:17the most exciting quote I've seen, is from MotorcycleSports.net, which you and I earlier
04:22decided is- this was definitely written by artificial intelligence, but my god,
04:27it's never made me more interested in a candidate ever. Minnesota Vikings assistant quarterbacks
04:32coach Grant Uditsky continues to make waves in the NFL coaching landscape as he vies for the
04:38vacant offensive coordinator position with the Houston Texans. His recent interview with the
04:42Texans marks another crescendo in his symphony of interviews this offseason, showcasing his prowess
04:49and ambition in the football realm. What's the- what's the word that you think gives it away that
04:55AI- Vies. Which one? Vies. Vies. As he vies for the vacant offensive coordinator position for the-
05:02it's a- you can tell that there's a disconnect between the way things are and the way things
05:08you might write about it. So this- if it was- or it was written by somebody and then AI juiced it
05:13up for him a little bit. Yeah. With a crescendo and the symphony of- the symphony of interviews
05:18doesn't make any sense at all. No. That just doesn't- that just doesn't- no that- that
05:24that analogy- Crescendo is- Crescendo was one for me right there. I was trying to figure out if it
05:31was a young writer trying way too hard over his AI, and the fact that it's in MotorcycleSports.net
05:38leads me to believe that this is definitely AI. Yep. So do either of these candidates
05:43excite you? Grant Udinski, Brian Johnson. How are you feeling about those two? Udinski I'm intrigued
05:49by just because he's getting an interview at the age of 28, and that if Kevin O'Connell
05:55thinks that highly of him, then that's very, very intriguing. Brian Johnson, it's- he doesn't
06:01excite me as much as if he had never been an offensive coordinator at Philadelphia last year.
06:06That's the part that- that Philadelphia last year offensively felt a lot like the Texans this
06:11year, in the second half of the season especially. I guess the other big question there though is,
06:16all right, how much was- how much was that because of Nick Sirianni and him- him meddling in the
06:21affairs, and was it his actual offense, and was- was Nick Sirianni holding him back? I don't know.
06:28It sounds like the Chip Kelly dream is over. Aaron Wilson did a video on YouTube yesterday
06:34that sort of bullet pointed a lot of the- the- where the Texans are according- you know,
06:39according to what he's hearing, where the Texans are with a lot of these guys, and he was pretty
06:43clear that Chip Kelly, it sounds like, is going to be staying at Ohio State now. So that- that
06:48dream, which was- initially you were the first one that I knew with that dream several weeks ago,
06:52Seth, for the offense, because you pointed out that Chip Kelly had been the one who- who had
06:57hired Jeff Stoutland as the offensive line coach in Philadelphia all the way back in 2013. Yeah.
07:04And Stout- Stout from your time, he was on the coaching staff when you were in college at Cornell,
07:09but Stoutland has been through multiple regimes now in Philadelphia, the offensive line. He's the
07:14best in the business. Right, and I think, like, obviously I don't expect- that's not the only
07:19reason you hire a guy, but I think it's- it illustrates a lot of what you know about Chip
07:25Kelly, which is that he's very good at engineering a run game, and he does it in a variety of
07:31different methods, and a lot of times people almost call him an offensive line coach as much
07:36as they call him an offensive coordinator. That was what was intriguing to me. The big question
07:40with Kelly would be that, look, with Ohio State, they were not up-tempo. They were not fast-paced
07:47at all. They were one of the slowest tempo teams in the league this- in- in the nation this year
07:52in college football. He was up-tempo at UCLA, not at the breakneck pace, necessarily, that he had
07:59been in comparison to other teams when he was in college at Oregon, but so he knows how to play
08:06slower, and he learned when he was in the NFL that he had to slow it down a little bit, but I guess
08:11my big question would be, all right, all we really know of him as a coordinator in the NFL when things
08:16were really humming for his offense was that he was- he was ambushing the league with that up-tempo
08:20stuff, and teams weren't ready for it. That was his- that was his magic bullet when he was doing
08:27well in the NFL, and everybody's kind of caught up to that. Offenses in general will mix up their
08:33tempos more. The league has seen it. He knows that he can't do it the way he was doing it the first
08:38couple years at Philadelphia without hurting his defense, so I don't know if- I don't know if he's
08:42genuinely proven a bona fide all-around offensive coordinator in the NFL, having to- having to play
08:50without an extra advantage of just ambushing them with that up-tempo offense. Yep. Text message.
08:56Let me understand. We have a Super Bowl defense. We fired our first time Wunderkind OC, and we're
09:01interviewing new Wunderkind OCs with no experience, and we have a Super Bowl defense. Do I have that
09:08right? Now, you have that right. Now, I know where you're going with this, Texter, which is like,
09:13okay, we're interviewing this guy who profiles probably a lot like Bobby Slowick did a few years
09:18ago. There's many reasons to interview guys, and it's not- it's not always to hire them for the
09:24job that's open. You know, you do it to gather intel. You do it- you pointed this out earlier,
09:28Seth. You know, you do it to- to get them on your radar. You know, like, there may not be-
09:34he's 28 years old, this Udinski guy. There may not be an opening this time around,
09:37but there- if it goes well with whoever they hire here, there may be an opening a year or
09:41two from now at OC. Listen, you know what else is really young and then sometimes ends up becoming
09:46something great? A sperm, and there's a, you know, a spermazoa, and just- but it's only one
09:54out of like a hundred million, you know? So you just like- sometimes you just got to keep- you
09:58just got to keep throwing sperm at the problem, and eventually one of these young guys will turn
10:02into something. A zygote, yeah. Yeah. We're willing to shoot as many sperm at the problem as it takes,
10:12yeah. Spermazoa, singular. Spermatozoa is- yeah, sperm is short for spermatozoa. So one little
10:22fella. Yeah. One little guy. As a sleeve. We always think- my confidence in the text page
10:28to correct this here is not very high, but yeah. We always think of the one little sperm as a guy,
10:32which isn't the case, you know? It's not- it's- it's part of an army, yeah. Well, yeah. One
10:39survivor. Well, and some of them carry an X, and some of them carry a Y. That's true. So like,
10:43some of them are- it should be an army of little men and little women. It's because it's- They're
10:47going on to battle in war, right? It's generated by a man, doesn't it? Yeah, exactly. Right,
10:52you got your Ys, and you got your Xs in there. I love how your Zoom screen just gave the little
10:58thumbs up for this take right here. It happens a lot during the show, and we just ignore it. Like,
11:04for this particular take that it popped up, that makes me- that makes me laugh. That tickles me.
11:09These guys are talking about sperma. Sperms. The gender of sperm.
11:15That would be- if I ever do an animated feature film, which I plan on doing someday,
11:20I'm going to be sure that my little- They haven't done one yet. Dude, the next-
11:25Co-ed, men and women, one with an X, one with a Y. Can you imagine that that's the next Pixar movie,
11:29is little sperm swimming? We're out of ideas, man. We've done toys. We've done animals. We've done-
11:37We've done bugs. We've done everything. I got an idea. Jenkins, what's your idea? Sperm. Yes,
11:44let's do it. There's between 20 million and 600 million in any little- What do you call-
11:51What do you call a herd of sperm? Are they a murder of sperm? I know what it's called.
11:56A gaggle or a- In some circles, no.
12:01Can't say that on the air.
12:02I said gaggle. No, no, no, no, no. There's no R in there. I said a gaggle of sperm.
12:13We'll talk during the break. So I think where this texture was going with this,
12:19definitely not there, but about the interviewing of Udinski, like, okay, wow,
12:25that sounds really risky for a team that's- I think a lot of people want not necessarily just
12:33safe, safe, conservative, but guys that feel a little less high variance than someone who's
12:38basically been an assistant OC and an assistant QB. Who's the safest out of all? There's seven
12:43guys who have interviewed or will have interviewed by the end of today, Jared Johnson and Bill Laser
12:48internally. And then the five external candidates are Jeff Nixon, Thad Lewis, Nick Kaley, Grant
12:54Udinski, and then Brian Johnson interviews today. Who's the safest out of all of those?
12:58It feels like the safest. I mean, really just by virtue of resume experience, everything else that
13:07these guys have hired, if you're looking for safety, I think Bill Laser is probably the safest
13:11in terms of having been an offense coordinator before and now didn't- really didn't have- He
13:18hasn't had great offenses when he's been an offensive coordinator. That's, you know, that's
13:22the thing that makes that a less exciting name. But I guess in terms of, okay, it won't be an
13:29abject disaster, that would be the safest is Bill Laser. The other part too is like them having seen
13:35him work with Gerrard and with CJ, I wonder both with Gerrard and CJ, how much did they- or both
13:42with Gerrard and Bill Laser, I wonder how- Look, these guys have actually done good work with
13:50with CJ and we know what Bobby's issues were and we don't think these guys are going to have those
13:55same issues. So maybe Gerrard and Bill are the safest, and especially if you're keeping them
14:01together. Now, but again, I don't know, I don't think that's going to be necessarily with a lot
14:07of people the popular choice and I understand that, but you're just asking me what's the safest
14:11choice that feels like one of those two guys feels like the air quotes safest choice. There
14:16is no safe choice. Yeah, it's funny, if Bill Laser were to get the job, it would be almost,
14:22I don't say almost entirely, I'll call it the final exam. I always call that the most highly
14:27weighted criteria for why you chose a guy or reason would be the familiarity they've gotten
14:33within the last two years in the building because there's no way you're hiring a special assistant
14:38or a special advisor to the offense off of any of the other 31 teams. It's the- Right.
14:43You know what I mean? Just based on titles, you're not doing that. I think the best,
14:47if you look at Laser, he was with Marvin Lewis in his last two years,
14:51Marvin Lewis's final two years as an NFL coach and they started off 26th in scoring offense.
14:59The next year they ended up 17th and then the year after that was 2018 and that would have been,
15:05that's Burroughs' rookie year, right? No, 2020 was Joe Burroughs' rookie year.
15:10Joe Burroughs' rookie year, so I'll have to look and see how they did in 2018.
15:15They were 11th in scoring in 2014 with Ryan Tannehill. He's shown growth in one area. He had
15:25the other in middling or below. I don't think they were abject. I think there were variables
15:32there where you could say, all right, it was bad circumstances or what have you.
15:36So I have no idea. I think a lot of it's just going to be based on what they've seen from him
15:41over the last two years. And I know people around the league think very highly of Bill Laser's
15:47football mind, his intelligence. It's a different deal running the show. So Bill and, so Nick and
15:54D'Amico haven't watched him and then him and Gerard worked together. There might,
15:58I don't want to see co-offensive coordinators, but that's the sense I get with Gerard and Bill
16:04is in some ways, we haven't heard any reports that CJ dislikes either of those guys. We know
16:12he has a really good relationship with Gerard Johnson, but maybe if Gerard is the guy that they
16:18like the idea of, okay, Bill Laser's an experienced offensive coordinator and he could be a resource
16:22for him. And that's where you get over some of Gerard's inexperience. Yeah. For me, Seth,
16:26it's got to be a really bad hire for me to not be able to at least talk myself into it at some
16:30point with the Texans. That's just, that's just how I like mood wise and mindset wise. That's
16:35how I skew. Like in the moment I'll be like, all right, not the best hire, not who I wanted.
16:39By the time training camp rolls around, I'll look at it through, you know, through glass half full,
16:44through rose colored glasses, whatever the case may be. If the solution is promoting Gerard
16:49Johnson to OC, keeping Bill Laser as the quarterback's coach, that won't be my first
16:56choice. But that's a solution that by the time I feel like by the time training camp rolls around,
17:01especially once we've had a chance to hear CJ talk, talk about a little bit,
17:07Casario, you and I will have talked with Nick Casario about it a couple of times on the show
17:10about it. I feel like that's one of those solutions. Like, all right, I can talk myself
17:14into this. I totally get where people are like, I don't want anybody that had anything to do
17:20with last year's offense around anymore. I totally understand that. Yeah. Let me tell
17:24you this. I'll tell you one thing, Sean, what's that? Jeff Driscoll had the best five game stretch
17:32of his career when Bill Laser was his offensive court. So like, that's one of the variables that
17:36I've taught for it. He had a season where he had to start Jeff Driscoll for five games and he threw
17:41for a two or a thousand yards. So with touchdowns, two interceptions, one of those seasons too,
17:46right? I know that's what I'm saying. We got, we got more out of Jeff Driscoll than,
17:51than the Texans were able to, like there have been Bill. Well, Bill's that perfect example of,
17:56man, you gotta be careful in who you select for your first opportunity or so, because it just,
18:03you know, his first go around was with Miami when Joe Philbin was the head coach and Philbin's an
18:08old offensive mind. And so it wasn't necessarily Bill Laser's show. And then you go and you got
18:15your next stop. You got to, you got to use Jeff Driscoll for a third of the season. It just,
18:20yeah. So you can see why, you know, Nick Caley turned down the opportunity reportedly to take
18:25the Patriots offensive coordinator job last year. And he probably looked at it and thought like,
18:30I'm, I'm just not so sure about this because I don't want to, I don't want to soil my name
18:34in a bad situation.