In The Loop's John P. Lopez, Reginald Adetula and Figgy Fig react to the latest ESPN report of how former Texans offensive coordinator failed to connect with players before he was fired.
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00:00Man, an interesting piece about a very insightful piece by DJ
00:04Bien-Ami at ESPN. I think they came through on Saturday, maybe
00:07if I'm if my memory serves me, where he was kind of going
00:11through and looking at Bobby Slowick's time, right? The
00:15predictability and lack of adjustments that doomed Bobby
00:18Slowick and the Texans. A really interesting piece,
00:21obviously sourced very well by DJ Bien-Ami about this team and
00:25its offense, particularly last year, but under his tenure, and
00:30of course, Bobby Slowick now on to, you know, working with as a
00:33as a senior passing game coordinator of sorts with the
00:37with the Miami Dolphins. But you know, moves on from here. And of
00:41course, we always say it, man, when somebody moves on, then you
00:44get a little bit more of a flow of information of what actually
00:46happened, people feel a little bit more comfortable telling
00:48you. And I think we got some really insightful stuff in this
00:52piece. And it feels like it moved you in a very particular
00:55way. Yeah, I've been trying y'all, you know, listening to
00:57this show the last few weeks, I've been trying to like, say,
01:00okay, let's temper the bash on Bobby stuff. I'm not gonna try
01:05anymore. Oh, wow. Oh, I say it to his face. I gave the man the
01:12benefit of the doubt. You know, I'm like, everybody does that.
01:14Oh, he's gone now like, oh, we played an uptempo basketball
01:17style. Now we're gonna slow it down. Oh, of course you are
01:19because that sucked, you know, or he was a disciplinarian. Now
01:23we're gonna be more player friendly. Of course you are
01:24because that's how people just automatically, you know, default
01:28to, yeah, that guy was awful. I'm not going to defend him
01:30anymore. Because it seems like that guy was really, really
01:33exactly what we what we speculated that he was. And that
01:36was not very flexible. Certainly not very adaptable to to the
01:42players. Because sources around the league and in that building
01:46and a player, you know, have flat out said, a lot of times
01:50the anonymous quotes, you sort of like, we'll see, you know, I
01:54believe it. I believe that was a strong player. I mean, a player
01:57who stated a strong opinion, when they said, I don't think we
02:01had a true identity of what the bleep we wanted to do. Yeah,
02:04so that's not, you know, that's not just the
02:09sort of like backhanded insult. No, that's direct, right? No.
02:12And I mean, these are things that you could see in that
02:15various people who, you know, cover the scene and watch the
02:18team discussed over that time period. It's just it's
02:20interesting to get like that interior sourcing via DJB enemy
02:25and ESPN to kind of confirm that that's what they felt in the
02:29building. I think that these things can be insightful also
02:31and helpful. Alright, what were they feeling? Right? Or did they
02:34believe in this and then ultimately, you know, just move
02:37on? Or did you see things and I mean, some of some of the quotes
02:40in a segment I like to call reading, we simply weren't good
02:43enough offensively as team source told ESPN, we had all
02:46season to make adjustments and improvements. And it never
02:48happened, which that is a hugely damning thing about this
02:53team. And if you could see it again, like you could see it
02:55time and time again, we didn't see real adjustments until real
02:57late in the season when it's fair to assume that somebody
03:00stepped in and forced those adjustments to be had. Otherwise,
03:03you were in the same place doing the same thing and not seeing
03:06results. And then ultimately, you mentioned that a player told
03:08ESPN quote, I don't think we had a true identity of what the
03:11bleep we wanted to do. And those like those might be the biggest
03:15indictments. And of course, those are the things that I think
03:17people latched on to most from this article. And there's a lot
03:21more in there that I found to be interesting, right? And there's
03:23more quotes that I'll read. But more importantly, like, what is
03:26that then? What does that then do for you in spinning this
03:29forward, right? And trying to make this a positive because it
03:31does feel like in hiring Nick Caley, they found somebody to
03:34at least address those things in particular. Well, one of those
03:36things because I feel like the idea of adjustments feels like
03:39something that Nick Caley will do. I mean, we heard similar
03:42things in his opening press conference, I will say we don't
03:45really have a great idea that there's going to be a solid I
03:49because right now at a very early juncture of you know, his
03:54tenure as the office coordinator, we haven't really
03:56gotten anything near concrete on what this offense will look like,
03:59which is fair. However, it is a space to watch as we go through.
04:03No, we haven't. But you know, we talked about the we didn't know
04:06what the bleep we wanted to do quote, and that's the one that's
04:08grabbing the headlines. The second one you read is the one
04:11that really opened my eyes to okay, everything that I'm not
04:15going to temper anything when it comes to Bobby, he was, he
04:17was inflexible, rigid. And frankly, when they say, you
04:22know, we had all season to make adjustments and improvement and
04:25it never happened. That tells me that CJ Stroud was in the
04:30middle of it, because everything trickles down from the
04:32quarterback. I find it almost impossible to believe now that
04:35CJ Stroud at some point when he was getting pummeled, didn't say
04:39Hey, what if we did this, you know, and and on top of that,
04:44coaches, you know, I think it's a very big tell that Cole
04:48Popovich is still on this on this coaching staff. Because a
04:53lot of times if it was just a complete fail offensively,
04:56everybody would have been, you know, replaced. The fact that
04:59they left Cole Popovich tells me that at least one coach him, and
05:03I'm speculating, but him tried to get Bobby slow it to block a
05:08different way to approach the run game or protections a
05:11different way. And he didn't do it. The fact that he said, we
05:15didn't make all season to make adjustments and improvements,
05:17and it never happened. That points directly to Bobby Slowick
05:20and directly to not being flexible and listening to
05:23people. Yeah. And speaking towards the idea of not making
05:26adjustments, right? I think that there was a lot of things that
05:30were here, including a player saying when teams would take
05:32away what we wanted to do, we just didn't have answers for it.
05:36That is a huge that is a huge indictment, right? There's not
05:39really a great reason for you to have a big brain if that brain
05:42does not give you other answers. And now I think that that some
05:44of that is indicative of being inexperienced, like you don't
05:46have the experience to call upon to say, okay, well, in various
05:49different circumstances, these things have worked. So I will go
05:51to those places. But it is problematic that it did not feel
05:54like you did not have answers. How about this when it comes to
05:57and this was something I think you were strong on another
05:59another excerpt. Stroud wasn't allowed to change protections at
06:02the line of scrimmage, often in Slowick's offense. It was the
06:05center's responsibility. A lot of the calls were considered
06:07basic, according to team source sources, according to a team
06:11source, I should say, as simple as having three offensive linemen
06:14zone blocking one side while the other backside blockers were one
06:17on one in protection against backside rushes. But the lack of
06:19communication within those blocking plans versus stunts led
06:22to free rushes, which is why Stroud faced 52 unblocked
06:26pressures, which was the second most in the NFL, right. And then
06:28of course, Strosser's approach wasn't easy for some players
06:30either, according to a team source as he struggled to
06:33connect with the offensive line. But the woes weren't all on
06:36Slowick or Strosser. Sometimes the players just failed to
06:38execute. And that last part we agree with. But going back to
06:41the first part about the idea of like, hey, the protections at
06:44the line and it being simple, and they're not being
06:47communication within it, like that is so damning.
06:49He treated CJ Stroud from what I can gather and from what we've
06:53heard and speculated about on this show for the last few
06:55weeks, is he treated CJ Stroud like a high school quarterback.
06:59No, you do it this way. Here's your first read, here's the
07:02second we read, etc. And that's not how you should treat a
07:06quarterback like CJ Stroud. And in fact, this holds me
07:10encouraging to me, because there's no way that Nick Kaley
07:14is coming in and saying, oh, yeah, we're going to do that.
07:16We're not going to trust the line. We're not going to change
07:18our blocking assignments. We're not going to trust CJ Stroud to
07:22help with protections and such. It's encouraging because I feel
07:25like he's going to get with CJ Stroud or the quarterback coach
07:28or whomever and say, listen, we're listening to you now. Your
07:32voice is going to be heard and we're going to allow you to do
07:35this, this and this. It's actually an encouraging thing.
07:37But boy, I'm done defending Bobby Slowick. It seems like
07:41it's pretty obvious.
07:41Yeah. And I feel like that's a good way of looking at it. And
07:44of course, if we're willing to take Nick Kaley at his word,
07:46which I imagine we probably are, especially at this early
07:48juncture, it seems like again, player focused approach, you
07:51know, it's going to be not focusing a square peg into a
07:54round hole. It seems like very much a lot of what he said will
07:58combat kind of these things. And so it was really insightful to
08:00kind of get some real confirmation from the interior
08:04of what this is looking like. How do you feel about this,
08:06John, though, before we move on from 7-1-3? I put a lot of this
08:08blame on the head coach. Hold D'Amico accountable, too. He
08:14knew he was who he was, and the character not a good sign. I
08:18don't know that this speaks necessarily fully to Bobby's
08:21character. I feel like that might be a bridge too far. But I
08:24think that, yeah, D'Amico probably has a level of
08:26accountability to be held on allowing this kind of to
08:29operate in the way that it did. But how much is there to be said
08:32for letting that man do what he wants to do as that being while
08:36he's in that position, and then judging him accordingly when you
08:38get to the place?
08:39I think D'Amico would tell you his biggest mistake was he just
08:43trusted Bobby Slower. And I don't see that happening again.
08:47I could see his head in some of these early week meeting rooms a
08:52lot more. Asking coaches and assistant coaches, you know,
08:56what do you think we're doing, you know, being having a better
08:59communication, because let's keep let's keep in mind, he's
09:01the defensive coordinator with Matt Burke. And I'm sure he
09:04spent a lot of time on the defensive side. Yeah, but I
09:06mean, but that's not a job as head coach. If you want to be a
09:10defensive coordinator, that's cool. The responsibility
09:12ultimately still falls all the way around.
09:14I think you're going to see a lot from D'Amico this year
09:16because now it's like he's caught. I think he's called in
09:20the plays on the on defense and all that stuff. He got a lot of
09:23hand in the defensive stuff. But now you kind of got to overlook
09:27everything now.
09:28I think D'Amico will tell you that I think that's going to be
09:30the biggest change.
09:30Yeah, so we're gonna we should see what D'Amico really is as a
09:34head coach overlooking everything rather than I'm gonna
09:37focus on the defense and I trust you to have the offense.
09:40Totally agree.
09:40And it does seem like he's accepting that responsibility
09:43that you know, the hectic nature of trying to do all these
09:45things are, you know, relatively new head coach, I think that
09:48he's learning a man there's there's a lot more to it. And
09:50there's a reason why this job is a job in and of itself, right?
09:53Outside of being a play caller. He's definitely going to have to
09:57you know, answer for or maybe not answer specifically for it
09:59in a way that I think we would talk about, but he's definitely
10:01going to have to account for how to be better at managing those
10:04things and being more, more hands on and more attentive to
10:09what's happening offensively. But I think that look, if we're
10:11willing to take the entry level press conference for what it is
10:14at face value, it seems like some of these things at least
10:17will be there will be a focus and a clear effort to make sure
10:21that these don't happen again, next year for your Houston Tech.