Nick Caley has inherited the same problem Bobby Slowik couldn’t solve, and the Houston Texans are paying for it in the most frustrating way possible: the offense keeps looking broken no matter who’s calling it.
That’s the point of the criticism here. It isn’t about whether the Texans have enough athletes.
It isn’t about whether C.J. Stroud, the running backs, the offensive line or the receiver room are suddenly the whole issue.
The argument is that the root of the mess sits with the coaching, because the job of the staff is to teach, prepare and put players in workable situations.
On paper, the roster has NFL-caliber talent. But when an offensive line full of capable players can’t create room for a capable running back, the instinct is usually to blame the players on the field. The bigger problem, though, is often the decision-making that put them there in the first place.
That’s why the change from Slowik to Caley hasn’t changed the story much at all. Slowik is dead last, Caley is bottom 5.
The issue, as framed here, isn’t quarterback play, the running backs, the line, the wideouts, injuries or the absence of a Marvin Harrison Jr. trade. It’s coaching.
That kind of failure is easy to miss from the stands or on TV. Fans see the sack, the turnover or the back running into traffic. What’s harder to spot is the play call or the setup that made the result almost inevitable.
There was a recent example cited to make that case even stronger: last weekend, Stroud became the only quarterback in NFL history to throw for more than 350 yards in an offense that scored fewer than 10 points. That’s the sort of stat that shifts the blame away from the quarterback and back toward the structure around him.
Jacob Barzilla also put together a list on X of offensive coordinator hires over the last two seasons, and the comparison wasn’t flattering for Houston. All but one were doing better than Caley, with Chip Kelly excluded because he currently has an NCAA job.
The contrast with the defense only sharpens the point. DeMeco Ryans and the Texans brass handed the defense to Matt Burke, and that side of the ball went from really good to elite. They handed the offense to Caley, and it stayed stuck in the same lane.
That’s where the conversation around Stroud gets even more interesting. In a recent Masthead discussion, the idea was raised that maybe he didn’t sign the $50 mil extension offer a few weeks back because he doesn’t want to spend his career in a crap Slowik/Caley offense.
There’s plenty of chatter about Stroud betting on himself or being greedy, but the alternative explanation is straightforward: maybe he doesn’t want to be trapped in Houston’s current offensive setup. His decision-making under pressure, his body language when things go sideways and the drop in his production since his rookie season all invite criticism. Still, the belief here is that if he were on the market right now, other teams would line up with massive offers, and several would bring strong offensive staffs with them.
Put him with a quality offensive coordinator, the argument goes, and he might already have a ring.
The other side of the discussion is obvious enough: firing an offensive coordinator in the middle of the season can wreck the year. But Houston does have Jerry Schuplinski on staff. He owns three Super Bowl rings, is viewed as a key part of Stroud’s 2026 offseason improvements and knows the Erhardt-Perkins system well.
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C.J. Stroud has actually been the more effective option in those moments, averaging more than six yards per passing play in short-yardage spots. The contrast is striking because it puts the burden back on an offense that was expected to be more balanced and more dependable when the yardage gets tight, and it leaves the Texans with a problem they will have to keep working through if they want those drives to finish the way they should. [Read more 🡒]