Official 2024 NFL Draft Day Discussion!!!
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RUMOR: COWBOYS NAMED AS POSSIBLE LANDING SPOT FOR QB MITCH TRUBISKY
January 15, 2021
By Howard Cosmell
Writer for Total Pro Sports Since July 21, 2010
Despite failing to qualify for the postseason, the Dallas Cowboys are still making headlines in January as word has it that they could be targeting a rather high-profile quarterback to back up Dak Prescott in 2021.
Bleacher Report put together a list or possible destinations for the second overall pick from 2017, and the Cowboys were the first team on that list. Andy Dalton was the Cowboys backup for the 2020 season, but he’s set to become a free agent for the first time in his NFL career, and the 10-year vet has made his intentions clear that he plans on testing the market.
That means the Cowboys could very well be in the market for an experienced quarterback, especially considering the uncertainty surrounding Dak’s recovery from the brutal ankle injury he suffered this past season.
Here’s how B/R’s Maurice Moton explained it:
www.totalprosports.com
January 15, 2021
By Howard Cosmell
Writer for Total Pro Sports Since July 21, 2010
Despite failing to qualify for the postseason, the Dallas Cowboys are still making headlines in January as word has it that they could be targeting a rather high-profile quarterback to back up Dak Prescott in 2021.
Bleacher Report put together a list or possible destinations for the second overall pick from 2017, and the Cowboys were the first team on that list. Andy Dalton was the Cowboys backup for the 2020 season, but he’s set to become a free agent for the first time in his NFL career, and the 10-year vet has made his intentions clear that he plans on testing the market.
That means the Cowboys could very well be in the market for an experienced quarterback, especially considering the uncertainty surrounding Dak’s recovery from the brutal ankle injury he suffered this past season.
Here’s how B/R’s Maurice Moton explained it:
There’s still a lot of time between now and free agency, but with the Cowboys’ quarterback situation somewhat murky, and Trubisky headed for free agency, don’t be surprised if this rumor begins to head up in the coming weeks.
RUMOR: Cowboys Named As Possible Landing Spot For QB Mitch Trubisky
Read “RUMOR: Cowboys Named As Possible Landing Spot For QB Mitch Trubisky ” and other Dallas Cowboys, NFL articles from Total Pro Sports.
www.totalprosports.com
Why would Bieniemy need to interview. All they have to do is look at his track record. Then contact Reid and Mahomes.
How much did Belicheks assistant interview please they see Patriots and if you want the job its yours. From how poorly they did as coaches you can tell there was no how are we going to turn this franchise around talk cause that never happened. You telling me Patricia walked in with a pencil and lamintated clip board and got the job from an interview yeah right. Everyone heard him in press conferences. He got the job cause of Belichek.
Just like Saban all his assistants always get rehired as HC.
How much did Belicheks assistant interview please they see Patriots and if you want the job its yours. From how poorly they did as coaches you can tell there was no how are we going to turn this franchise around talk cause that never happened. You telling me Patricia walked in with a pencil and lamintated clip board and got the job from an interview yeah right. Everyone heard him in press conferences. He got the job cause of Belichek.
Just like Saban all his assistants always get rehired as HC.
^^^^
Seattle Seahawks WR Josh Gordon suspended indefinitely again
4:54 PM ET
An NFL spokesperson told ESPN that the decision stems from Gordon violating terms of his conditional reinstatement under the league's substance-abuse policy. No other details were provided from the league.
ESPN's Jeremy Fowler reported last month that Gordon, 29, had another setback in his recovery from substance abuse as he was nearing his return to the field after a yearlong suspension. A source told Fowler at the time that Gordon was grappling with the reality that he might never be allowed to play in the NFL again as indications throughout the process of his reinstatement from that suspension were that this was probably his final strike.
The league suspended Gordon indefinitely in December 2019 for violations of its policies on substances of abuse and performance-enhancing substances. That was Gordon's sixth suspension since the 2013 season and his fifth for some form of substance abuse, according to ESPN Stats & Information research.
Gordon was conditionally reinstated by the NFL last month and was set to practice with the Seahawks in Week 16. Coach Pete Carroll said he had a chance to play that Sunday against the Los Angeles Rams. But a day before what would have been Gordon's first official practice in a year, the NFL placed him on the commissioner's exempt list after deeming that he had not satisfied the terms of his conditional reinstatement.
Gordon's tweet Friday -- "wasn't this old news" -- suggests his indefinite return to the reserve/suspended by commissioner list stems from last month's events.
Gordon was allowed back at Seahawks headquarters on Dec. 9 after completing his COVID-19 testing. He tweeted that day that he was "excited as hell to be back amongst the family like this."
When Gordon's comeback bid was halted, Carroll said he was not allowed to comment on any specifics of the receiver's situation, including the nature of his setback.
"We're not able to comment about any of it, really, other than to say that he's still coming in, working out with our trainers, and getting his work done conditioning-wise," Carroll said at the time. "We'll revisit it again next week. Certainly disappointed not to have him for his sake and for a lot of things, but we'll stay with it and we'll see what happens next week."
Asked how Gordon was handling the situation, Carroll said: "Very frustrated that he's not out here. Frustrated by it."
Gordon signed a one-year deal with the Seahawks before last season. He would become a free agent if he is reinstated by the NFL again.
Gordon's attorney, Adam Kenner, confirmed to ESPN in June that Gordon's 2019 suspension was the result of a setback he experienced after the death of his brother that fall. Gordon posted on social media on Nov. 11, 2019, the day he made his Seahawks debut, about losing his older brother.
4:54 PM ET
Brady HendersonESPN
An NFL spokesperson told ESPN that the decision stems from Gordon violating terms of his conditional reinstatement under the league's substance-abuse policy. No other details were provided from the league.
ESPN's Jeremy Fowler reported last month that Gordon, 29, had another setback in his recovery from substance abuse as he was nearing his return to the field after a yearlong suspension. A source told Fowler at the time that Gordon was grappling with the reality that he might never be allowed to play in the NFL again as indications throughout the process of his reinstatement from that suspension were that this was probably his final strike.
The league suspended Gordon indefinitely in December 2019 for violations of its policies on substances of abuse and performance-enhancing substances. That was Gordon's sixth suspension since the 2013 season and his fifth for some form of substance abuse, according to ESPN Stats & Information research.
Gordon was conditionally reinstated by the NFL last month and was set to practice with the Seahawks in Week 16. Coach Pete Carroll said he had a chance to play that Sunday against the Los Angeles Rams. But a day before what would have been Gordon's first official practice in a year, the NFL placed him on the commissioner's exempt list after deeming that he had not satisfied the terms of his conditional reinstatement.
Gordon's tweet Friday -- "wasn't this old news" -- suggests his indefinite return to the reserve/suspended by commissioner list stems from last month's events.
Gordon was allowed back at Seahawks headquarters on Dec. 9 after completing his COVID-19 testing. He tweeted that day that he was "excited as hell to be back amongst the family like this."
When Gordon's comeback bid was halted, Carroll said he was not allowed to comment on any specifics of the receiver's situation, including the nature of his setback.
"We're not able to comment about any of it, really, other than to say that he's still coming in, working out with our trainers, and getting his work done conditioning-wise," Carroll said at the time. "We'll revisit it again next week. Certainly disappointed not to have him for his sake and for a lot of things, but we'll stay with it and we'll see what happens next week."
Asked how Gordon was handling the situation, Carroll said: "Very frustrated that he's not out here. Frustrated by it."
Gordon signed a one-year deal with the Seahawks before last season. He would become a free agent if he is reinstated by the NFL again.
Gordon's attorney, Adam Kenner, confirmed to ESPN in June that Gordon's 2019 suspension was the result of a setback he experienced after the death of his brother that fall. Gordon posted on social media on Nov. 11, 2019, the day he made his Seahawks debut, about losing his older brother.
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Arthur Smith reaches deal to become Atlanta Falcons' new head coach
4:55 PM ET
Smith has served as the offensive coordinator for the Tennessee Titans the past two seasons.
Smith, 38, replaces Dan Quinn, whom the Falcons fired along with general manager Thomas Dimitroff on Oct. 11 after an 0-5 start. Raheem Morris took over as interim head coach and led the Falcons to their only wins of the 2020 season en route to a 4-12 overall record.
The Titans ranked fourth in the league in scoring during the regular season, averaging 30.7 points per game under Smith. Tennessee finished the regular season averaging 396.4 total yards per game, good for third in the NFL. The Titans' rushing attack posted 168.1 yards per game, second only to that of the Baltimore Ravens (191.9 yards).
Smith joined the Titans in 2011 as a defensive quality control coach; he then served multiple other roles in Tennessee, including offensive quality control coach, offensive line assistant and tight ends coach.
Smith also interviewed with the Jacksonville Jaguars, Detroit Lions, New York Jets and Philadelphia Eagles. The Jaguars hired Urban Meyer as their new head coach on Thursday.
Bears passing game coordinator Dave Ragone is the favorite to join Smith as offensive coordinator in Atlanta, sources told ESPN's Jeremy Fowler.
The Falcons had a remote interview with Smith on Monday before flying him to Atlanta for a second interview on Wednesday. The team also interviewed Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy, Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive coordinator Todd Bowles, San Francisco 49ers defensive coordinator Robert Saleh, Carolina Panthers offensive coordinator Joe Brady and Green Bay Packers offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett.
The Jets announced Thursday night that they had reached an agreement in principle with Saleh to be their next head coach.
4:55 PM ET
Smith has served as the offensive coordinator for the Tennessee Titans the past two seasons.
Smith, 38, replaces Dan Quinn, whom the Falcons fired along with general manager Thomas Dimitroff on Oct. 11 after an 0-5 start. Raheem Morris took over as interim head coach and led the Falcons to their only wins of the 2020 season en route to a 4-12 overall record.
The Titans ranked fourth in the league in scoring during the regular season, averaging 30.7 points per game under Smith. Tennessee finished the regular season averaging 396.4 total yards per game, good for third in the NFL. The Titans' rushing attack posted 168.1 yards per game, second only to that of the Baltimore Ravens (191.9 yards).
Smith joined the Titans in 2011 as a defensive quality control coach; he then served multiple other roles in Tennessee, including offensive quality control coach, offensive line assistant and tight ends coach.
Smith also interviewed with the Jacksonville Jaguars, Detroit Lions, New York Jets and Philadelphia Eagles. The Jaguars hired Urban Meyer as their new head coach on Thursday.
Bears passing game coordinator Dave Ragone is the favorite to join Smith as offensive coordinator in Atlanta, sources told ESPN's Jeremy Fowler.
The Falcons had a remote interview with Smith on Monday before flying him to Atlanta for a second interview on Wednesday. The team also interviewed Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy, Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive coordinator Todd Bowles, San Francisco 49ers defensive coordinator Robert Saleh, Carolina Panthers offensive coordinator Joe Brady and Green Bay Packers offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett.
The Jets announced Thursday night that they had reached an agreement in principle with Saleh to be their next head coach.
Josh Gordon Suspended Indefinitely Again By NFL
I hate to say it, but at this point, I think Josh Gordon should just retire and work on being the best Josh Gordon he can be. The NFL is a pretty terrible organization at times, but not sure how many more times we all can go through this. Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Josh Gordon has been...
blacksportsonline.com
please let that happen..come on Jerruh...pick up the phone lolRUMOR: COWBOYS NAMED AS POSSIBLE LANDING SPOT FOR QB MITCH TRUBISKY
January 15, 2021
By Howard Cosmell
Writer for Total Pro Sports Since July 21, 2010
Despite failing to qualify for the postseason, the Dallas Cowboys are still making headlines in January as word has it that they could be targeting a rather high-profile quarterback to back up Dak Prescott in 2021.
Bleacher Report put together a list or possible destinations for the second overall pick from 2017, and the Cowboys were the first team on that list. Andy Dalton was the Cowboys backup for the 2020 season, but he’s set to become a free agent for the first time in his NFL career, and the 10-year vet has made his intentions clear that he plans on testing the market.
That means the Cowboys could very well be in the market for an experienced quarterback, especially considering the uncertainty surrounding Dak’s recovery from the brutal ankle injury he suffered this past season.
Here’s how B/R’s Maurice Moton explained it:
There’s still a lot of time between now and free agency, but with the Cowboys’ quarterback situation somewhat murky, and Trubisky headed for free agency, don’t be surprised if this rumor begins to head up in the coming weeks.
RUMOR: Cowboys Named As Possible Landing Spot For QB Mitch Trubisky
Read “RUMOR: Cowboys Named As Possible Landing Spot For QB Mitch Trubisky ” and other Dallas Cowboys, NFL articles from Total Pro Sports.
man this cancel culture I tells ya 
Dan Campbell, Detroit Lions coach front-runner, made controversial anti-gay remark in college
Marlowe Alter
Detroit Free Press
Dan Campbell is the favorite to be named the next Detroit Lions coach as of Friday night.
The 44-year-old played 11 seasons in the NFL, has coached in the NFL for 10 years, and is seemingly well-liked by those who played with and for him. He's currently the New Orleans Saints assistant head coach and tight ends coach under Sean Payton.
But while he was a tight end at Texas A&M in the late 1990s, Campbell caused a major controversy.
Speaking at a pep rally called the "Aggie Bonfire" before a game against rival Texas in 1998, Campbell, a senior at the time, made an anti-gay remark in front of about 40,000 students, staff members and alumni, causing outrage from some students and professors, according to a media report at the time.
After expressing hatred for the Longhorns, Campbell said he was proud to attend a university where “men like women and women like men.”
A local newspaper published an apology from Campbell in the days after the event: “I offended some people, and I’m sorry for that. It was heat of the moment. It’s not necessarily that I directed it at anyone.”
“I suffered the pain of listening to a football player tell me that A&M is NOT my university,” said Eric W. Trekell, a spokesman for Texas A&M University Allies, a support network for homosexual, bisexual, and transgendered people on the campus.
After saying nothing at the rally and facing outrage, university president Ray M. Bowen released a statement a week later, acknowledging Campbell's words were inappropriate. “The university’s position is that the university is inclusive,” Bowen said.
The incident was particularly harmful for some because, according to a university spokesman at the time, Texas A&M had come a long way since the 1980s, and had incorporated many educational programs for students and faculty members that involve issues of sexual orientation.
“This university has a history of refusing to recognize its gay, lesbian, and bisexual community,” said Trekell, noting in the 1980s, a gay-student organization had to sue the university to gain official recognition.
Dan Campbell, Detroit Lions coach front-runner, made controversial anti-gay remark in college
Marlowe Alter
Detroit Free Press
Dan Campbell is the favorite to be named the next Detroit Lions coach as of Friday night.
The 44-year-old played 11 seasons in the NFL, has coached in the NFL for 10 years, and is seemingly well-liked by those who played with and for him. He's currently the New Orleans Saints assistant head coach and tight ends coach under Sean Payton.
But while he was a tight end at Texas A&M in the late 1990s, Campbell caused a major controversy.
Speaking at a pep rally called the "Aggie Bonfire" before a game against rival Texas in 1998, Campbell, a senior at the time, made an anti-gay remark in front of about 40,000 students, staff members and alumni, causing outrage from some students and professors, according to a media report at the time.
After expressing hatred for the Longhorns, Campbell said he was proud to attend a university where “men like women and women like men.”
A local newspaper published an apology from Campbell in the days after the event: “I offended some people, and I’m sorry for that. It was heat of the moment. It’s not necessarily that I directed it at anyone.”
“I suffered the pain of listening to a football player tell me that A&M is NOT my university,” said Eric W. Trekell, a spokesman for Texas A&M University Allies, a support network for homosexual, bisexual, and transgendered people on the campus.
After saying nothing at the rally and facing outrage, university president Ray M. Bowen released a statement a week later, acknowledging Campbell's words were inappropriate. “The university’s position is that the university is inclusive,” Bowen said.
The incident was particularly harmful for some because, according to a university spokesman at the time, Texas A&M had come a long way since the 1980s, and had incorporated many educational programs for students and faculty members that involve issues of sexual orientation.
“This university has a history of refusing to recognize its gay, lesbian, and bisexual community,” said Trekell, noting in the 1980s, a gay-student organization had to sue the university to gain official recognition.
Houston texans fans
Jack Easterby’s Rise to Power and the Chaos That Followed
His path to the top of the Houston Texans’ front office is unlike anything the NFL has ever seen. Many from his past see him as a chaplain with a heart of gold or an underdog outsider with the tools for greatness. Others are skeptical, unable to square his relentless ambition with claims of selflessness. Two years after his arrival in Houston, those inside the Texans’ building describe an atmosphere of mistrust, a state of constant chaos and a sense that he isn’t fit for the roles he’s taken on.
BY JENNY VRENTAS AND GREG BISHOP , DEC 10, 2020
https://www.si.com/nfl/2020/12/10/e...texans-chaos-after-power-struggle-daily-cover
The film study for one Texans player suddenly required a different kind of source material.
In addition to reviewing practice and game tape, he delved into a ruthless fantasy world, seeking insight into the machinations of an extreme power struggle from the television series that tens of millions of others were watching: Game of Thrones.
He wasn’t alone. The grab for the Iron Throne was so analogous to the complicated, real-life dynamics that began to unspool at NRG Stadium last year that it had become something of a reference point among more than a dozen Texans coaches, players and team personnel, who likened the individuals at the top of the organization to characters in the TV drama.
General manager Brian Gaine was Robb Stark, the intended future King of the North, who was murdered by the end of Season 3. (Gaine would be fired after only 17 months as GM.)
Coach Bill O’Brien was compared to King Joffrey Baratheon, a hot-headed ruler prone to screaming and chopping off heads, only to be poisoned in Season 4. (O’Brien would be fired in October of this year.)
Then there was Jack Easterby, hired as the franchise’s executive vice president of team development in April 2019, a man who’d risen from low-level Jaguars intern to Patriots team chaplain to lauded character coach—before making an unprecedented shift into football operations.
Easterby, those Texans told each other, was Littlefinger, the nickname of Petyr Baelish, a shadowy and cunning operative who on TV espoused righteousness as a strategy, but sought to consolidate power through chaos and isolation and the pulling of strings behind the scenes.
For those who don't watch Game of Thrones, this might be an oblique metaphor, as well as a hyperbolic one. But the point is: A player found insight into his own workplace from a dramaseries about the vicious and unrelenting pursuit of power. “That’s why I was able to read them,” the player says of the trio of decision makers, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “I knew who it was going to be [at the end].”
Illustration by The Sporting Press
Easterby’s sudden ascent to power has generated intense curiosity and, depending on whom you ask, either admiration or scrutiny. He has not conducted any on-the-record interviews since September, leaving others to make sense of perhaps the NFL’s most polarizing executive. In response to interview requests for Easterby and team owner Cal McNair, as well as a list of 83 questions regarding the details of this story, a Texans spokesperson provided broad statements on behalf of McNair and Easterby (which can be read in full here). To Sports Illustrated, some called the 37-year-old a guiding force in their lives, a beloved minister and mentor who shepherded two NFL franchises through difficult times and became part of the foundation of the Patriots’ late-dynasty years, earning him a rare spot in Bill Belichick’s inner circle. Many in Houston, though, have not seen him as the congenial confidant and Belichick foil. Rather, they describe an authority figure whose leadership style sows distrust and division, at times flouting rules and straining relationships inside the building. Meanwhile, his responsibilities expanded despite questions surrounding his credentials.
Conversations with more than 40 people—current and former Texans football operations staff and players, colleagues from Easterby’s time in New England, those from his past in and out of football—provided detailed accounts of his alleged role in, among other things:
- Undermining other executives and decision-makers, including the head coach who helped bring him to Houston.
- The team’s holding workouts at the head strength coach’s house during the COVID-19 pandemic after the NFL had ordered franchises to shut down all facilities, shortly before a breakout of infections among players.
- Advocating for a trade of star receiver DeAndre Hopkins soon after arriving in Houston—one season before Hopkins was sent to Arizona in a widely panned deal.
- Fostering a culture of distrust among staff and players to the point that one Texan and two other staffers believed players were being surveilled outside the building.
When SI began making phone calls in October to make sense of Easterby’s improbable path, he quickly caught wind and reached out to a reporter, saying that he wanted to help communicate “truth and honesty.” Easterby did not return a text message, sent Tuesday, offering a chance to tell his side of the story. But colleagues who spoke to SI—many requesting anonymity, like the player, for fear of retribution—said they felt compelled to share their own truth in the hopes of opening the eyes of McNair, of whom one source said: “[He] is just blinded.” There is a perception inside the Texans’ building that Easterby won a power struggle, completing his climb. And in doing so, these sources say, the character coach brought in to improve the culture has made it worse.
* * *
Whether in front of congregations where the faithful packed into pews, behind the occasional podcast microphone, or standing before a locker room of professional athletes, Easterby likes to tell audiences that the coolest thing about sports is how “everybody has a story.” Easterby often waxed on in a folksy way about his influences, starting with his granddad (also a Jack Easterby), who became a bank treasurer and taught his grandson to take jobs seriously, to not lie and to always write thank-you notes. The younger Easterby also liked to tell audiences how he worked in the mall at a shoe store, emphasizing his humble start.
Easterby’s job in football, he would explain, was to learn the stories of everyone in an organization, come to appreciate their complexity and nuance, then attempt to stitch the stories and people together in a way that made everyone stronger as a whole. It sounded great, much like Easterby’s own story—the one that beckoned more scrutiny with each promotion. Because even Easterby’s allies, those who believe he can command an audience better than most anyone in the NFL, still wonder how he got here.
“It’s still a long-, long-shot story, right?” says one NFL executive who worked directly with Easterby in the past. “You’re not going to be the team chaplain, then, 10 years later, you’re the interim GM. That just doesn’t happen in our league.”
Easterby onstage during the Super Bowl Gospel Celebration in January 2015.
Images/Super Bowl Gospel
That unlikely ascent began on a hot July day back in 2005, on the basketball court. As South Carolina men’s coach Dave Odom made the rounds at his program’s summer camp, he noticed a young counselor who had earned the rapt attention of his campers. When the week concluded the veteran coach would invite Jack Easterby, then a part-time academic tutor at S.C., into his office—and by the fall, Easterby would be a fixture in Odom’s locker room, serving in a new role created by the coach in conjunction with a friend of Easterby’s at the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.
“We gave Jack an opportunity to bring his faith to our team,” Odom says. “We didn’t force him on anyone, but I was amazed at how many of our kids took to him. He was a counselor and a coach—a ‘character coach’ is what we called him.”
Fans couldn’t miss Easterby over the next few seasons, cheering enthusiastically and energetically high-fiving players from the end of the Gamecocks’ bench—an Associated Press beat writer even profiled him in March 2008. Odom, who calls Easterby the “seed” from which today’s character-coach trend began, says he’s surprised at where that young camp counselor ended up 15 years later “only because the NFL is such a closed-door business.”
Easterby was well-liked, even loved, by most at South Carolina. There he earned the ear of Eric Hyman, the Gamecocks’ athletic director from 2005 to ’12. Hyman echoes Odom, saying Easterby was years ahead of the now-pervasive trend toward holistic care and mental health for athletes, acting as an all-around problem-solver. “He was sort of like an ombudsman,” Hyman says. But the unprecedented character coach role sometimes put Easterby’s short-term responsibilities and long-term goals in conflict. He was expected to serve the role of a selfless team chaplain, but he was also a young assistant who understood what he had to do to get ahead: Altruism and ambition don’t always sync. One lower-level athletic department staffer during Easterby’s time at South Carolina put it this way: “When it was just us, he’d want to know how you were doing and wanted to help you in any way he could.” But if an important coach or player walked into the room, “it was like, all of the sudden, you didn’t exist.”
Odom retired in 2008, and the next coach, Darrin Horn, showed little interest in Easterby’s services. After two more seasons under Horn, the program severed ties with the FCA program and the character coach. Easterby stayed in South Carolina, taking a job at his alma mater, Newberry College, as well as continuing to work with S.C. athletes through Gamecocks for Christ, a ministry for the school’s athletes that Easterby had founded. He was active with the women’s basketball program (Dawn Staley, the program’s Hall of Fame coach, raves about Easterby) and worked with players from the football and baseball teams.
Easterby used to pop by Hyman’s office and hand out these little cards bearing wisdom on leadership. Example: a picture of the open road, as seen from a driver’s seat; OUTLOOK splashed across the front; and the relevant lesson—Let your OUTLOOK be primarily focused on what’s in front of you, and let your past experience only serve as a reference—laid out on the back. Or: a picture of an open book; MOVE ON; Don’t dwell on the pages you have already read.
Hyman so loved these cards that he kept more than 20 of them.
One year—Hyman thinks this was 2008 or ’09—the AD invited a special guest to talk to the football team. The speaker, a South Carolina alum, spent 10 minutes in that meeting room discussing character and the importance of developing mental skills in addition to physical ones. The Gamecocks’ character coach was sitting near the front of the room, intently focused on the man standing before him: Texans owner Bob McNair.
* * *
It must have been a strange sight: This white brick house in the Houston suburbs, with the neatly landscaped front yard, had a row of oversize vehicles parked in the street out front and some of the city’s best athletes running sprints attached to resistance bands. After all, in spring of 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic was surging. Players lifted together on a covered back patio with squat racks and barbells that had been transported from NRG Stadium, supervised by coaches sporting team apparel; in one video posted to a player’s social media in May, none of the participants were wearing masks.
In March, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell closed all team facilities, and the league and the players union later agreed to conduct all offseason programs virtually, with no in-person interaction except for players who had ongoing medical rehab, based on guidance from medical experts. But in the weeks that followed, small groups of Texans players cycled through the home of head strength and conditioning coach Mike Eubanks, according to four people with direct knowledge of these workouts. Three of these people believe these workouts could not have happened without the approval of Easterby, who oversees the strength and conditioning department.
These sessions, even to Texans employees, appeared to at least violate the purpose of the league’s offseason COVID-19 restrictions, which were implemented to prevent teams from congregating as cases of the highly contagious virus soared nationwide. (An NFL spokesman declined comment.)
Eubanks was put in a compromising position professionally; he also had his health, as well as that of the players, their families and their friends, put at risk. (The Texans did not make Eubanks available for an interview.)
The group training continued for several weeks, until early June, when numerous Texans players tested positive for COVID-19 and the team shut down the workouts in response, these sources said. The league was not conducting contact tracing at the time, and it’s impossible to discern exactly how many positive tests resulted from these workouts, but there was concern among the Texans that these team-sanctioned gatherings had played a role in spreading the virus. (Around the time of this outbreak, some of the players who took part in these workouts also attended the funeral for George Floyd, the former Houston resident killed by police in Minneapolis, alongside a larger contingent from the organization, requiring more people to get tested and quarantine.) During this part of the NFL calendar, teams did not have to report positive tests to the league or place players on the COVID-19 list; these cases were not publicly disclosed.
The promotion Easterby received in January, to executive vice president of football operations, reflected the wide-ranging authority he’d gained since being hired nine months earlier. The Texans’ football operations were divided into what they called “subprograms.” O’Brien handled coaching and had final say on the roster. In addition to strength and conditioning, Easterby oversaw everything from team logistics to salary cap management to sport science, equipment, video, player development and security for football operations.
The flux at the organization’s top levels had created a growing power vacuum leading up to Easterby’s arrival in Houston. Rick Smith had taken a leave of absence as GM at the end of the 2017 season to tend to his ailing wife; Bob McNair—the man whom Easterby heard speak at South Carolina a decade earlier—died in November 2018. The team’s original owner had once been a commanding presence in the building, but cancer had taken a toll in his final years. His son, Cal, newly in charge, hired Easterby in April 2019 as a vice president of team development.
At the time, Gaine was a little more than a year into his tenure as general manager, and O’Brien, as coach, had compiled a career-best 11–5 record the previous season, with a now-healthy Deshaun Watson in only his second year. It wouldn’t be until a year later that O’Brien came under heavy criticism for personnel moves. Easterby’s role wasn’t clearly described to many of his new colleagues, but he was expected to build on the position he held in New England, setting an organizational culture and mentoring players.
Within his first few weeks with the Texans, though, Easterby began making requests of multiple football operations departments to prepare presentations or reports, seeking specific information without disclosing how it would be used. Easterby framed these asks as a learning exercise. Looking back now, many of his colleagues wonder whether he was collecting the intel he would need to run a team.
* * *
The usual names led the star-studded guest list for the Super Bowl LIII ring ceremony held at Patriots owner Robert Kraft’s Boston-area mansion in June 2019. Bill Belichick. Tom Brady. Gronk. And there were also two people no one could have predicted would make for a controversial headline soon enough: Jack Easterby and Nick Caserio.
Easterby was returning to New England two months after he was hired by the Texans, joining his colleagues turned rivals on the sprawling backyard lawn set up for the outdoor reception hosted by Kraft. Sometime after the cocktail hour started and before drivers took guests home, Easterby was seen huddled with Caserio, New England’s top personnel executive, long enough to draw attention. Fewer than 24 hours later, back in Houston, Gaine was abruptly fired; the Texans then requested an interview with Caserio. (Gaine declined to comment to SI.). A few days following the dismissal, news broke that the Patriots were filing tampering charges against the Texans for the improper pursuit of Caserio.
Cal McNair said at the time that the Texans stopped pursuing Caserio after being made aware of his contract terms with New England—a clause prohibited Caserio from interviewing with other teams—and the Patriots dropped the tampering charge two days after filing it. Easterby was at Kraft’s home as an invited guest, and it’s reasonable he would want to catch up with Caserio, whom he says he worked alongside with the Patriots. But colleagues in both Houston and New England wondered why Easterby would have created any appearance of impropriety in the middle of a bustling soiree at the home of his former boss. He and Caserio also share an agent, Bob LaMonte, who would have firsthand knowledge of Caserio’s restrictive contract.
The Texans, ultimately, did not hire a GM; instead, both O’Brien and Easterby took on more responsibilities—and gained more power. Some of Easterby’s work during his first season fell under his team development title. Austin Exford, a defensive back from Appalachian State who signed with the Texans as an undrafted free agent in 2019, describes Easterby as a positive, guiding force who helped the team’s rookies transition to the professional ranks. “He took a personal responsibility to make sure that these are the best rookies in the NFL,” says Exford, who was released from the practice squad in October 2019. Easterby held weekly meetings with the rookies, Exford says, leading exercises in which he’d ask each player to evaluate the personal circle in his life or discuss how he’d handle off-the-field situations involving players who were in the news.
Texans colleagues describe Easterby as a talented speaker, presenting his ideas with energy and dramatic flair. But some also noticed that he often speaks in vague terms. One former staffer says that when Easterby is asked for specifics about a subject on which he’s out of his depth—not uncommon considering his scope of responsibilities and limited NFL experience—he’ll artfully deflect and move on to a new topic. They watched curiously as Easterby’s responsibilities expanded well beyond the role for which he was hired—in some cases, outside his areas of expertise. As another colleague puts it, “Jack was basically doing everything O’Brien was doing, except for calling plays.”
Easterby weighed in on the handling of injuries and how the post-practice nutrition shakes should be prepared and distributed. He began giving input into the team’s daily agenda, which sometimes resulted in confusion: The schedule texted to players and the football operations division each night was often different from what was on the TVs when they arrived for work at the stadium the next day. To some, Easterby cast this as a mix-up; but others suspect his intention was to test the team, like some sort of Belichickian mind trick. Some of Easterby’s colleagues who have worked for other NFL clubs describe a constant scramble that devolved into a dysfunction unlike any they have experienced, complicating even routine tasks, such as compiling an injury report.
The character coach also freely shared with other members of the organization what some saw as unfair or inaccurate perceptions of players, including the notion that Watson and Hopkins didn’t get along when in actuality, others saw the two as close friends. Or that one Texans veteran had a gambling problem, a description with which other staffers disagreed. Last January, the Texans fired Chris Olsen, their longtime contract negotiator. Easterby subsequently took on a lead role in negotiating contracts—O’Brien publicly credited him for closing extensions for Watson and linebacker Zach Cunningham—some of which have been widely criticized for their player-friendly structures.
While Easterby aspires to be a transformational leader, guided by religion and morality, people who have worked alongside him in Houston have increasingly come to see him as transactional. Says a colleague: “If you combine a faith-healing televangelist with Littlefinger, you’d get Jack Easterby.”
* * *
The faith healer emerged in late 2011, when Easterby started commuting between his home in South Carolina and Chiefs headquarters in Kansas City. Having been introduced to GM Scott Pioli by Ryan Succop, the Gamecocks kicker the team drafted in ’09, Easterby at first paid for his own travel to gain a foothold in the NFL.
Players gravitated to Easterby, says former Chiefs quarterback Matt Cassel, especially the religious ones but also anyone who believed that Easterby wanted to help and asked for nothing in return. He could reach them in ways their coaches could not.
“He was more like a life coach,” Cassel says. “We utilized him in that manner, as more of a chaplain. He was a huge asset in that respect. [But] it was never football operations, because he had nothing to do with the football, in my experience.”
Easterby bolstered his value to the Chiefs under unthinkable circumstances. In December 2012, Jovan Belcher, a 25-year-old linebacker, killed the mother of his infant child, drove to team headquarters and shot himself in front of Pioli, coach Romeo Crennel and assistant Gary Gibbs. In the aftermath, lines formed outside the conference room where Easterby met with players and coaches. Pioli, Crennel and Gibbs in particular spent hours with him. Executives began to pay for his weekly flights into town. “I know,” Cassel says, “that he had a lot to do with starting the healing process.”
Soon after, Easterby told one friend that he had started to see how organizations functioned in pro sports, the various egos and structures in play—and how he might best fit. “That’s the first time I heard him talk about building the infrastructure of a team the right way through process management and good discipline,” the friend says. “He started diving into emotional intelligence.”
Easterby would get a chance to deploy some of those ideas soon enough. Brian Daboll, the Chiefs’ offensive coordinator in 2012, joined the Patriots as an offensive assistant the next season and connected Easterby with the decision-makers at One Patriot Place. Arriving at Foxboro in ’13, Easterby helped the team prepare for draft evaluations, on-boarded new players and held Bible studies. The door to his office never closed. More importantly, he also served as an emotional counter to the typically stoic Belichick.
As had happened in Kansas City, the Patriots would need Easterby. When tight end Aaron Hernandez was arrested and charged with murder in June of Easterby’s first year, a new team turned to its character coach for guidance. When New England traded for Josh Gordon, an All-Pro talent with a long history of drug and addiction issues, Easterby was more than an influence—he became more like a minder, the person who checked in with Gordon every morning, making sure the wideout made it to work and went to meetings. When the Patriots won Super Bowls in the 2014, ’16 and ’18 seasons, the character coach basked in some of the credit.
Easterby with defensive back Jordan Richards before the Patriots' victory in Super Bowl LI.
Jim Mahoney/AP
For dozens of players, Easterby became an essential part of their lives. After the Patriots took Derek Rivers in the third round of the 2017 NFL draft, Easterby greeted the defensive end at team headquarters with a bear hug. Rivers called his mother after their initial meetings. “You gotta meet Jack Easterby,” he gushed. Eventually, Easterby performed the wedding ceremony for Rivers and his then girlfriend, Lauren—twice. The first was small, done quickly, Easterby told Rivers, so that he could concentrate on football in his rookie season and still live with his wife, and then later a larger ceremony in the offseason. One year, Easterby invited Rivers, offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels and their families to celebrate Easter at his home, complete with an egg hunt and a Wiffle ball contest.
Many who worked for or with the Patriots during Easterby’s tenure there saw him as something of a cheerleader, and they don’t mean that in a negative sense. Easterby was all hugs, high-fives and fist bumps. Three sources from that time in New England agree that Belichick approved of these sideline theatrics; if he hadn’t, all reasoned, they would not have taken place. “He was magnetic, and the energy in New England is the opposite of that,” says one person who saw the sideline dynamic up close. “All you need to do [to be a counter to Belichick] is exhibit a little bit of EQ, and Jack has a lot. People were attracted to that.”
Supporters and detractors say the same thing: Easterby has been able to accumulate power throughout his career because of his ability to build and strengthen relationships. In Foxboro, he was simultaneously a conduit between the players who trusted him and the coaches who wanted to better understand their players’ emotional needs. He managed a rare duality: He was sought out by most of the Patriots’ locker room and by Belichick.
* * *
It was an increasingly common sight in 2019. McNair, in his first full season as the franchise’s principal owner, would watch over practice 50 yards away. Next to him was Easterby, his newest hire and a man with whom he shared a deep religious faith.
Often, no other member of the franchise was within earshot as the two chatted. Some saw this as the perfect visual to explain Easterby’s changing role in his first year: farther away from the players and closer to the owner.
While Easterby did forge some connections, four people who worked for the Texans around this time say that he did not have a relationship with Hopkins, one of the team’s most important players. Hopkins had earned first-team All-Pro honors in each of the three seasons since Houston drafted Watson in 2017. The emerging quarterback and star receiver led Houston to back-to-back division titles in ’18 and ’19. They also shared a close bond that extended beyond their prolific relationship on the field; the players jointly held a Thanksgiving dinner for teammates and members of the organization who didn’t have family in town for the holiday.
O’Brien, who assumed the GM title nine months before being fired, took the brunt of the backlash for Hopkins’s unpopular trade, which has proved to be lopsided. While O’Brien negotiated the terms—the consensus was that the coach wanted to trade Hopkins as well—the same sources who recounted Easterby’s perceived coldness to Hopkins say it went further: They describe Easterby as the first, and most persistent, advocate for the team’s trading the receiver out of Houston. One of these people recalls hearing Easterby saying about Hopkins in front of small groups of people on multiple occasions in 2019, “We need to move on from that person,” without using his name. Another recalls learning that the Texans discussed trading Hopkins as early as the summer of 2019.
Hopkins’s trade left a void in the Texans’ offense and in the locker room. The receiver often led a call and response when breaking down meetings, calling out “Glory!” to which his teammates would respond “Hallelujah!” Watson carried on that tradition this season as a nod to his former teammate, and Hopkins agreed to a two-year extension with the Cardinals. (Hopkins is No. 2 in the NFL with 85 catches.)
Hopkins was first-team All-Pro in each of his last three seasons in Houston.
Some of Easterby’s staples weren’t as effective in Houston as they had been at previous stops. Those motivational cards from his South Carolina days traveled to New England, and then to Houston, where they were customized with the Texans’ logo. Each week, a new card would appear on players’ stools in the locker room and on employees’ desks. Members of the organization asked one another if they could throw the cards away without repercussions—at least one did. Eventually word reached Easterby: This particular tool had not resonated.
Easterby also began occasionally addressing the team on the nights preceding games, turning the meeting room into his pulpit. But some of his efforts to relate to the majority-Black roster occasionally failed him; in some cases he even caused offense.
During one Saturday-night meeting in 2019, Easterby, who is white and cites Martin Luther King Jr. as a role model, asked players to think back to when they were growing up “playing ball with Ray-Ray and Ki-Ki and them,” according to three people in the room for these meetings. Some saw the language as more of a misguided attempt to fit in—players often called Easterby a “try-hard.” But at least one person was bothered enough by what they saw as a use of Black stereotypes that they debated saying something to Easterby. (They decided not to take on that conversation with a game the next day.) A few weeks later, one of the sources says, Easterby used similar language again.
A culture of distrust had started to permeate the organization. Multiple Texans from Easterby’s tenure say they began to watch what they would say in conversations with him, nervous that the culture coach was looking for reasons to move out people with different values or lifestyles. Those worries weren’t limited to the workplace. One player was so convinced he was being followed by someone representing the team that he paid a friend to watch the dark sedan he says he observed frequently parked outside his house. He even went so far as to log license plate numbers of unfamiliar cars. Two other members of the organization shared the player’s concerns that members of the team were being surveilled away from the building. (The Texans did not respond to specific questions about these accounts.)
The image of Easterby emerging in Houston doesn’t square with his caricature in New England, where he became close with someone who doesn’t become close with many: Belichick. In Foxboro, Easterby had ascended quickly, though the responsibility he added wasn’t necessarily sent out in press releases. After Year 1, he told one friend, the equipment staff began to report to him. Year 2: the training camp staff. Year 3: football operations.
A former colleague describes this hypothetical ascension as grounded in fact, but also embellished. The Patriots have little additional training camp staff, for instance. It’s clear that Easterby did amass more responsibility—and that he did it through Belichick. Two employees who worked with Easterby say that he could speak to the Patriots’ coach in an honest way, more truthful than, say, an assistant might. It was part of the character coach’s job to say tough things, to share deep secrets and concerns. “He became a trusted confidant for Bill,” Easterby’s friend says. (Belichick, through the Patriots, declined to comment on this characterization.)
Even then, some in the building had started to suspect Easterby’s motivations. One person who saw his sideline histrionics up close says they were more show than substance: “When you see him and the big personality and how he's moved up the ladder so fast, you’re like, ‘Man, this isn't authentic. Something doesn't feel genuine about this.’ ” Others saw him sidling up to assistants. They noticed that he hired an agent who represented coaches and executives, an unheard-of move for a chaplain in pro sports. One Patriots staffer compared Easterby to a preacher at a megachurch—a man of God who stands onstage and denounces the ills of poverty, then slips out the backdoor, into a private jet. Several current and former colleagues, from Foxboro and Houston, agree that this description is accurate.
Easterby told people that Kraft, New England’s owner, had offered him and Caserio, the longtime personnel czar, “lifetime” contracts to run personnel. But Easterby intimated that he had turned down that offer, lest it look like he was going behind Belichick’s back. (The Patriots, through a team spokesperson, say such a contract was never offered.)
Belichick’s tacit approval opened doors, and Easterby was eager for an expanded role from the one he had in Foxboro. In 2018, Easterby visited Carolina, where he met with new Panthers owner David Tepper and others. He drew interest from Miami, where a former Patriots assistant, Brian Flores, had been hired as the coach. Many believed Easterby would leave for Indianapolis with Josh McDaniels, but the coach backed out of an offer he accepted with the Colts. At that point, Easterby had an expiring contract and no immediate new offers.
Then the opportunity arose in Houston—an organization with a novice owner, a new general manager and a power vacuum waiting to be filled. As Easterby’s responsibilities grew, he discouraged communication between departments that previously talked often.
According to two team employees, he made it so that many actions that previously did not need approval required his sign-off. The man who had once been known for cheering on the sidelines during games was now serious, taking notes on a piece of cardstock. He decreed that team employees couldn’t wear sunglasses during games unless they were playing outdoors and there was discernible sun. He wanted to look them in the eyes.
The loss in Minnesota, dropping the Texans to 0-4, would be O'Brien's last game as the Texans head coach.
The partnership between Easterby and O’Brien appeared to work well at first. O’Brien wasn’t at odds with Easterby the way he had been with former GM Rick Smith, and Easterby took on tasks that gave O’Brien more time for his priority—coaching.
But as Easterby continued to expand his influence in 2019 and beyond, team employees began to wonder when O’Brien would finally see Easterby the way they did. By that point, three Texans say they believed that the vast majority of the franchise did not trust the person brought in to improve the culture. Two of them estimate that 85% of the building did not trust Easterby; another upped the percentage to 90.
Even in an industry known for high turnover, many of the changes made during Easterby’s tenure sent shockwaves through the organization. J.J. Moses, a well-liked former player serving as the team’s player engagement director, was dismissed after the 2019 season, along with several other staff members. Amy Palcic, who led an award-winning p.r. staff, was fired midseason for not being a “culture fit”; the move raised more questions than answers about the kind of culture the team was trying to build. (Both Moses and Palcic declined to comment. As part of a statement provided to SI by a team spokesperson on McNair’s behalf, the owner said, “I am the one that made the decision to part ways with our GM and head coach. … I will not get into specifics about any decisions made regarding former employees of the Texans other than to say that I was aware of and approved every decision, and I hold the responsibility and accountability for each one.”)
In the meantime, with O’Brien as GM and Easterby’s influence growing, Houston began making additions with Easterby’s fingerprints on them, on and off the field. After dealing Hopkins, the Texans turned around and acquired Brandin Cooks, a speedy but injury-prone receiver who was close to Easterby when they were both in New England, parting with a second-round pick. It was a clear overpay, even before factoring in the disappointing return they got for Hopkins (a second-round pick and running back David Johnson). One new addition that staffers noticed: The team awarded an internship to a former South Carolina golfer who had gone to the same high school as Easterby; among his duties, this intern would set up in the home team’s tunnel and spin records, to the annoyance of the football team trying to get onto the field.
Just like Gaine had been isolated and fired, just like Hopkins had been traded, just like the roster had been made over, another domino would fall. Nine months removed from a close playoff loss to the eventual Super Bowl champion Chiefs, as the Texans worked their way to an 0–4 start, one player was approached by Easterby. The executive had foreshadowed a coaching change, the player told a person close to him, and asked for the player’s support when it happened. The day after a loss to the Vikings, Easterby wandered aimlessly around the office in a way that struck others as unusual, while telling colleagues that he had spoken to McNair after the defeat. Several hours later, O’Brien was fired (O’Brien, through his agent, declined multiple requests for comment).
* * *
Over the years, from Kansas City to Foxboro to Texas, Easterby and his wife, Holly, stayed in touch with many of the people he’d mentored at South Carolina.
The couple offered life counseling and helped many get started in careers in and out of sports; Jack presided over several weddings. SI reached out to more than a dozen of Easterby’s connections from Columbia, and along with glowing reviews, many—unprompted and in strikingly similar language—concluded conversations by admonishing the media in general for stories about Easterby that were “untrue,” encouraging SI to present the truth.
With his growing profile came growing scrutiny over Easterby’s past. In October, Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio, a persistent critic, wrote about discrepancies in Easterby’s public résumé. At the time, a Texans spokesperson dismissed the piece, explaining that there was a “meaningless oversight in a bio from an entry-level position in Jacksonville 16 years ago. ... His employment paperwork was accurate with the correct description of his internship.”
At least partially fueling the controversy is the lack of definition for Easterby’s job during Jacksonville’s 2004 training camp. He landed an internship thanks to a connection with Steven Drummond, a South Carolina alum and now the Panthers’ VP of communications and external affairs, who was working in the Jaguars’ PR department at the time. The two met through Young Life, the religious mentoring organization, when Easterby was in 10th grade.
Easterby roamed that summer, interacting with players in the locker room and stopping by offices in different departments—p.r., salary cap management, football operations. “He didn’t stick to whatever job he had,” says one ex-Jaguars staffer who didn’t take issue with the roaming. “He was all over the building, trying to do other people’s jobs.” (The Jaguars declined comment when asked to provide clarity on Easterby’s role.)
In media reports, Easterby has said that during that time he was “in the ticket office,” or “in football operations to work with the salary cap,” or that he worked “mainly on salary cap matters” or “in salary cap administration.”
Meanwhile, starting with his arrival as South Carolina’s character coach, his public-facing bio morphed.
The idea of a 21-year-old serving as “the assistant director of football operations” for one of the NFL’s 32 franchises is incredible, bordering on fantastical. And yet that specific language lasted all the way to the Texans’ 2019 media guide. The Patriots explained that all media guide bios are provided to each player and staff member individually for approval and have emails confirming receipt and approval from Easterby in 2015 and ’16.
- In the men’s basketball team’s 2008–09 and ’09–10 media guides, his job in Jacksonville was described as “an assistant to the director of operations.”
- In his next appearance, as the Patriots’ team chaplain for the ’15 season, “an” had become “the,” and—in a Dwight Schrute–ian twist straight out of The Office—“to the” had been dropped: “the assistant director of operations.”
- In the ’16 Patriots guide, after he officially took on the title of “character coach/team development,” the Jaguars gig became “the assistant director of football operations.”
The Texans did not respond to specific questions about their editing process. Easterby’s bio was heavily revised for the ’20 media guide—and updated online—to state that he “gained his first NFL experience in the summer of ’04 with the Jacksonville Jaguars, helping in football operations and public relations.” In a statement provided to SI by a Texans spokesperson, McNair said that Easterby’s background was “fully vetted” and that the owner stands by his hiring.
As recently as November, a bio for Easterby that appeared on the website for the Greatest Champion Foundation (a nonprofit with a goal of serving athletes holistically through faith and founded by Easterby and his father) claimed that Easterby has over the years “been entrusted with over 50 head coaching searches at both power-five and mid-major universities for multiple sports.” Neither the Texans nor Easterby addressed specific questions from SI about which programs he has worked with on coaching searches and in what capacity.
That foundation’s site was down for most of the past month—a staffer explained that it was due to a redesign and migration to a new content management system—and when the new version launched last weekend, Easterby no longer had a bio. He is still noted as the foundation’s founder and chair of the board of directors, and the foundation’s latest 990 tax return says Easterby worked there an average of 40 hours per week in 2019, also his first year in Houston, collecting a salary of $16,981. A statement provided to SI by a Texans spokesperson on Easterby’s behalf reads, in part, “I have made no false claims about my experience, nor my work with my Foundation.”
Considering his limited experience in pro football, these shifting credentials can be seen as an attempt to retroactively justify the roles he held in the NFL—particularly his current one, for which many feel he is unqualified. Perhaps more off-putting: A leader, whose greatest skill is his ability to build strong moral character, long maintained a public bio that may not have been fully transparent about his past.
* * *
Easterby and McNair, in 2019.
Kirby Lee/USA TODAY Sports
Like Littlefinger became Lord Baelish, Easterby ascended to the top of the Texans’ hierarchy, his power consolidated and widespread. Not that long ago, some NFL insiders wondered whether he might become the Texans’ next (not interim) GM. But the lofty perch presented another, related problem: not how to get there, but how to stay. Instead, Easterby took control of his football kingdom only temporarily, and soon, it seems, it will be ruled by someone else.
The Texans sent that message again Tuesday. One day after SI provided the Texans with a list of questions regarding the details of this story but before its deadline for the team’s response, McNair sent a letter to season-ticket holders announcing the Texans had assembled a star-studded committee to conduct the search for the Texans’ next coach and general manager. Hall of Fame coaches Tony Dungy and Jimmy Johnson, as well as franchise legend Andre Johnson and others, will join McNair, team president Jamey Rootes and search firm Korn Ferry in the process.
In a statement provided to SI by a Texans spokesperson, McNair said he believes Easterby did “a great job picking up [GM] responsibilities in addition to his other duties,” but that he wants to “make it clear that Jack is not on our internal search committee for the next GM or head coach. ... However, I value Jack’s input and if he has firsthand knowledge about a specific candidate, I will ask for his observations and feedback.” He and the next GM, McNair affirmed, will determine the roles of all football operations employees, including Easterby.
There’s a sense that Easterby is scrambling. Confidants say that the last couple of months have been a tough time for Easterby, as he’s faced what McNair labeled as “personal attacks.” He’s trying to hang on as the roles he once captured slip away.
Those who were with him in that first season in Houston know that he’s capable of doing it. As one former Texans staffer says, it doesn’t matter what the rest of the building thinks of him. “All you have to do is convince one or two people, then isolate them from the thoughts and feelings of the rest of the staff.”
Last November, the Texans boarded their team charter for a 10-hour trip home after a game against the Jaguars in London. Mid-flight, several players gathered around a table in the galley area, playing cards and sharing laughs after their sixth win of the season. Nearby, Easterby knelt in an aisle, speaking in a low voice to McNair. The volume of the card game grew, and Easterby took his stand. He rose and made a move toward the galley, shushing the players, demanding quiet—imploring them that Mr. McNair needs his sleep. Then he returned to his post, by the owner’s side, the one voice in his ear.
The Truth Behind the NFL's Most Polarizing Executive
From famed character coach in the Patriots' dynasty to the top of the chaotic Texans: Who is Jack Easterby?www.si.com
I'm kinda surprised that no one has mentioned Dallas for a trading spot for Deshaun Watson...Dallas has the pieces, trade Dak(coming off an injury i know, but Houston is stupid enough to do it) Cooper, Elliot, and a first round pick for...that still leaves you with enough pieces...Gallup, and Lamb, and Tony Pollard, get you a TE in the draft...skill positions aren't the problem, need to work on rebuilding the defense(Vander Esch may be Sean Lee 2.0)..
How Jack Easterby Held on, and Why Deshaun Watson Might Slip Away From the Texans
After a disappointing season in Houston, those expecting change from ownership did not get it. Now, with an embattled executive fighting for his job—and winning—a frustrated quarterback threatening to leave, a staff in crisis and a fan base incensed, a franchise that finished 2020 in a state of constant chaos has invited more of the same.
GREG BISHOP AND JENNY VRENTAS7 HOURS AGO
On the eve of the finale of the Texans’ lost 2020 season, Jack Easterby preached. In the preceding weeks, as scrutiny both inside and outside the building swelled around the character coach turned acting GM, Easterby seemed to some to have been keeping a lower profile. But now, he took acting head coach Romeo Crennel’s place at the head of a team meeting.
Easterby delivered a speech that was described in multiple direct accounts as a lengthy missive intended to be rousing. The discourse centered almost entirely on Deshaun Watson, the Texans’ star quarterback at the end of a historically great—if wasted—season. Easterby, those sources said, was effusive in his praise for the quarterback, but to the dismay of many, he did not extend the same attention to: J.J. Watt, the team leader and greatest player in franchise history, who was on the verge of completing only his second healthy season in the past five years; the turmoil that engulfed the organization; the midseason firing of coach Bill O’Brien; or the future of a franchise seeking new leadership.
Easterby, in answering emailed questions from Sports Illustrated via a team spokesperson, described it as a “brief intro speech” and that “afterward, I was thanked by many players and coaches for my words.” But multiple players texted their representatives that night to describe a meandering address unlike any they’d heard. Others, one source said, left the meeting “pissed off,” believing Easterby’s only intention was to curry favor with the quarterback. Watson, if anything, was embarrassed by the show, two sources said.
Photo Illustration by The Sporting Press
Four months earlier, Watson had signed a four-year, $156 million extension that tied him to this team through 2025, when he would be 30 years old. But throughout the season, two sources close to Watson say, his frustration grew. Watson was told by team owner Cal McNair he would have input in the search for the franchise’s next general manager and head coach, and the two talked on multiple occasions through the season’s final weeks.
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Watson told McNair he wanted to create a “winning culture” in Houston, similar to his experience in college at Clemson, where he won a national title in 2016. He also sought for the franchise decision-makers to “get on the same page,” ending the division created and flamed since Easterby’s arrival in 2019. Watson even made his critiques more public, saying of the organization at his press conference after the season-ending loss to Tennessee: “There’s no real foundation in view.”
The Monday after the season ended, Watson took off for a vacation in Mexico to think about his future. What he didn’t know was that a plan was already underway—one that was not born out of his input or that of multiple high-ranking team executives, prominent consultants or the search firm McNair had paid handsomely to choose the team’s new leaders.
Rather, the person accompanying McNair on a flight out of town Monday morning was the one the owner had asserted would not be part of the team’s search committee, and whose future he said would be decided by the next GM: Easterby. They were en route to pick up the man Easterby had suggested to a Texans employee the previous week that Houston would hire as GM, Patriots personnel executive Nick Caserio. Watson, along with the rest of the world, learned of this news on social media Tuesday night. Dismayed, he decided to ponder his future poolside rather than check in with team brass.
Meanwhile, an incensed fan base was coming to terms with the fact that the embattled executive who played a major role in fueling the Texans’ current state of disarray appeared to have wedged his way into the owner’s plans. But based on his actions in the past week, according to some at team headquarters, Easterby seemed to be scrambling—and ultimately succeeding—to hold onto his role in Houston. And those working and playing for the reeling franchise are left to worry about their futures with the team, as well as wonder whether an end to the chaos will ever come into sight.
* * *
A former team chaplain turned “character coach” in New England and now Houston’s executive VP of football operations, Easterby had made a habit of asking coworkers to take his hand and pray for wisdom when making workplace decisions. He often did so with people who reported to him; some felt they had no choice but to oblige, even if this made them uncomfortable. McNair, though, strongly identifies with Easterby’s Christian faith. The two were among the last people to leave NRG Stadium the night of the season-ending loss. And, according to multiple members of the organization, with the biggest decision for the franchise’s future looming—who would lead the team moving forward—word spread throughout the building that Easterby and McNair prayed for enlightenment.
McNair said, through a spokesperson’s email, that he and Easterby had routine meetings but denied that they met after the final game. In response to a question directed to McNair asking how frequently he and Easterby pray together: “My religious beliefs don’t dictate how we play football.” Easterby, through the spokesperson, said prayer is “not a part of my daily interactions with Cal.” (The Texans did not make McNair; Easterby; Caserio; Watson; or Hannah McNair, Cal’s wife, available for interviews for this story. A team spokesperson provided an emailed list of responses to questions, including some directed specifically to Cal McNair and Easterby, to SI. Any quotes in this story attributed to McNair, Easterby or a team spokesperson were provided via email by the team spokesperson unless otherwise noted.)
The duo flew to New England to meet with Caserio the next morning. Easterby, according to multiple sources, skipped some of Monday’s exit interviews, the ones where players hand over their team-issued iPads and discuss offseason goals.
As Easterby had suggested to the employee, they did not take no for an answer, landing the GM that Easterby most coveted (a team spokesperson declined to respond to a question about this exchange). The Caserio hiring blindsided many because it did not square with the statements McNair had spent the previous month making in public. The owner emphasized publicly, including in a statement to SI, that he wanted to “make it clear that Jack is not on our internal search committee for the next GM or Head Coach.” The team also released a statement saying a star-studded group of advisers, including Hall of Fame coaches Tony Dungy and Jimmy Johnson as well as Texans legend Andre Johnson, would consult. The team now says these advisers provided only “general advice” at the start of the search and did not play a specific role in Caserio’s selection. “Nothing changed,” McNair says. “[Easterby] wasn’t a significant part of the search.”
Easterby (left) and McNair.
Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle/AP
In its pursuit of Caserio, Houston did not follow the orderly process adhered to by management consulting firms like Korn Ferry, the one the Texans hired. The Texans had announced on the team’s Twitter account each of the four prior GM interviews set up with the firm: Louis Riddick, Matt Bazirgan, Omar Khan and Trent Kirchner (the fifth, a meeting with Baltimore’s Scott Cohen scheduled for Jan. 8, was canceled after the Caserio hire).
The franchise did not publicize its meeting with Caserio. The people McNair named as being part of the search team—team president Jamey Rootes and Korn Ferry vice chairman Jed Hughes—did not meet with the candidate the team hired, the team confirmed to SI. And if the team had zeroed in on Caserio separate from the firm’s process, which included interviews with two candidates of color, they had made a sham of the good-faith efforts upon which the success of the Rooney Rule relies. A Texans spokesperson says Caserio was not on Korn Ferry’s candidate list because he was “already on Cal’s list at the start of the search. Korn Ferry had recommended Nick since 2017 and we knew their feedback.”
In Mexico, Watson was hoping to process his deep frustration, unhappy with the direction of the franchise that signed him to that nine-figure deal. He had moved quickly past the 2020 offseason trade of his favorite target and close friend, All-Pro wideout DeAndre Hopkins, the same source said. Of course, Hopkins’s departure greatly impacted the Texans’ offense. But Watson still put up MVP-caliber numbers, finishing the year with a career-high 4,823 passing yards and throwing for 33 touchdowns against only seven interceptions. As he and Watt, two of the most respected players in the NFL, walked off the field following the 41–38 Week 17 loss to the Titans, the final indignity in a 4–12 season, Inside the NFL cameras caught a dejected Watt telling the quarterback, “I'm sorry, we wasted one of your years.” Many players, according to the same sources, felt the same way as Watt—and support Watson’s doing what’s best for himself moving forward.
Watson hoped McNair would listen to him, but his disappointment went deeper than that: He’d also felt a responsibility to his teammates to use his role as the franchise QB to represent their interests to ownership. Texans players, according to one of those sources, had already decided that Watson should be the person to approach McNair and tell the owner the team needed more unified leadership and a clearer direction. Watson, according to one source close to the QB, met with McNair several times before the season’s end; they huddled almost every week. He asked the owner to include Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy in the coaching search, having heard directly from Patrick Mahomes how Bieniemy had helped steer the Chiefs’ QB onto a Hall of Fame career path. The last meeting happened near the end of the season, before Watson addressed the media. When answering a question about Bieniemy as a coaching prospect, he said: “We just need a whole culture shift. ... We need a leader so we can follow that leader ... too many different ideas and too many people thinking that they have this power, and it’s not like that.”
Watt and Watson might have walked off the field together for the last time.
Carmen Mandato/Getty Images
While on vacation Watson learned, according to the two sources, the franchise that said it wanted his perspective had not yet asked to interview Bieniemy (they would, on Jan. 12, two days after the initial interview window for Bieniemy had closed, and only after the firestorm that followed the Caserio twist in the franchise’s ongoing saga). Watson was further upset by the press conference that McNair held with Caserio, in which the owner said he had read reports that Watson was unhappy but noted he had met with Watson several times and “understood his point of view before meeting with candidates.” Watson found this response, according to another of the sources close to him, to be “patronizing.” (McNair told the Houston Chronicle in an article published Friday that he and Watson “connected over text” after the QB returned from vacation.)
On Tuesday, Johnson, the lone member of the franchise’s Ring of Honor, posted on Twitter that Watson should stand his ground, writing that “nothing good has happened” since Easterby’s hire. When Watson saw the tweet, the first for a person of Johnson’s significance to name Easterby directly, he laughed. Asked why he might find a tweet that heavy in sentiment funny, one of the people close to Watson says, “He just wants out.” Then Watson watched the Houston Rockets play Tuesday night—when he posed for a photo with Johnson, which Johnson posted to his Instagram page, reiterating the “stand your ground” message from hours earlier. Only this time, Watson was in the frame.
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Ronnie Baker ordered from the same place he got all his signs made—the print shop that provided the FIRE BILL O’BRIEN banners early in the year. A season-ticket holder for the past 12 seasons, Baker was making the trip to Indianapolis for the Texans’ Week 15 game against the Colts. He had some extended family in the area, but he was mostly going to deliver a message via two large banners. One read: “Jack Easterby Chaplain or Charlatan.” The other: “Jack Easterby Is A Snake FIRE HIM.”
Baker unveiled his sign during pregame warmups at Lucas Oil Field.
Courtesy of Ronnie Baker
Baker, in his red No. 32 alternate jersey (second-year defensive back Lonnie Johnson), was cheered as he unfurled the second banner for a photo op, Texans players warming up on the Lucas Oil Stadium field behind him. Then, those fans were signaling to Baker to turn around—someone on the field was trying to get his attention.
Watson, Baker says, asked him to put the sign down, saying that it was “disrespectful.” Baker, sensing that the request was half-hearted, declined, telling Watson, “I appreciate what you’re doing. You’re the leader of this team, but I’m sorry. I’m over it. He has to go.” Baker lowered it momentarily, and Watson walked away. Whether Watson felt obligated to make this request or was prodded to do so, he found himself in an uncomfortable situation shortly before playing a game.
Two sources were concerned he might have been put in such spots at the behest of another member of the organization to help Easterby, something they say has been a pervasive concern among the team. In New England, where Easterby had built strong relationships throughout the building, he was able to be a conduit between the locker room and Bill Belichick. But in Houston, these sources say, Easterby has looked for others to be this kind of conduit for him. Those people might have good intentions, says one Watson confidant. “But I also think that Jack is really thoughtful about what he’s doing and I’m not sure that everybody knows they’re involved in [his plans].”
In the season’s final weeks, Easterby’s relationships with the business side of the Texans’ operations also frayed. One person was surprised to see him sidling up to Rootes, the team president, at one of the later home games, despite a relationship that many of the same sources considered frosty. “There’s something going on with Jack and Jamey,” the person who saw them told a coworker. After the season, multiple sources heard that Rootes was considering resigning. That he did not, those same sources said, spoke to his desire to fight for an organization he had helped lead for two decades. (Rootes did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)
Meanwhile, the fan base became more agitated. The #FireJackEasterby hashtag showed up frequently on social media and inspired one fan to design a T-shirt and mask with the slogan. Baker, and his signs, were also at NRG Stadium for the Week 16 home loss to the lowly Bengals. He displayed them pregame and security descended on him; he wouldn’t hand over the signs, but he agreed, as he always did, to put them away during the game.
When Baker left to get a beer at halftime he asked Ashley Reidy, a friend and fellow Texans fan, to watch his banner while he was gone. Their seats are directly across the field from the McNair’s box, and Reidy says that, as soon as Baker got up, security descended again.
“They asked if they could see my banner, and I said, ‘You can not. It’s not mine,’ ” she says.
Reidy is a Houston native whose father was a season-ticket holder for the Oilers; she has owned Texans season tickets since 2003, the franchise’s second season. And, through a family connection, she’s an acquaintance of Hannah McNair. They followed each other on Instagram.
She suspected Hannah had asked security to confiscate Baker’s banners when he got up, though her theory drew more of an eye roll when she told her husband. But Monday morning, Reidy had a direct message from Hannah’s now-deleted Instagram account: “I saw y’all on Sunday. Do you feel proud of yourself and your new friends? Y’all have zero basis for your charades. Easy to act that way when you know nothing.” And then she saw she had been blocked. (A Texans spokesperson did not respond to questions about Hannah’s Instagram account or any interactions she had with fans through social media.)
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Cal McNair became the Texans’ vice chairman in 2008, marking an apprenticeship under his beloved father, Bob, who landed the expansion franchise in 1999 and returned pro football to Houston starting in the ’02 season. Over the past decade Bob McNair’s health worsened, as he endured skin cancer and a chronic form of leukemia. In 2018, Cal took over for his father as team chairman, meaning he now effectively controlled an NFL franchise. Hannah became the vice president of the Houston Texas Foundation.
Soon after, many Texans staffers began referring to Cal by a new nickname: Tommy Boy. This was a reference to the Chris Farley comedy where his character, Thomas R. "Tommy" Callahan III, is given an executive job at the family auto plant before his father dies and Tommy generally bumbles through his attempts to keep the business running. Not all his employees felt that way. One longtime staffer called him a “good man”; another said his biggest flaw was being too trusting. “Change is hard,” McNair says, “and I accept that we haven’t handled everything perfectly. I have heard our team’s frustrations and will listen, learn and commit to being better.”
Bob McNair often leaned on several close advisers. Philip Burguières, a limited partner with the franchise who later became Bob’s vice chairman, was among the most prominent, serving in that role until 2012, when Cal McNair replaced him. Rick Smith, the team’s general manager from ’06 to ’17, also served in an advisory role for the family, before he took leave after that last season to care for his wife, who had fallen ill with cancer. When Burguières died in ’16, Smith left the next year and Bob McNair died the year after that, the sequence of events left Cal at the top of the organization without a trusted right-hand person. He never hired a vice chairman and only briefly employed the team’s next general manager, Brian Gaine. Into that leadership void stepped the character coach from New England: Easterby.
Hannah McNair, at the Texans' 2019 game in London.
Steve Flynn/USA TODAY Sports
One year after taking control of the franchise, Cal McNair made Easterby his first major hire. The new VP had been looking for an NFL home after his contract ran out in New England, and he found one in a neophyte owner who shared his faith. While players, coaches and staffers say they saw signs that the former team chaplain sought to bolster his power and increase his influence, Easterby’s sway over McNair, according to those same people, only increased. Gaine lasted only 17 months and was fired after the ’19 season. The team’s coach—and briefly de facto GM—Bill O’Brien was dismissed in October.
The relationship between Easterby and McNair was strengthened by their shared faith. The men prayed together regularly at team headquarters, reinforcing their bond. Eventually, the same players, coaches and staffers say that Easterby became the primary voice in McNair’s ear.
When SI published its original story on Easterby’s unusual rise to power and ensuing chaos for the Texans on Dec. 10, many outside the building found the details to be troubling, but few inside were surprised. If the unflattering portrayal did cause Easterby to reflect on his actions, there was no indication to colleagues. Instead, he sought to smoke out or intimidate people he believed had spoken to SI.
According to three sources, Easterby told multiple people inside the building that he had sued, or planned to sue, SI for defamation, and had therefore been provided with a list identifying all sources for that story. That is untrue: SI has not been notified of any lawsuit nor disclosed the identity of any of its sources.
Multiple people who have worked with Easterby also say that he has told people in both Houston and New England, including the McNairs, that the Kraft family, which owns the Patriots, is behind the negative press about him. Some of these people also say he has spread a story that the Krafts are investors in SI or had directly funded SI’s reporting. That is also untrue: SI has no financial relationship with the Krafts or any of their business ventures, including the Patriots. The Krafts declined SI’s interview requests for that story. Easterby denies telling colleagues that the Kraft family has an ownership stake in SI, and McNair says he does not believe SI is funded by the Kraft family.
“The [Caserio] hire made [his influence] even more clear,” says one longtime staffer, pointing to Easterby’s close relationship with Caserio and McNair’s going outside the search firm’s process to pursue him. Easterby and Caserio share an agent, Bob LaMonte, who was well positioned to direct the pursuit of Easterby’s preferred candidate.
Pro Football Talk reported a “well-timed phone call,” from LaMonte to McNair which, if true, shows how he leveraged his two clients. Easterby did not push Caserio to the Panthers as a candidate, according to a source in Carolina with direct knowledge of the search, but did give a positive recommendation when asked and said Caserio would mesh well with coach Matt Rhule.
By the time Caserio interviewed with the Panthers, though, they already had strong indications that he was nearing a deal with the Texans. In fact, only hours after the afternoon meeting, news of Caserio to Houston was widespread. While the Panthers never offered—nor had time to offer—Caserio anything more than an interview, the mere appearance of that possibility gave LaMonte the upper hand in negotiations with the Texans. McNair says he did not believe Caserio’s taking the Panthers job was imminent, but he acted quickly because Caserio was “a well-sought-after candidate and had the potential to not be on the market for long.”
Nick Caserio
Mark J. Rebilas/USA TODAY Sports
Back in 2019, when Gaine’s ouster as the Texans’ GM created an opening, Easterby, according to two sources, told confidants there was something aside from roster-building experience that he liked about Caserio: He would be coming from an organization where he wasn’t in charge, so in Houston he wouldn’t expect to run everything. Easterby denies making that characterization of Caserio and adds, “It is my understanding Nick is running things here in Houston.”
Their pursuit of Caserio back then was quickly thwarted; the Patriots filed a tampering charge but dropped it when the Texans backed off—they learned a clause in Caserio’s contract prohibited him from interviewing with other teams. This time, his hiring appeared to be possibly the last avenue for Easterby to keep his job in Houston. “No legitimate person was going to walk in with [all the Texans’] baggage,” the staffer says. “They were going to say they needed a fresh start. It’s a dysfunctional environment.”
Even the star quarterback came to worry about the franchise’s leadership above Easterby. “He’s very concerned,” says one source close to him.
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Last Friday, McNair introduced Caserio as the team’s new general manager. Easterby did not join them, but his presence was felt by anyone watching the live stream on the Texans’ YouTube feed, where viewers peppered the live chat with variations of “FIRE JACK EASTERBY!,” the social-media rallying cry for the team’s fan base.
When asked, Caserio described a “really special relationship” with Easterby from their six years working together with the Patriots. McNair added that Easterby is “very gifted in a lot of different areas,” though he didn’t specify which areas. His continued role in the organization seemed to be affirmed.
In recent days, Easterby seemed to be scrambling again. Reports about Watson’s rift with the organization sent seismic waves through Houston over the weekend, and Johnson’s tweet Tuesday afternoon was an unexpected aftershock. It wasn’t just because Johnson is a beloved franchise legend; he’s just as well-known for his quiet demeanor. Some joked that the last time Johnson displayed this kind of fire publicly was during one of his on-field tussles with rival cornerback Cortland Finnegan. But people who have worked with Johnson say his tweet was not the first time he’d expressed distrust of Easterby and believe that it was one factor in his distancing himself from the organization in recent months. (Johnson declined an interview request through his publicist. When asked whether the organization has a response to Johnson’s tweet, McNair said, “No, but we feel Andre’s passion.” McNair answered a question about whether Watson would be in a Texans uniform next season and whether he had asked for a trade with, “Deshaun is our quarterback. We handle all personnel conversations directly with our players.”)
According to multiple sources, Easterby has reached out to several players this week with a personal plea. Often through tears, he’s shared accounts of his receiving death threats and his family’s having to relocate to a hotel. He implored these players to support him to prominent Texans, like Watson, or publicly, these sources say.
“I have called players to see how they’re doing and check in, per normal process,” Easterby says. “I have not asked anyone to speak to Cal or Deshaun on my behalf. I ask players to tell the truth when asked.” He adds that, for security reasons, he cannot address SI’s question about death threats.
At least one person Easterby called did not take him at face value. And, as one longtime staffer noted, there are some people worried for Easterby’s safety and others who doubted him, which, to the staffer, reflects how his credibility has eroded in Houston and the culture of mistrust the once-celebrated character coach has stoked.
Caserio is an experienced personnel executive, something the Texans haven’t had in a while. With a six-year deal believed to be worth between $5 million and $6 million per year—making him one of the three highest-paid GMs in the league, as a first-timer—he isn’t going anywhere. He will hire the team’s next head coach. But he also must grapple with the rebuild of a 12-loss roster that lacks salary-cap space (OverTheCap.com projects Houston to be nearly $18 million above the projected 2021 cap) and draft capital (the third pick, earned with a season-ending five-game losing streak, belongs to the Dolphins). And he must manage an organization that’s well aware of his ties to the unpopular executive who brought him in, as well as the frustrated franchise quarterback.
With Watt a candidate to be traded this offseason to free up cap space, Watson seems poised to be the face of the Texans’ franchise for the next decade. If he stays, the majority of an organization will be looking to him to not only carry the team on the field, but help reset the course for the franchise as a whole, an enormous responsibility for the 25-year-old star. But if it is too late, and the organization has no choice but to trade him, the franchise will carry the burden of watching its quarterback continue his ascent in another uniform. Many who have devoted their careers to the Texans are grappling with the weight, and potential lasting effects, of these two chaotic weeks following a forgettable season.
Carmen Mandato/Getty Images
On Thursday, following Easterby’s alleged direct pleas to players and Andre Johnson’s expression of solidarity with Watson—and after SI emailed interview requests and a list of questions regarding details of the story—word spread through the Texans’ building that Easterby had a meeting with McNair. Past and present members of the organization braced for word on Easterby’s future with the team.
Instead, the answer came Friday in a report from the Houston Chronicle. “No,” McNair told the newspaper, when asked whether he would fire Easterby, adding that he did not believe he would resign. The article said that while Caserio will oversee roster-building, Easterby will handle other football operations, including “strength and rehab, medical, nutrition—anything involving the non-business side of the operation.” McNair called the scrutiny on Easterby “unjustified” and put on himself any franchise missteps.
Easterby says players had “reached out to me in an effort to support me. For that I’m appreciative but I’ve not asked them to speak to Cal on my behalf. I haven’t felt that was needed.” And, apparently, he was right.
“They got the owner to take the blame for everything,” says one longtime staffer. “Never heard that.”
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After a disappointing season in Houston, those expecting change from ownership did not get it. Now, with an embattled executive fighting for his job—and winning—a frustrated quarterback threatening to leave, a staff in crisis and a fan base incensed, a franchise that finished 2020 in a state of constant chaos has invited more of the same.
GREG BISHOP AND JENNY VRENTAS7 HOURS AGO
On the eve of the finale of the Texans’ lost 2020 season, Jack Easterby preached. In the preceding weeks, as scrutiny both inside and outside the building swelled around the character coach turned acting GM, Easterby seemed to some to have been keeping a lower profile. But now, he took acting head coach Romeo Crennel’s place at the head of a team meeting.
Easterby delivered a speech that was described in multiple direct accounts as a lengthy missive intended to be rousing. The discourse centered almost entirely on Deshaun Watson, the Texans’ star quarterback at the end of a historically great—if wasted—season. Easterby, those sources said, was effusive in his praise for the quarterback, but to the dismay of many, he did not extend the same attention to: J.J. Watt, the team leader and greatest player in franchise history, who was on the verge of completing only his second healthy season in the past five years; the turmoil that engulfed the organization; the midseason firing of coach Bill O’Brien; or the future of a franchise seeking new leadership.
Easterby, in answering emailed questions from Sports Illustrated via a team spokesperson, described it as a “brief intro speech” and that “afterward, I was thanked by many players and coaches for my words.” But multiple players texted their representatives that night to describe a meandering address unlike any they’d heard. Others, one source said, left the meeting “pissed off,” believing Easterby’s only intention was to curry favor with the quarterback. Watson, if anything, was embarrassed by the show, two sources said.
Photo Illustration by The Sporting Press
Four months earlier, Watson had signed a four-year, $156 million extension that tied him to this team through 2025, when he would be 30 years old. But throughout the season, two sources close to Watson say, his frustration grew. Watson was told by team owner Cal McNair he would have input in the search for the franchise’s next general manager and head coach, and the two talked on multiple occasions through the season’s final weeks.
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Watson told McNair he wanted to create a “winning culture” in Houston, similar to his experience in college at Clemson, where he won a national title in 2016. He also sought for the franchise decision-makers to “get on the same page,” ending the division created and flamed since Easterby’s arrival in 2019. Watson even made his critiques more public, saying of the organization at his press conference after the season-ending loss to Tennessee: “There’s no real foundation in view.”
The Monday after the season ended, Watson took off for a vacation in Mexico to think about his future. What he didn’t know was that a plan was already underway—one that was not born out of his input or that of multiple high-ranking team executives, prominent consultants or the search firm McNair had paid handsomely to choose the team’s new leaders.
Rather, the person accompanying McNair on a flight out of town Monday morning was the one the owner had asserted would not be part of the team’s search committee, and whose future he said would be decided by the next GM: Easterby. They were en route to pick up the man Easterby had suggested to a Texans employee the previous week that Houston would hire as GM, Patriots personnel executive Nick Caserio. Watson, along with the rest of the world, learned of this news on social media Tuesday night. Dismayed, he decided to ponder his future poolside rather than check in with team brass.
Meanwhile, an incensed fan base was coming to terms with the fact that the embattled executive who played a major role in fueling the Texans’ current state of disarray appeared to have wedged his way into the owner’s plans. But based on his actions in the past week, according to some at team headquarters, Easterby seemed to be scrambling—and ultimately succeeding—to hold onto his role in Houston. And those working and playing for the reeling franchise are left to worry about their futures with the team, as well as wonder whether an end to the chaos will ever come into sight.
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A former team chaplain turned “character coach” in New England and now Houston’s executive VP of football operations, Easterby had made a habit of asking coworkers to take his hand and pray for wisdom when making workplace decisions. He often did so with people who reported to him; some felt they had no choice but to oblige, even if this made them uncomfortable. McNair, though, strongly identifies with Easterby’s Christian faith. The two were among the last people to leave NRG Stadium the night of the season-ending loss. And, according to multiple members of the organization, with the biggest decision for the franchise’s future looming—who would lead the team moving forward—word spread throughout the building that Easterby and McNair prayed for enlightenment.
McNair said, through a spokesperson’s email, that he and Easterby had routine meetings but denied that they met after the final game. In response to a question directed to McNair asking how frequently he and Easterby pray together: “My religious beliefs don’t dictate how we play football.” Easterby, through the spokesperson, said prayer is “not a part of my daily interactions with Cal.” (The Texans did not make McNair; Easterby; Caserio; Watson; or Hannah McNair, Cal’s wife, available for interviews for this story. A team spokesperson provided an emailed list of responses to questions, including some directed specifically to Cal McNair and Easterby, to SI. Any quotes in this story attributed to McNair, Easterby or a team spokesperson were provided via email by the team spokesperson unless otherwise noted.)
The duo flew to New England to meet with Caserio the next morning. Easterby, according to multiple sources, skipped some of Monday’s exit interviews, the ones where players hand over their team-issued iPads and discuss offseason goals.
As Easterby had suggested to the employee, they did not take no for an answer, landing the GM that Easterby most coveted (a team spokesperson declined to respond to a question about this exchange). The Caserio hiring blindsided many because it did not square with the statements McNair had spent the previous month making in public. The owner emphasized publicly, including in a statement to SI, that he wanted to “make it clear that Jack is not on our internal search committee for the next GM or Head Coach.” The team also released a statement saying a star-studded group of advisers, including Hall of Fame coaches Tony Dungy and Jimmy Johnson as well as Texans legend Andre Johnson, would consult. The team now says these advisers provided only “general advice” at the start of the search and did not play a specific role in Caserio’s selection. “Nothing changed,” McNair says. “[Easterby] wasn’t a significant part of the search.”
Easterby (left) and McNair.
Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle/AP
In its pursuit of Caserio, Houston did not follow the orderly process adhered to by management consulting firms like Korn Ferry, the one the Texans hired. The Texans had announced on the team’s Twitter account each of the four prior GM interviews set up with the firm: Louis Riddick, Matt Bazirgan, Omar Khan and Trent Kirchner (the fifth, a meeting with Baltimore’s Scott Cohen scheduled for Jan. 8, was canceled after the Caserio hire).
The franchise did not publicize its meeting with Caserio. The people McNair named as being part of the search team—team president Jamey Rootes and Korn Ferry vice chairman Jed Hughes—did not meet with the candidate the team hired, the team confirmed to SI. And if the team had zeroed in on Caserio separate from the firm’s process, which included interviews with two candidates of color, they had made a sham of the good-faith efforts upon which the success of the Rooney Rule relies. A Texans spokesperson says Caserio was not on Korn Ferry’s candidate list because he was “already on Cal’s list at the start of the search. Korn Ferry had recommended Nick since 2017 and we knew their feedback.”
In Mexico, Watson was hoping to process his deep frustration, unhappy with the direction of the franchise that signed him to that nine-figure deal. He had moved quickly past the 2020 offseason trade of his favorite target and close friend, All-Pro wideout DeAndre Hopkins, the same source said. Of course, Hopkins’s departure greatly impacted the Texans’ offense. But Watson still put up MVP-caliber numbers, finishing the year with a career-high 4,823 passing yards and throwing for 33 touchdowns against only seven interceptions. As he and Watt, two of the most respected players in the NFL, walked off the field following the 41–38 Week 17 loss to the Titans, the final indignity in a 4–12 season, Inside the NFL cameras caught a dejected Watt telling the quarterback, “I'm sorry, we wasted one of your years.” Many players, according to the same sources, felt the same way as Watt—and support Watson’s doing what’s best for himself moving forward.
Watson hoped McNair would listen to him, but his disappointment went deeper than that: He’d also felt a responsibility to his teammates to use his role as the franchise QB to represent their interests to ownership. Texans players, according to one of those sources, had already decided that Watson should be the person to approach McNair and tell the owner the team needed more unified leadership and a clearer direction. Watson, according to one source close to the QB, met with McNair several times before the season’s end; they huddled almost every week. He asked the owner to include Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy in the coaching search, having heard directly from Patrick Mahomes how Bieniemy had helped steer the Chiefs’ QB onto a Hall of Fame career path. The last meeting happened near the end of the season, before Watson addressed the media. When answering a question about Bieniemy as a coaching prospect, he said: “We just need a whole culture shift. ... We need a leader so we can follow that leader ... too many different ideas and too many people thinking that they have this power, and it’s not like that.”
Watt and Watson might have walked off the field together for the last time.
Carmen Mandato/Getty Images
While on vacation Watson learned, according to the two sources, the franchise that said it wanted his perspective had not yet asked to interview Bieniemy (they would, on Jan. 12, two days after the initial interview window for Bieniemy had closed, and only after the firestorm that followed the Caserio twist in the franchise’s ongoing saga). Watson was further upset by the press conference that McNair held with Caserio, in which the owner said he had read reports that Watson was unhappy but noted he had met with Watson several times and “understood his point of view before meeting with candidates.” Watson found this response, according to another of the sources close to him, to be “patronizing.” (McNair told the Houston Chronicle in an article published Friday that he and Watson “connected over text” after the QB returned from vacation.)
On Tuesday, Johnson, the lone member of the franchise’s Ring of Honor, posted on Twitter that Watson should stand his ground, writing that “nothing good has happened” since Easterby’s hire. When Watson saw the tweet, the first for a person of Johnson’s significance to name Easterby directly, he laughed. Asked why he might find a tweet that heavy in sentiment funny, one of the people close to Watson says, “He just wants out.” Then Watson watched the Houston Rockets play Tuesday night—when he posed for a photo with Johnson, which Johnson posted to his Instagram page, reiterating the “stand your ground” message from hours earlier. Only this time, Watson was in the frame.
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Ronnie Baker ordered from the same place he got all his signs made—the print shop that provided the FIRE BILL O’BRIEN banners early in the year. A season-ticket holder for the past 12 seasons, Baker was making the trip to Indianapolis for the Texans’ Week 15 game against the Colts. He had some extended family in the area, but he was mostly going to deliver a message via two large banners. One read: “Jack Easterby Chaplain or Charlatan.” The other: “Jack Easterby Is A Snake FIRE HIM.”
Baker unveiled his sign during pregame warmups at Lucas Oil Field.
Courtesy of Ronnie Baker
Baker, in his red No. 32 alternate jersey (second-year defensive back Lonnie Johnson), was cheered as he unfurled the second banner for a photo op, Texans players warming up on the Lucas Oil Stadium field behind him. Then, those fans were signaling to Baker to turn around—someone on the field was trying to get his attention.
Watson, Baker says, asked him to put the sign down, saying that it was “disrespectful.” Baker, sensing that the request was half-hearted, declined, telling Watson, “I appreciate what you’re doing. You’re the leader of this team, but I’m sorry. I’m over it. He has to go.” Baker lowered it momentarily, and Watson walked away. Whether Watson felt obligated to make this request or was prodded to do so, he found himself in an uncomfortable situation shortly before playing a game.
Two sources were concerned he might have been put in such spots at the behest of another member of the organization to help Easterby, something they say has been a pervasive concern among the team. In New England, where Easterby had built strong relationships throughout the building, he was able to be a conduit between the locker room and Bill Belichick. But in Houston, these sources say, Easterby has looked for others to be this kind of conduit for him. Those people might have good intentions, says one Watson confidant. “But I also think that Jack is really thoughtful about what he’s doing and I’m not sure that everybody knows they’re involved in [his plans].”
In the season’s final weeks, Easterby’s relationships with the business side of the Texans’ operations also frayed. One person was surprised to see him sidling up to Rootes, the team president, at one of the later home games, despite a relationship that many of the same sources considered frosty. “There’s something going on with Jack and Jamey,” the person who saw them told a coworker. After the season, multiple sources heard that Rootes was considering resigning. That he did not, those same sources said, spoke to his desire to fight for an organization he had helped lead for two decades. (Rootes did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)
Meanwhile, the fan base became more agitated. The #FireJackEasterby hashtag showed up frequently on social media and inspired one fan to design a T-shirt and mask with the slogan. Baker, and his signs, were also at NRG Stadium for the Week 16 home loss to the lowly Bengals. He displayed them pregame and security descended on him; he wouldn’t hand over the signs, but he agreed, as he always did, to put them away during the game.
When Baker left to get a beer at halftime he asked Ashley Reidy, a friend and fellow Texans fan, to watch his banner while he was gone. Their seats are directly across the field from the McNair’s box, and Reidy says that, as soon as Baker got up, security descended again.
“They asked if they could see my banner, and I said, ‘You can not. It’s not mine,’ ” she says.
Reidy is a Houston native whose father was a season-ticket holder for the Oilers; she has owned Texans season tickets since 2003, the franchise’s second season. And, through a family connection, she’s an acquaintance of Hannah McNair. They followed each other on Instagram.
She suspected Hannah had asked security to confiscate Baker’s banners when he got up, though her theory drew more of an eye roll when she told her husband. But Monday morning, Reidy had a direct message from Hannah’s now-deleted Instagram account: “I saw y’all on Sunday. Do you feel proud of yourself and your new friends? Y’all have zero basis for your charades. Easy to act that way when you know nothing.” And then she saw she had been blocked. (A Texans spokesperson did not respond to questions about Hannah’s Instagram account or any interactions she had with fans through social media.)
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Cal McNair became the Texans’ vice chairman in 2008, marking an apprenticeship under his beloved father, Bob, who landed the expansion franchise in 1999 and returned pro football to Houston starting in the ’02 season. Over the past decade Bob McNair’s health worsened, as he endured skin cancer and a chronic form of leukemia. In 2018, Cal took over for his father as team chairman, meaning he now effectively controlled an NFL franchise. Hannah became the vice president of the Houston Texas Foundation.
Soon after, many Texans staffers began referring to Cal by a new nickname: Tommy Boy. This was a reference to the Chris Farley comedy where his character, Thomas R. "Tommy" Callahan III, is given an executive job at the family auto plant before his father dies and Tommy generally bumbles through his attempts to keep the business running. Not all his employees felt that way. One longtime staffer called him a “good man”; another said his biggest flaw was being too trusting. “Change is hard,” McNair says, “and I accept that we haven’t handled everything perfectly. I have heard our team’s frustrations and will listen, learn and commit to being better.”
Bob McNair often leaned on several close advisers. Philip Burguières, a limited partner with the franchise who later became Bob’s vice chairman, was among the most prominent, serving in that role until 2012, when Cal McNair replaced him. Rick Smith, the team’s general manager from ’06 to ’17, also served in an advisory role for the family, before he took leave after that last season to care for his wife, who had fallen ill with cancer. When Burguières died in ’16, Smith left the next year and Bob McNair died the year after that, the sequence of events left Cal at the top of the organization without a trusted right-hand person. He never hired a vice chairman and only briefly employed the team’s next general manager, Brian Gaine. Into that leadership void stepped the character coach from New England: Easterby.
Hannah McNair, at the Texans' 2019 game in London.
Steve Flynn/USA TODAY Sports
One year after taking control of the franchise, Cal McNair made Easterby his first major hire. The new VP had been looking for an NFL home after his contract ran out in New England, and he found one in a neophyte owner who shared his faith. While players, coaches and staffers say they saw signs that the former team chaplain sought to bolster his power and increase his influence, Easterby’s sway over McNair, according to those same people, only increased. Gaine lasted only 17 months and was fired after the ’19 season. The team’s coach—and briefly de facto GM—Bill O’Brien was dismissed in October.
The relationship between Easterby and McNair was strengthened by their shared faith. The men prayed together regularly at team headquarters, reinforcing their bond. Eventually, the same players, coaches and staffers say that Easterby became the primary voice in McNair’s ear.
When SI published its original story on Easterby’s unusual rise to power and ensuing chaos for the Texans on Dec. 10, many outside the building found the details to be troubling, but few inside were surprised. If the unflattering portrayal did cause Easterby to reflect on his actions, there was no indication to colleagues. Instead, he sought to smoke out or intimidate people he believed had spoken to SI.
According to three sources, Easterby told multiple people inside the building that he had sued, or planned to sue, SI for defamation, and had therefore been provided with a list identifying all sources for that story. That is untrue: SI has not been notified of any lawsuit nor disclosed the identity of any of its sources.
Multiple people who have worked with Easterby also say that he has told people in both Houston and New England, including the McNairs, that the Kraft family, which owns the Patriots, is behind the negative press about him. Some of these people also say he has spread a story that the Krafts are investors in SI or had directly funded SI’s reporting. That is also untrue: SI has no financial relationship with the Krafts or any of their business ventures, including the Patriots. The Krafts declined SI’s interview requests for that story. Easterby denies telling colleagues that the Kraft family has an ownership stake in SI, and McNair says he does not believe SI is funded by the Kraft family.
“The [Caserio] hire made [his influence] even more clear,” says one longtime staffer, pointing to Easterby’s close relationship with Caserio and McNair’s going outside the search firm’s process to pursue him. Easterby and Caserio share an agent, Bob LaMonte, who was well positioned to direct the pursuit of Easterby’s preferred candidate.
Pro Football Talk reported a “well-timed phone call,” from LaMonte to McNair which, if true, shows how he leveraged his two clients. Easterby did not push Caserio to the Panthers as a candidate, according to a source in Carolina with direct knowledge of the search, but did give a positive recommendation when asked and said Caserio would mesh well with coach Matt Rhule.
By the time Caserio interviewed with the Panthers, though, they already had strong indications that he was nearing a deal with the Texans. In fact, only hours after the afternoon meeting, news of Caserio to Houston was widespread. While the Panthers never offered—nor had time to offer—Caserio anything more than an interview, the mere appearance of that possibility gave LaMonte the upper hand in negotiations with the Texans. McNair says he did not believe Caserio’s taking the Panthers job was imminent, but he acted quickly because Caserio was “a well-sought-after candidate and had the potential to not be on the market for long.”
Nick Caserio
Mark J. Rebilas/USA TODAY Sports
Back in 2019, when Gaine’s ouster as the Texans’ GM created an opening, Easterby, according to two sources, told confidants there was something aside from roster-building experience that he liked about Caserio: He would be coming from an organization where he wasn’t in charge, so in Houston he wouldn’t expect to run everything. Easterby denies making that characterization of Caserio and adds, “It is my understanding Nick is running things here in Houston.”
Their pursuit of Caserio back then was quickly thwarted; the Patriots filed a tampering charge but dropped it when the Texans backed off—they learned a clause in Caserio’s contract prohibited him from interviewing with other teams. This time, his hiring appeared to be possibly the last avenue for Easterby to keep his job in Houston. “No legitimate person was going to walk in with [all the Texans’] baggage,” the staffer says. “They were going to say they needed a fresh start. It’s a dysfunctional environment.”
Even the star quarterback came to worry about the franchise’s leadership above Easterby. “He’s very concerned,” says one source close to him.
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Last Friday, McNair introduced Caserio as the team’s new general manager. Easterby did not join them, but his presence was felt by anyone watching the live stream on the Texans’ YouTube feed, where viewers peppered the live chat with variations of “FIRE JACK EASTERBY!,” the social-media rallying cry for the team’s fan base.
When asked, Caserio described a “really special relationship” with Easterby from their six years working together with the Patriots. McNair added that Easterby is “very gifted in a lot of different areas,” though he didn’t specify which areas. His continued role in the organization seemed to be affirmed.
In recent days, Easterby seemed to be scrambling again. Reports about Watson’s rift with the organization sent seismic waves through Houston over the weekend, and Johnson’s tweet Tuesday afternoon was an unexpected aftershock. It wasn’t just because Johnson is a beloved franchise legend; he’s just as well-known for his quiet demeanor. Some joked that the last time Johnson displayed this kind of fire publicly was during one of his on-field tussles with rival cornerback Cortland Finnegan. But people who have worked with Johnson say his tweet was not the first time he’d expressed distrust of Easterby and believe that it was one factor in his distancing himself from the organization in recent months. (Johnson declined an interview request through his publicist. When asked whether the organization has a response to Johnson’s tweet, McNair said, “No, but we feel Andre’s passion.” McNair answered a question about whether Watson would be in a Texans uniform next season and whether he had asked for a trade with, “Deshaun is our quarterback. We handle all personnel conversations directly with our players.”)
According to multiple sources, Easterby has reached out to several players this week with a personal plea. Often through tears, he’s shared accounts of his receiving death threats and his family’s having to relocate to a hotel. He implored these players to support him to prominent Texans, like Watson, or publicly, these sources say.
“I have called players to see how they’re doing and check in, per normal process,” Easterby says. “I have not asked anyone to speak to Cal or Deshaun on my behalf. I ask players to tell the truth when asked.” He adds that, for security reasons, he cannot address SI’s question about death threats.
At least one person Easterby called did not take him at face value. And, as one longtime staffer noted, there are some people worried for Easterby’s safety and others who doubted him, which, to the staffer, reflects how his credibility has eroded in Houston and the culture of mistrust the once-celebrated character coach has stoked.
Caserio is an experienced personnel executive, something the Texans haven’t had in a while. With a six-year deal believed to be worth between $5 million and $6 million per year—making him one of the three highest-paid GMs in the league, as a first-timer—he isn’t going anywhere. He will hire the team’s next head coach. But he also must grapple with the rebuild of a 12-loss roster that lacks salary-cap space (OverTheCap.com projects Houston to be nearly $18 million above the projected 2021 cap) and draft capital (the third pick, earned with a season-ending five-game losing streak, belongs to the Dolphins). And he must manage an organization that’s well aware of his ties to the unpopular executive who brought him in, as well as the frustrated franchise quarterback.
With Watt a candidate to be traded this offseason to free up cap space, Watson seems poised to be the face of the Texans’ franchise for the next decade. If he stays, the majority of an organization will be looking to him to not only carry the team on the field, but help reset the course for the franchise as a whole, an enormous responsibility for the 25-year-old star. But if it is too late, and the organization has no choice but to trade him, the franchise will carry the burden of watching its quarterback continue his ascent in another uniform. Many who have devoted their careers to the Texans are grappling with the weight, and potential lasting effects, of these two chaotic weeks following a forgettable season.
Carmen Mandato/Getty Images
On Thursday, following Easterby’s alleged direct pleas to players and Andre Johnson’s expression of solidarity with Watson—and after SI emailed interview requests and a list of questions regarding details of the story—word spread through the Texans’ building that Easterby had a meeting with McNair. Past and present members of the organization braced for word on Easterby’s future with the team.
Instead, the answer came Friday in a report from the Houston Chronicle. “No,” McNair told the newspaper, when asked whether he would fire Easterby, adding that he did not believe he would resign. The article said that while Caserio will oversee roster-building, Easterby will handle other football operations, including “strength and rehab, medical, nutrition—anything involving the non-business side of the operation.” McNair called the scrutiny on Easterby “unjustified” and put on himself any franchise missteps.
Easterby says players had “reached out to me in an effort to support me. For that I’m appreciative but I’ve not asked them to speak to Cal on my behalf. I haven’t felt that was needed.” And, apparently, he was right.
“They got the owner to take the blame for everything,” says one longtime staffer. “Never heard that.”
Two Weeks of Chaos for Deshaun Watson and the Texans
An embattled exec scrambled to keep his job, and a frustrated quarterback could slip away as the franchise’s future hangs in the balance.
www.si.com
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These Jets fans KNOW they new coach is Muslim right?
Oh I LOVE it.
Oh I LOVE it.
fohRams went up to Seattle to whoop some ass. I like their chances in GB. (I’m getting tired of the AR dick riding too)
McVay better be glad for that false start cause he was about to make a mistake
Where in the world did you find this?
Anybody but the Packers. You know the drill.
They got one of these for every teamWhere in the world did you find this?
Where in the world did you find this?
Dude on the Bears board has it as his sig
...I can't stand that dude Tunyon
Tonyan's feelin' himself. He's grinding this season.Dude on the Bears board has it as his sig
...I can't stand that dude Tunyon
LA is gone just rack up the penalties.