Houston Texans trying to mimic New England Patriots
By Josh Sanchez
The Houston Texans are looking to bounce back from a disappointing 2013 campaign that landed them the No. 1 overall pick in this year’s NFL draft. New head coach Bill O’Brien is the man given the responsibility of turning the team around, and he will be looking to use knowledge from his past coaching gigs.
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Prior to joining the Texans, O’Brien was the head coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions.
However, it is his time spent with the New England Patriots that helped to shape him as a coach and he is using some old film from his time under Bill Belichick’s wing as a learning tool for his team.
According to quarterback T.J. Yates, the Texans have spent plenty of time watching Patriots film and the offense is something that they will be trying to emulate.
“Obviously watch a lot of Patriots film and seeing how they do it,” Yates told CSN Houston. “We’re trying to mimic them right now.”
Yates is one of the handful of quarterbacks competing for the Texans’ starting job, alongside veteran Ryan Fitzpatrick, rookie Tom Savage and Case Keenum, so Yates better soak up as much knowledge as he can during those film sessions.
All of the quarterbacks should also prepare for the tempo in Houston to pick up, because O’Brien could have some no-huddle attack in his plans.
“Our view of tempo has evolved especially those of us who were in New England,” O’Brien said. “We were a huddle team in New England and we were always a huddle team in New England. But then the last few years I was there we incorporated more no huddle and different tempos of no huddle.”
It will be interesting to see how the Texans offense looks in 2014, but one thing they will need to do in order to really turn the corner is avoid having a quarterback who sets a NFL record for most consecutive games throwing a pick-six.