Ranking 32 NFL head coaches based on presidential potential

23. Bill O’Brien – Houston Texans

As with most of his peers, there’s a bit of good and bad when it comes to Bill O’Brien. Sure, he’s had some modicum of success in his brief tenure with the Houston Texans, but he’s also had forgettable stretches as well, which makes him rather difficult to rank. Ultimately, there were a few negatives that were just too hard to ignore, leaving him well outside the top-20 in our rankings.

Perhaps counter-intuitively, Houston’s defense might be the least redeeming quality about O’Brien. This is a unit featuring JJ Watt, arguably one of the best defensive players of all time, and O’Brien’s defenses as a whole have been mediocre at best. While one player does not an entire unit make, there are numerous examples of great coaches being able to build around that one stud linchpin — and in a way that doesn’t have to entail finding 10 more superstars. As such, O’Brien’s inability to capitalize on once-in-a-generation talent doesn’t bode well for how he’d handle the unrivaled brain trust that is the West Wing.

While O’Brien may be a solid public presence that doesn’t reflect anything egregiously wrong or offputting, he’s not exactly the type of guy you imagine when you think of a dyed-in-the-wool leader. He’s just a bit too vanilla in that regard, making for enough of a mitigating factor to put him in the lower echelon of our rankings.

Next: No. 22 Dirk Koetter