When Bill O’Brien announced last week that he was handing over playcalling duties to Tim Kelly, the Houston Texans coach praised the job his young offensive coordinator already was doing before quickly joking that he better not speak too highly of him because he wants to keep him in Houston.official nfl jerseys cheap

In O’Brien’s six seasons with the Texans, he has continued to gain more influence in the organization, outlasting two general managers — Rick Smith and Brian Gaine — to take over the job himself. Now that he has control of the front office in addition to his head-coaching duties, it’s on O’Brien even more to produce a winning team. That has led to the realization that to be successful, he has to prioritize keeping his bright young coaches in the organization.

“[Kelly is] a really bright guy,” O’Brien said. “He’s a really good coach. Players really respect him. He just does a great job. Great knowledge of the whole offense from the passing game to the running game.”

Kelly, 33, has been with O’Brien since serving as a graduate assistant on his staff at Penn State. Although Kelly wasn’t calling plays during the regular season in his first year as offensive coordinator, he was in charge of many meetings.

New defensive coordinator Anthony Weaver is in a similar situation as Kelly after taking over for Romeo Crennel. Promoting from within is something new for O’Brien, who watched quarterbacks coach Sean Ryan move on to the Detroit Lions after the 2018 season to pursue his aspirations of one day calling plays in the NFL.

Of course, O’Brien hopes that giving up the playcalling also frees him up to take a look at the bigger picture on game day as well. At the NFL combine last week, O’Brien said he doesn’t think this will change his in-game role “too much,” but that it does allow him to focus more on the whole game instead of sitting on the bench between series with quarterback Deshaun Watson, Kelly and the rest of the offense.nfl jersey for cheap

“I think I’m not going to do probably as much of that,” O’Brien said. “I think I’ll do more about being able to focus on the whole game, how the game is being played and things like that.”

The biggest picture that O’Brien must put into focus will be how to get this Texans team past the divisional round of the playoffs for the first time in franchise history.