Bill O’Brien has more authority in 2020 as the coach and general manager than he ever has in his previous six seasons with the Houston Texans.
The 50-year-old is using his authority for community outreach and healing as he has given the players and coaches June 9 off to attend George Floyd’s funeral in Houston.
“We will not meet on that day, so, we will encourage the guys that are here in Houston to go to the funeral if we’re able to go to that,” O’Brien said.
According to O’Brien, he told Texans players in 2014 that he had their back, and reiterated his support for them in 2017 during the fervor of national anthem protests.
“If they need time to themselves, they can have time to themselves,” said O’Brien. “If they need resources from us to try to begin to heal, we’ve got to help them, we have a lot of resources here to do that, they will get it.”
O’Brien also emphasized that he wants players to communicate about the issues facing society, and to take advantage of the resources the club has available.
If they just need someone to listen — maybe they don’t want to talk to me about it, but we have plenty of people here that they can talk to about it,” said O’Brien.
