The Houston Texans promoted tight ends coach Tim Kelly to offensive coordinator in January. Previously, coach Bill O’Brien had doubled up as the offensive coordinator since 2017 along with being play-caller.
While the expectation is that Kelly, the new offensive coordinator, will ipso facto become the new play-caller, O’Brien indicated they still have not made that decision.
“I think it’s so early right now to really talk about any of that,” O’Brien told reporters at the NFL combine in Indianapolis. “We’re really concentrated on the draft. We’re concentrated on what we want to do. We have a nine-week offseason program that starts April 15.”
O’Brien acknowledged that every play-caller “starts somewhere.” How they could decide whether or not to give Kelly full blown play-calling duties could be influenced by his ability to call plays during organized team activities in May.
Said O’Brien: “Where does the process start as a playcaller? It starts with obviously having a great understanding of your system, having a great understanding of defense, which Timmy does. And then it starts with how much scripting do you want to give them? Will he call the plays in practice? Who will translate the play from the script, or even off the script, to the quarterback in practice? There’s a lot of ways you can train a playcaller.”
Kelly has been a member of the Texans coaching staff since 2014 when he started out as an offensive quality control coach, a position he held for three seasons until being promoted to tight ends coach in 2017. After five seasons within O’Brien’s offense and 23 regular season games with quarterback Deshaun Watson under center, Kelly should have enough of a feel for the offense.
“Until you’re actually doing it in a game, it’s exactly what you said,” said O’Brien. “You have to get a feel for it. You have to get a feel for your team. You have to understand how the game’s being played, how you’re being played defensively and things like that. Those are all things that we will work through but we’re real early in that process.”
