Bill O’Brien’s stay in Happy Valley was a short one.
Penn State football coach Bill O’Brien will become the Houston Texans’ new coach, according to multiple sources. O’Brien met with the Texans this week at his home in Cape Cod. The deal was reportedly completed late Tuesday night. An official announcement reportedly will made Thursday.
O’Brien, a longtime assistant with the New England Patriots and a protege of Bill Belichick, returns to the NFL two seasons after taking over the Nittany Lions in the aftermath of the Jerry Sandusky scandal. Despite a bowl ban, scholarship reductions and relaxed transfer rules that allowed players to leave Penn State without sitting out, the Nittany Lions went 15-9 under O’Brien, including 10-6 in the Big Ten. He was selected Big Ten coach of the year in 2012 and created a positive image for the university, whose former president Graham Spanier and senior administrators still face felony charges.
O’Brien, only 44 years old, already was on the fast track for NFL head-coaching jobs during his seven seasons on Belichick’s staff in New England and was there for each of the Patriots’ last two Super Bowl appearances. He was offensive coordinator when the Pats lost to the Giants after the 2011 season.
The Texans were the first team to create a coaching vacancy this season when they fired Gary Kubiak on Dec. 6, and they’re the first to make a new hire. Defensive coordinator Wade Phillips took over as interim coach once Kubiak was fired, and he was one of three candidates the Texans interviewed for the position, along with O’Brien and former Bears coach Lovie Smith, who did not coach during the 2013 season after being fired after the 2012 season.
O’Brien was never a long term fix. O’Brien had conversations with the Cleveland Browns last year but felt obligated to stay for at least one more year until the program got back on its feet. As a condition to returning to Penn State for 2012, O’Brien and the school agreed to an amended contract that lowered his buyout to join an NFL team from $19.33 million to $6.48 million. There had been conversations to further reduce the NFL buyout. O’Brien said as recently as mid December he was committed to staying and told recruits he would be back.
With O’Brien gone, Penn State is expected to focus on Vanderbilt coach James Franklin of Vanderbilt,University of Miami coach Al Golden and former Rutgers’ NFL Tampa Bay coach Greg Schiano.
Franklin, who was born in Bucks County, Pa. has coached Vandy to a 23-15 record in three seasons, beating Georgia, Tennessee and Florida this season. He has coached the Commodores to three bowls. Golden might have considered Penn State when he was younger and building a program at Temple, but he has navigated the program through NCAA sanctions and may not want to go back to a program that has NCAA problems of his own. Schiano was just fired by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers after two years and would likely actively pursue the job at Penn State. The North Jersey native spent six seasons on the Penn State staff as an assistant from 1990-95. He gets credit for transforming a Rutgers’ program that was going nowhere into a competitive Big East team during his 11 years on the Banks, going 56-33 in his final seven years there.
