Quotes: Head Coach Bill O'Brien [Texans, NFL]

Houston Texans ^ | 3-25-14 | n/a

[FlJoePa]

Very long interview with O'Brien that Texans fans will certainly want to read - especially w/ regard to the draft. Hard to read him, but I get the feeling that if they draft Johnny Football, it will be an upper management decision, not a Bill O'Brien decision.

I obviously liked a few of his remarks about Penn State as well.

[FlJoePa]

On the gap between the college and pro game for quarterbacks:

“There’s a big gap, and I’m just speaking for what we do offensively. We ask the quarterback to do a lot of different things pre-snap; direct the protection, direct the running game, get us from a pass to a run or a run to a pass all within the play clock parameters. We ask our quarterback to understand defensive alignments, almost like a coach on the field. I think a lot of the college quarterbacks, just because of the time limits, it’s not because of the coaching, the coaching is great in college, you can only get the guys for 15 to 20—they say the 20-hour rule but you really don’t even have them for 20 hours because, at least at Penn State, those guys went to class all the time. So you can’t really teach them everything they need to know about the position."

On if it was harder to leave Penn State because of the circumstances surrounding the school and football program:

“Yeah. One thing that I did there, was I always tried to be very honest with them. Last year, when I interviewed with a couple pro teams, I came back to Penn State and I told the them, to the kids there, I said, ‘I love pro football but I really enjoy coaching you guys and I’m staying.’ So I think the kids there, they really respected our staff, our honest and the night that I took the Houston job, I called every kid from like 11:30 at night until 4 in the morning. It was tough. That was a tough deal because we were very attached for the reasons—everybody stuck together, it was a tough time, we won some games. We won some games that no one could believe we won, beating someone with 40 scholarship kids. So we owe a lot to those kids. But those kids, kids are resilient and they’ve got a good coach there now, James Franklin. I think they’ll be fine.”

On what motivated him to not leave Penn State without talking to his players:

“It was during Christmas break and because of the bowl ban, which was ridiculous, the fact that there is a bowl ban at Penn State, is ridiculous, but because of the bowl ban, we were on Christmas break. We weren’t going to a bowl. I wish I could have had a team meeting because what I would have done, I would have explained it to them face-to-face. But we couldn’t, so I called them. I didn’t ever want to be somebody that just rode off in the middle night and never said a word. I mean, I love those kids and had a great relationship with all those guys. I don’t know if I reached every one of them but I at least left a message for all of them.”