For a brief time Sunday, it appeared as though the Texans were down to two finalists for their head coaching job: Josh McCown and Brian Flores. Hiring Flores would be complicated since he filed a class action lawsuit against the NFL claiming racial discrimination in the hiring and firing process for NFL coaches. Giving the job to McCown would be just as complicated due to the optics of giving a white candidate with no coaching experience above the high school level an NFL head coaching job over several much more qualified Black coaches.
So, the Texans threw everyone a curveball and promoted assistant head coach and defensive coordinator Lovie Smith to head coach.