If the Texans hire Bobby Slowik,another run back of Nillls might be the best option over drafting a QB

Let me start by saying that this is just a theory to kind of play devil’s advocate for Mills, but I do think it’s more than plausible enough to hold some weight.

We all know that the offense sucked this year. Mills is not immune to taking blame in that. HOWEVER, there’s a serious glaring issue that we discuss separately, but never in tandem with Mills’s performance. And that issue was the offense as a whole, specifically Pep Hamilton.I remember in training camp when we made Pep OC that he and Mills said that the schemes would be diverse and varied to take advantage of matchups and defensive weaknesses. This very clearly didn’t happen. We ran a lot of multiple TE sets and some of our best plays on the ground we’re out of of X2 personnel (Pierce and Hairston together) and that seemed to be the extent of our offense. There was little to no variation in formations (aside from that all spread thing we screwed up more than it was successful), or route combination variation.

Now flip to Slowik, who is currently the Niners pass game coordinator. Obviously Shanahan has a lot to do with what they are and what they do on offense, but the formations, the splits, the motion that they use create legitimate mismatches and can let guys like Brock Purdy be instantly successful. They quite literally design ways to get their best guys the ball when they need it. There’s a lot of parallels to be made with the two teams. Two very athletic tackles in a Trent and Tunsil, a bigger threat in Aiyuk/Nico, a dynamic running back in CMC/Pierce, good fullback play from Juscyczyk/Hairston and good pulling guards in Brendel and Kenyon Green. It’s not out of the question to think that Mills can be as serviceable as Purdy/JimmyG in that system. It’s not like there’s a giant chasm in talent between them. Hiring Slowik could allow DeMeco to get a defensive cornerstone in the draft at 1.02 and give Mills a half decent fair shake at being the guy. If he’s not, you can take a QB in ‘24.

Like I said, Mills and the players are not blameless in the offense being bad; but with a better defense, and a better OC, it’s very possible that we could see a pretty drastic shift in his performance if he’s given the chance.