CAL McNAIR: Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining us. Happy New Year to all of you.
First, our country is going through a difficult time, and we hope 2021 will be a year of healing.
Second, thank you for joining us today and to share this good news as we kick off 2021. Today is a great day to be a Texans fan, as we introduce Nick Caserio as the GM of the Houston Texans.
To start, my mom and I want to take a moment to thank everyone who worked hard and stepped up throughout this past season. Although we were disappointed with the results on the field, I am proud of our coaching and support staff for protecting the health and safety of our team during this unprecedented pandemic.
I especially want to thank Romeo Crennel for his leadership over the past few months. He's a great coach and an even better person. We were incredibly fortunate that he stepped up to lead the team starting in week 5.
As we look forward, it's important for me to remind everyone who the Houston Texans are as an organization. Our culture has been repeatedly under question this season, so let me clear that up for all of you right now.
We are an organization committed to excellence, both on and off the field. We operate with integrity, character, a winning mentality and a strong sense of community.
We believe you can't go wrong by doing what's right, and ask our fans to trust that we know what's right. In everything we do, we are an organization committed to bringing a championship to the city of Houston.
To that end, we're incredibly excited to welcome our new general manager, Nick, to the Houston Texans. Nick is widely considered to be one of the most well-respected and successful personnel executives in the National Football League. He has over 20 years of experience, building and sustaining championship-level teams, and is committed to winning.
Nick is intelligent, an incredibly hard worker, and believes in doing things the right way. That among so many other reasons is why he is here today.
I've come to understand that it's been reported that the Deshaun feels left out of the process, that he and I had several visits and I understood his point of view before meeting with candidates. I've reached out to Deshaun about Nick's hire, and I look forward to him getting back to me when he returns from his vacation.
We thank the other candidates who interviewed in this process. We had a terrific list of qualified candidates, and learned a lot about our organization by talking to them. While Nick was always high on our radar, we began a new search because we knew Nick was a well sought-after candidate who had multiple options to pursue.
It says a lot about our organization that he chose to be a Texan.
I want to thank our advisors for their input in this process. Some of you have wanted to understand Jack Easterby's role in hiring Nick. There is no secret about Nick and Jack's working relationship in the past.
Because of their professional history, I sought out Jack's feedback on Nick as a leader, as I did with others, during my decision process.
We thank the New England Patriots, specifically Robert and Jonathan Kraft and Coach Belichick for being a first-class organization that builds winners. With respect to their organization, we do not consider ourselves the Patriots south. We are here to lead this team the Texans way.
Following this press conference we will hit the ground running and get to work on our football team. First order of business will be to focus on our next head coach, as we look for the right person to joins the Texans' culture of integrity, hard work, and doing things the right way.
Before we take a few questions, I'll turn it over to our new general manager, Nick Caserio.
NICK CASERIO: Thanks, Cal. Appreciate it. Good afternoon, everybody. Excited to be here. Can't wait to get started. Appreciate everybody taking some time out of their day to spend some time with us this afternoon.
Before we take some question, just a few comments, really more of a thank you to a number of people that have impacted my life in a positive way.
On behalf of our family, my wife Kathleen and our three girls, I'm honored and humbled to stand before you today as the general manager of the Houston Texans.
I'd like to thank by thanking Janice, Cal, and Hannah for the belief you have in us and the commitment that you've made towards our family. You have welcomed us with open arms, and we are ready to serve you and the Texans' organization with grace and humility.
Before we move forward and embrace what is ahead, it's important to first honor the past and those who have helped us, my family, both personally and professionally, reach this point, this great day in our lives, to get this opportunity that we have in front of us.
To the Kraft family, Robert and Jonathan, Bill Belichick and the entire Patriots organization. You provided a foundation for over 20 seasons that we will take with us as we embark on our new journey.
Bill, you have provided incredible guidance as well as the opportunity to continually grow, serve, and truly learn what it takes to be great on a day in and day out basis. And for that, I'm eternally grateful and thankful.
To my beautiful bride, Kathleen, who I know is out there listening because she can't be in the room with us because this is 2020/2021, but you're my best friend, the rock of our family. None of this is even possible without your constant love, support, guidance, and devotion.
And tip of the cap to the Patriots' organization. We actually, my wife and I actually met -- she worked on the business side and the marketing side for the Revolution, so I guess the credit goes to the Patriots for my marriage and my wife on this one.
I love you dearly, and will continue to lean on you as we get started in our new home here in Houston.
To my three girls who are out there watching, Whitley, Chatham, and Charleston, we are now Texans. Daddy loves you lots and is excited to see you grow and experience a new way of life.
You and mommy are the reason daddy does what he does. I know my middle child, our middle child, Chatham, before we left, once I told her the news, she said, Does that mean we can get a swimming pool and have a putting green in our backyard? And I said, Honey, I'm not sure, but we'll talk about that a little bit later.
But daddy loves you guys dearly and we're a significant part of our lives and always will be, and I love you.
To my mom and dad back home in Ohio, you laid the foundation and instilled principles in my brother and I, Michael, that I hold true to this day that we will unquestionably look to instill in our team: Hard work, love, toughness, selflessness, to always do what is right and always treat people the right way.
Thanks for your guidance, your wisdom and constant support. This opportunity is about all of us. It's not about me. It's about all of us, and without your love and devotion, we wouldn't be here today.
Finally, to my coaching mentor, Joe Perella, who recently passed away here during the season, he is a big reason why we were spending time together here today. He always demanded excellence. He pushed me further than I may have even thought possible. He instilled in me a passion for football that burns deeply. He believed in me, and most importantly, he loved me.
His hands along with the Lord's are with us here in Houston. Thank you, Coach. We'll see you one day.
And I'm sure the question as everybody sits out there today, what is the vision, what is the plan moving forward for the Houston Texans.
Our goal is to build a program that centers on being selfless, willingly accepting challenges, which we unquestionably will face and have faced and will continue to face each day, always put the team above yourself. Nothing is, nothing will be more important than the team.
Others before self, team before I; that will be the mindset and that will be the expectation for everybody that walks into the building on a daily basis.
Again, thank you for being here today. Tremendous opportunity. Can't wait to get started, and we'll take some questions here now from the group.
Q. You come right when your quarterback is unhappy, your defensive end is unhappy. As the new man in charge, what are you going to do about it?
NICK CASERIO: Great question. Yeah, I think each year is a new year. We're starting from scratch. I think the most important thing for us is just to speak specifically to Deshaun.
I'd say from afar the respect and administration that I have for him as a player and what he's done for this organization is significant. He's our quarterback, and quite frankly he's a big part of the reason why over the last two seasons when we faced the Texans that New England came out on the losing side of the ledger.
I think it's important for all of us to take some time, and I think when the time is appropriate, we'll have discussions with the players. I think it's important for us, whatever conversations that we're going to have with players about their individual situation, that we do it directly and we do it face to face.
When the appropriate time comes, we'll sit and spend some time with Deshaun. But certainly looking forward to the opportunity to work with him.
Q. There's a lot of talk about him being traded. Are you going to quash that?
NICK CASERIO: Yeah, he's our quarterback, and again, once we have an opportunity, spend some time together, we'll have further discussions. I can't tell you how much respect and administration that I have for him, for who he is as a player and what he means to this franchise.
CAL McNAIR: I would just follow up real quick. First of all, Nick, that was an awesome statement. I had a little tear in my eye. I love that stuff. I love your passion and the integrity that you have, and you're just going to be such a good thing for us here, and just what you said is exactly why you're here.
In regards to 4 and 99, they're valued members on our team. They're important to the team and the city. They're passionate and they want to win, and those are all totally in alignment with where we're going and what we've done here in bringing Nick aboard.
So it's perfect. We're totally aligned.
Q. Could you explain what Jack Easterby's role with the team will be going forward, and will he be involved in personnel decisions?
NICK CASERIO: Yeah, Jack and I have had a really special relationship. It goes back a number of years. I'd say he and I have -- he's helped me a lot I would say personally. We've actually dealt with some things on a personal level through the year, but he's someone that I've always leaned on, I have a tremendous amount of respect and admiration for.
Any personnel decisions that will be made we'll make as a group, but ultimately that's a responsibility that Cal has instilled in me, is to handle the personnel side of the football operations. So that's the expectation moving forward.
Jack will have a role and we'll work in conjunction with each other on a number of things for sure, but when football decisions, those will ultimately be my decision in conjunction with the head coach once we get to that point, as well.
Q. When you look at the roster, do you feel like there are a lot of pieces here, and how would you describe your scouting philosophy just as you try to kind of immerse yourself and dig in and look at trying to improve the team from the 4-12?
NICK CASERIO: Yeah, no, look, this has been an organization that quite frankly it's almost like we've played them every year. It's almost like a division opponent in the AFC East. We always knew that when we played the Texans we had to be prepared because there were a lot of players that could impact the game.
I think where we are just from a calendar standpoint -- so it's important to take inventory of where you are as a team, evaluate your own team. I would just say when you talk about scouting and evaluating players, it's really hard to make a determination about other players until you intimately know what you have on your team.
So the evaluation of your team, their strengths, their weaknesses, what the vision for them is from the staff, and obviously whomever the head coach and his staff will be will have input on that.
You have to start with the foundation of your team, understand what you have in place, understanding that the one thing about the NFL that we know is change is constant, right? So there's typically about I'll call it 25 to 30 percent of your team that is naturally going to turn over, whether it's players leave, releases, free agents.
So there's a process, so this part of the year is, A, understand your team, understand what you kind of have in place, make an evaluation of who fits moving forward. And then in conjunction with that, we are kind of in this college scouting evaluation period where we've gone through the season, whatever season we've had, and we're starting to transition to the off-season now with the Senior Bowl around the corner, the junior declaration.
So there's a lot of work to do in front of us. I would say just relative to what's going to be important to the Houston Texans, the things that we articulate or articulated in the opening before putting the team first, relentless work ethic, being intelligent, and -- you know, we'll talk about the actual ins and outs of scouting as it pertains to how we do that, but there are people, a lot of the qualified people here that I am excited to work with background with. I have a background with James Liipfert from my time in New England, so we'll sit down, we'll have a conversation.
But, again, you have to start with your team, have an understanding of what you have in place before you can actually project what's going to fit into your building moving forward.
Q. You keep mentioning to excellence. You said that in your statement and you said that today. But Deshaun Watson is frustrated. You've acknowledged him being frustrated. You guys traded DeAndre Hopkins in the last year; J.J. Watt said all season he's frustrated; Bill O'Brien, you gave him GM power, head coach power obviously, and then fired him after four games. When I get emails and messages and I look on Twitter, all I see pretty much ever see anymore is sell the team or fire Easterby. And I know Twitter is Twitter, but how can you tell your fan base, this city, that the Texans are committed to excellence when all these things keep happening to the team?
CAL McNAIR: That's a great question. Thank you for that. Brian and I go back a few years. We did a bucket challenge together. I don't know if you remember back when the ice bucket challenges were the thing going around. He challenged me, and so I appreciate you.
You know, 2020 was a hard year for a lot of different reasons. The pandemic was a lot of challenges; the results, like I mentioned earlier, was not what we wanted.
If you look at it, we had 10 one-score games, and we lost all but two, so we were 2-8 in the one-score games.
We do have a commitment to win and win the right way, and so changes were needed. If you looked at our -- I'll remind you, it wasn't too long ago -- in fact last year we were planning for a game in the playoffs and we had just a fantastic game with Buffalo right here. We had 70,000 fans. They were energized. They were excited. It was one of the loudest games I've ever been to, a great game.
And so I wouldn't say we're that far apart from where we were back then. That was, like I say, like a year ago. 2020 was a tough year. We're looking forward to putting it behind us.
The way you make these changes, in my opinion, is right now we have a vision of, if you will, we're going to build a wall, and maybe you've heard this before, but it's going to be brick by brick. We're going to pick up a brick, put it down, put it down in the right place, put the mortar around it, make sure it's set, make a great decision.
Then we're going to go to the next one, and it's going to be day by day, making great decisions, getting this thing exactly where we want it, knowing that we're not far off from where we were.
I'll tell you, it's a great day to be a Texan because this is a big break. This guy sitting next to me, Nick Caserio, has extreme competency, and we'll work together, we'll cooperate, we'll collaborate, cooperate, and that will get us the fastest to where we want to get to be is by doing all that.
And before you know it you'll look back and we'll have built a substantial brick wall that we are all committed and proud of.
NICK CASERIO: If I can just chime in, add to that. I mean, obviously what we're trying to do is build something that is sustainable and durable for a long period of time. That's going to take some time to put things in place.
But, again, we're not going to get there until we actually -- we're going to have to spend the time, we're going to have to make the investment. We're going to have to invest and everybody is going to have to invest, and that's part of the responsibility that Cal and his family have bestowed upon me. It's a big responsibility and it's going to take all of us.
Everything we do matters. It's all going to matter, and it's going to be a matter of just having a few small wins each day. And, again, to Cal's point, brick by brick, day by day. Because if you put the foundation in place, hopefully you have something that you can sustain over a long period of time and it's not a kind of year to year you kind of have some degree of variability, right?
You've been around the league for a long time, too. You've followed the league for a long time. The margin of error pretty small, right? So you have to try to figure out some ways on the margin to see if you can make some progress or try to make some things that will allow you to be successful.
We can get into the football and nuts and bolts of it. But, again, there's a myriad of things that go into it. What you're trying to do is put in place a program from top to bottom that sustainable for a long period of time, and that's part of the responsibility that's been bestowed upon myself and our staff, and that's what we're going to try to do to the best of our ability.
Q. As you search for your next head coach, how much value do you place on having continuity between your quarterback and play caller if that isn't an offensive-minded guy, and just making sure it's the same person year to year versus potentially cycling through offensive coordinators if you go the other way?
NICK CASERIO: No, it's a great question. I think when you look at some of the other teams and the programs that have been successful, that idea of sustainability, that notion of putting something in place, that there's not variability from year to year is important.
The head coach process is something that we're going to as soon as we're done here essentially today is that's the next challenge, that's the next step in front of us. But trying to put something in place where there's sustainability, there's continuity, and I think that's something that's important to any organization and that's going to be our goal.
Relative to your question about the head coach and some of the other things that are important, everybody has a different philosophy I would say just relative to the head coach. What's going to be important is you have to lead people, right? Because in the end football is a sport but it's about people, right? You have to make an investment in people.
You have to be able to lead people. You have to be able to lead the group. You have to be able to message the group. Those are some of the things that will be important relative to whether or not they're a good play caller on their respective side of the ball.
But whoever it is will have some competency in some area. But then again, as you fill out your staff you want to make sure that you have enough people to complement what that person may or may not do well.
I would say in our situation relative to Deshaun, trying to put something in place that's sustainable for him that can allow him and the rest of the team and the organization to go out there and perform to their maximum capacity on a week-to-week basis. That's the goal.
Q. You talked about how you've seen this team a lot. I'm curious -- you heard Cal say what he thought this culture was like here. From the outside looking in, what did you get about the culture in Houston and what do you think needs to either be improved or changed about it?
NICK CASERIO: Yeah, we visited on that. I would say the most important thing is what this is going to look like moving forward, right? So what's happened in the past, you have to have an understanding and acknowledge what has happened on any level.
But, again, we're looking to the future. We're trying to build. So we're going to take inventory of what we have in place. We're going to spend time with the staff, talk with them, and figure out how we want to construct this.
So ultimately I wasn't here for that, but have some understanding of what has happened. But our responsibility is to try to move forward, because each year everybody starts over kind of from the same platform, right?
So we're kind of starting over, right? So we're starting our process to build the 2021 Houston Texans' roster, and that's what we're going to do.
You take inventory of what you have, what maybe has happened in the past, but ultimately it's about what happens moving forward. Then you start to project players, what's their role, how they're going to fit. Because that's what we're going to be planning for when we go out there beginning of September or whenever that may be.
Q. What do you want that mindset to be?
NICK CASERIO: Relative to?
Q. Like the team culture and the mindset of the players you're bringing in and how the players are here.
NICK CASERIO: Yeah, no, it's a great question. It's going to take a lot of work, hard work, being selfless. I think the idea of being selfless and always putting others before yourself and it's the team above yourself.
Again, we're not going to sacrifice individual goals, individual accomplishments for the success of the team, but being relentlessly -- being tough, being relentless. You have to have a smart team. You'd like to have a smart team and go out there and execute and play well under pressure.
How do you do that? Well, there's some things that you can do relative to situational football, taking care of the football, turnovers. Like there's things on the margins that if you make incremental progress on that can help you with the bigger picture.
But I think the things that I mentioned in my opening, those are some of the things that will be important as we evaluate players that come in.
Q. Cal, last year when you fired Bill and you kept Jack Easterby, why did you make that decision to keep Jack Easterby, and why exactly would you keep him now considering some of the uneasiness in the locker room?
CAL McNAIR: Well, thank you for the question. So yeah, we moved on from the coach, and frankly I needed someone to step into that spot. That wasn't something Jack pushed for or wanted, it was something I needed. And so I'm really grateful that he did that.
He took a lot of heat for it. He did. But it's hard to operate a team without a general manager, someone in that seat, someone to do those -- a lot of them are administrative type tasks.
But as we moved from Bill as a GM to Jack as interim GM, Jack was there for a few months, did the job he was asked, and now he's ready to step back into some of his earlier roles. Nick will step in here, be the GM.
Nick has got the roster, the draft, the free agency. Nick will be supported by me. I will do everything I can to help Nick succeed. I want Nick to succeed here.
Jack will do whatever Nick asks him to do to succeed. So we'll all work together like I had mentioned, being collaborative, cooperative, and get this thing going exactly where we want it.
Q. Cal, can you list Jack Easterby's specific skills that make him so attractive to you as far as keeping him around, as far as he's worth this drama, he's worth the perception? What specifically does he bring to the table?
CAL McNAIR: Well, Jack is very gifted in a lot of different areas, and those areas would be things that Nick will need as he moves into his role as GM. It won't be roster. It won't be free agency.
Like I said before, those are the GM jobs that Nick is doing, and he will look to Jack to do some of these other things that Jack has done really well in the past.
NICK CASERIO: If I could add to that, because I've had experience working with Jack. Jack's unique skill I would say is the ability to invest in people, grow people, and serve, and I think that servant mindset has served a lot of people well.
I know it's helped me on a lot of levels, but that's -- those are the types of things relative to Jack and what he can bring to the table.
Again, Cal has brought me to the Texans to handle the football aspect, and that's my main responsibility. We're going to need a lot of people in this building, a lot of really good people, to try to help grow this team and develop this team to get to a point that we have something that's sustainable for a long period of time.
Q. I was just wondering, as reporters, as all of us who cover the team and as fans around Houston, we all think there's one thing -- if there's just one thing, the one big thing to help fix this team, we all have our own opinions. What's that in your minds, Cal and Nick?
NICK CASERIO: I'll take that first. I would say -- thanks for the introduction. I would say there's really not -- it's not one thing. It's never one thing. It's a combination of things, right?
So when you look at your team, it's going to take a multitude of areas. Again, there's never one particular thing. When you go back if you were to do an evaluation of the season, each game was its own entity, it wasn't necessarily one player, one particular thing. It's a combination of things over the course of time.
You have to do an evaluation, and again, going back to the earlier question about understanding your team, understanding your roster, understanding maybe where some of the gaps existed and then figure out, Okay, what's the plan moving forward? How do you fill those gaps?
Again, there's never one reason why you win or lose a game, right? It's a combination of things. I would say if you were to day, What is the one thing that's going to be important, it's understanding the amount of work and the effort that it takes on a day-to-day basis, and to understand that if you're not going to be process-driven or process-oriented -- the only way you get better is to have a process in place.
I'll just give you a few clear-cut examples. And I'm not saying -- it's not about necessarily the player. It is but it isn't, but it's about their process more than anything else.
Fortunately being able to be around a lot of good players in New England, everybody understands how good Tom is, and everybody associates Tom with the success that he's had. But what made Tom great was his process, and each day he invested in that process and it was very important to him.
Just picture this. I know it's kind of hard to picture, but put on your thinking cap for a minute. So the way practice is split up, right, the offense is going, the defensive guys that aren't involved in servicing their respective side of the ball on the sideline doing some different things. So when the defense was going through their weekly prep, going through the opponent's prep, Tom would be on the sidelines with a band around his waist working on his drop-backs. You might be saying to yourself, This guy is in the league like 50 years; what's he doing over there working on his drop-backs.
Well that was part of his process. That's what he believed in, right? Matthew Slater, who's a multiyear Pro Bowler, right, and one of the most respected and one of the best players in the league is off to the side where (indiscernible) on a gunner release, right? You might be thinking to yourself, What's he doing over there working on his gunner releases, right?
Well, he's trying to prepare myself so he can optimize his performance on Sunday, right? So that investment of time, that investment in the process -- like if you want to boil it down to maybe one particular thing, if you have a process in place that's a really good process and you invest in that process and you're consistent with it week to week, that's going to give you an opportunity to go out there on Sunday and duplicate and reduplicate success.
So I would say just taking a big picture view of it with a couple specific examples, that would be something that we would hope to permeate and articulate to our team and group and understand why it's important, and if you do these things along the way, you're going to give yourself an opportunity to have success on Sunday.
I know that was a long-winded answer, but hopefully it sheds some light on the mindset and some of the things that are going to be important with this team as we piece it together.
CAL McNAIR: That's awesome. I would also add what I see as something I mentioned earlier, it is these processes that Nick was talking about, but it will show up in these one-score games where we had ten of them. We had ten one-score games. We only won two. So you get these processes, you do better at the end of these games, closing out these games. It's not one thing but a whole lot of things, so you do those things right, and now all of a sudden you don't lose eight games that are one-score games. Maybe you split it. Maybe you go the other way. It's 8-2 and you have a different season.
We were also very poor in tackling. Statistically one of the worst tackling teams. So that goes to what Nick is talking about again, is you have your processes down right. You work on those specific skills, all of a sudden you become one of the best tackling teams and your defense makes a big jump statistically in a lot of other areas.
So those were just two things that sort of popped out at me that as Nick was talking that would really show up and make a difference in our team going forward.
Q. Nick, they've touched a little bit on what you've talked about, the process, a second ago. Early on Cal addressed a bunch of the, I would say, criticisms from fans and media about the Patriots way and not being the Patriots south and about your friend Jack Easterby. What are your feelings on the criticism being those two entities? You grew up on the Patriots way. It may not have traveled well in other instances, but I assume you have a high regard for that. We know you have a high regard for Jack, and everybody is ripping those two things apart. What is your take on it? What are you feeling about said criticism?
NICK CASERIO: Sure, it's a great question. Just going back a little bit, it would be interesting to go back and figure out kind of who coined the term the Patriots way. I think that's something that has kind of evolved and developed.
I think when you take a step back, there's been a lot of good people that have been through our building that I personally have been associated with. The most important thing when you take a step back and when you take a new opportunity, right, and you go into a new situation, whoever you are, whatever your DNA is, whatever you're about, the most important thing is to be true to yourself and who you are, right.
I can't speak to what happened at other places about why something may or may not have worked, right? Because I'm not in the building, we weren't in the building, you may not understand the intricacies of what's happening. That's all I really know, is trust what you believe, okay, try to be true to yourself.
And part of my responsibility here is to try to earn the trust of the people that are in our building, whether it's in scouting, whether it's in the training staff, whether it's the players, whether it's in the media, and just trying to be as consistent as possible, be as true to who you are as possible, and then the rest will hopefully take care of itself.
When you think about when everybody talks about kind of the Patriots' way or the Patriots' mantra, I think what really resonates with me is the idea of this being process-oriented and process-driven to the point of understanding everything that it takes in order to be successful on a week in and week out basis.
I think that was one of the great things the way Bill messaged the team and explained to the team is about understanding how much it actually takes to be great, okay, and it's not something that happens overnight. So there has to be an investment on a lot of levels, and you just have to do it day after day, time after time, and hopefully your patterns and what you're doing is actually right so that if you do those consistently, that gives you the best chance for success.
I would say each situation is different. I'm my own person. I'm going to try to be true to the Texans' organization and be true to who I am and try to learn as much as possible and earn the trust of everyone that is here and around me because that's the responsibility that I have to everybody here.
Q. And are you sensitive to your friend being criticized so relentlessly?
NICK CASERIO: Yeah, I think my relationship with Jack is a special relationship. We've known each other a long time and I have a lot of faith and trust and confidence in him, and I'm excited to work with him.
Q. I wanted to ask you about your football days and kind of your passion for football --
NICK CASERIO: Are you sure about that? (Laughing).
Q. I watched the pass, the one you threw to Josh on the sideline. That was pretty good.
NICK CASERIO: It wasn't very good. It was terrible.
Q. It was a completion.
NICK CASERIO: That's right.
Q. You got it there.
NICK CASERIO: That's right, exactly. Exactly.
Q. A lot of people I spoke with were talking about your competitiveness, the way you were in practice, the way you would study, the way you attacked everything, whether it was a class or things you did on the football field. London Fletcher said you guys would have some good banter back and forth between the defense and the offense. I just wanted to ask you how those formative years have brought you to where you are now and just your philosophy toward football from a player and now here on the scouting side?
NICK CASERIO: That's an awesome question. London is a little bit better athlete than I am, so it wouldn't take much for him to track me down.
Going back to kind of my introductory comments, I mentioned Coach Perella, Joe Perella. His influence in my life was massive and significant relative to my development from a football standpoint.
So coach was my high school coach at University School, and actually even going back before then, his son was my baseball coach, right? So Joe Perella, Junior was my baseball coach, so I played baseball when I was in the sixth grade. That was kind of -- so when I was around that age, we would actually go watch Joe Senior coach at Beachwood, right? And his teams were really successful and there was a lot of juice, there was a lot of energy, there was a lot of excitement.
And then had the opportunity to go to University School where Coach was going first as the offensive coordinator and then as the head coach, and then when Coach went from University School to John Carroll, so he essentially coached me for my entire life and career.
Look, I'm not the tallest, I'm not the fastest, I didn't have the strongest arm. The only thing I knew that I could control was my work ethic on a day-to-day basis, right?
So the investment of time that I made in myself along with the great coaching that I received from him was the only thing that I felt gave me the opportunity to go out there and perform to the best of my ability.
You know, I would say John Carroll, Matt Grubb, and the people that were there with me had a significant influence on my life. And when you go play Division III football, right, it's not because you were awarded a scholarship. You basically go to school and you play football because you want to play football and you want to be around it.
Fortunately we played a completely new brand of football. Unfortunately we could never beat Mount Union, so we always had to hear how like how bad we are against Mount Union. But I would say that period of time from high school to college, and then Coach Perella, the way he -- like I talked about the way he coached me, and it was tough love, it was hard love, but he believed in me, and he trusted me, and those things resonated with me.
I think those are things that if I can bring those things to the Houston Texans' organization, like those would be some of the things that are important.
Funny story about London, London and I. London actually started I want to say it was St. Francis or St. Joseph, went to play basketball. But he transferred to John Carroll to play basketball and I was actually playing on the basketball team at the time, so I was in practice like trying to guard London Fletcher and he was posting me up and he backed me down and like I couldn't stop London. There was no chance in hell.
And then he was a backup linebacker as a sophomore. He actually played behind a accountant essentially, guy when he graduate got a CPA, got an accounting degree. London played he had like 8,000 tackles in two years, and there's a good example of a guy that wasn't drafted, right? Had one of the most sustainable, durable careers of anybody. Had a great career, had an awesome career. He made it as a player, and between life and the sport, it was really about getting an opportunity. You're never really sure when that's going to come, but I would say that period of time in life was a significant period of time in my life.
I'm a big fan of London, always have been. Have a lot of respect and admiration for him. But that was a pretty special time and a pretty special group of people.
Q. I know you're going to dig into the salary cap and some tough roster decisions. Not having currently a first-round or a second-round pick, this is your first year taking over some of those things. How do you view some of those situations that you'll deal with as you manage the roster and the cap as you go forward?
NICK CASERIO: Yeah, I think every year has its own set of challenges, and you have to try to just look at the assets you may or may not have in place and try to be as creative as possible at building a team. There's no one set formula how to put a team together. It's not going to come from one particular area. It's going to be a combination of things.
We're going to have to be creative. We're going to have to really invest and utilize the resources that we have, and just try to take advantage of the opportunities as they present themselves.
Q. The Texans have not reached out to Eric Bieniemy or Robert Solomon. There's a report on NFL Network Matt Eberflus turned down an opportunity to interview here. How many candidates, now that you're the GM, would you like to interview, and how important is it to seriously consider hiring a minority head coach?
NICK CASERIO: Yeah, great question. So what we're going to do is we're going spend some time together here over the next few days, and the most important thing is try to identify the candidates that we feel are going to be the best fit or potentially best fits for the Houston Texans, so at this point it's really not necessarily about names, but we're going to do whatever we feel is best for the organization on the head coaching front, and that will be front and center here as we move forward.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports