Times are tense right now in Houston sports. The Houston Texans have a major NFL Draft coming up next week, one in which they are trying to get their roster from “really good” to “Super Bowl caliber.” And that’s the LEAST of the very tense situations with our three biggest squads!
The Houston Rockets have a playoff series that begins this weekend, in which there a several legacies that can really only be damaged. They play a Lakers team that, if they lose to them, everyone from Kevin Durant to Ime Udoka will be ridiculed for the entire offseason.
And don’t get me started on the Houston Astros, who somehow have one of the worst records in baseball while leading the sport in several offensive categories. Just terrible.
This all brings me back to how “tense” things are right now, particularly for those in charge. Managers, head coaches, and general managers have hard jobs, but they are jobs that pay very well, and heavy is the head who wears the crown!
So let’s assess this! Of the three head coaches (or managers, in the case of baseball) and general managers in town, who is under the most pressure this very moment? Well, I ranked them for you, and here we go:
6. DeMECO RYANS
I don’t even want to know the atrocities DeMeco could commit and still keep his job. There may be no coach or manager who is more secure in his job without winning a title in this city’s history than DeMeco Ryans.
5. IME UDOKA
Udoka is not quite as secure as Ryans, but it’s close. The Fertittas love Udoka and he has multiple seasons remaining on the extension he signed last year. I’d rather Udoka not test the aforementioned “atrocity scale” I alluded to with Ryans, but he seems very safe, even with a potential early playoff exit.
4. NICK CASERIO
Despite some difficulty in fixing the offensive line, which has been in the bottom half to bottom third of the league for the entire Ryans-Stroud Era, Caserio has built one of the better rosters in the NFL, particularly on the defensive side of the football. He is very popular in the building, from ownership on down, so the season would have to be a catastrophe for the Texans to move on from Caserio, who works very well with DeMeco Ryans.
3. RAFAEL STONE
As we all know, in any given season, there are roughly eight to ten teams who could not care less about actually winning games. These teams are tanking for draft lottery positioning. The Rockets were one of those teams for three season, from 2021 through 2023. Most tanking teams remain bad, or mediocre at best. Stone hit on most of his picks, though, and acquired Kevin Durant this past summer. The Rockets are unlikely to win a title this season, but Stone’s tank-and-rebuild of the team has gone way better than most have gone around the league.
2. DANA BROWN
1. JOE ESPADA
It’s pretty easy to put the two leaders of the Astros at the top of the pressure line. The team entered the week with the worst record in baseball, despite having scored the most runs in the league on offense. The pitching is atrocious, and that falls on Brown, who went with some cheap patchwork starters, and a contract for Tatsuya Imai that looks awful right now. Ultimately, Espada is probably less to blame for this bad Astros start than Brown, but if you’re looking for an on-field spark in-season, it’s easier to fire a manager than it is a general manager.
