AFC Notes: Colts, Jaguars, Texans

Colts

Colts HC Frank Reich said he wants to improve on helping other coaches improve and holding them “accountable” going forward. 

“One thing I definitely want to get better at is I think I can do a better job supporting the coaches in all three phases,” said Reich, via Kevin Bowen of 1075TheFan. “I felt like you gear so much energy and effort towards the players but part of being the head coach is coaching the coaches and holding the coaches accountable and being involved on every level as the head coach. I think I can do a better job there just giving coaches feedback along the way, encouragement along the way, observations. So that’s definitely one area that I think I can grow in.”

Reich mentioned that he wants their coaching staff to examine times their offense begins to struggle and study himself as a play-caller. 

“Just taking a look back at some of those games. Trying to figure out, ‘Hey, when we get in a lull offensively, what gets us out of the lull?’ Studying those kinds of things as a play-caller and seeing it, ‘When we did this, that helped to get us out, or this didn’t work.’ What are those little things that gave us a spark? How can we do more of that? Those are a couple areas that I’ve looked at.”

Reich called their 7-9 finish in 2019 a “small step back” but that the organization continued to improve in other aspects. 

“In some ways we took a small step back, but what I see and what I envision is while we took a step back as far as results, there are a lot of other things that made us better,” Reich says. “Having to go through the adversity that we went through, it helped us build in other ways that I think are going to help sustainable, long-term success.”

Jaguars

• ESPN ranked the Jaguars No. 32 in their power rankings for the next three years, with the team embracing a full-scale rebuild this offseason that won’t finish for two or three more seasons.
• Reshaping and rebuilding the organization’s culture is the biggest challenge facing the team.  
• The Athletic’s Sheil Kapadia predicts Jaguars first-round CB C.J. Henderson will be the team’s breakout player in 2020 and establish himself as an impact starter. 
• The Jaguars rank fourth in the NFL in dead money for the past three seasons, according to Jason Fitzgerald of Over The Cap, with a total of $94.6 million. 

Texans

• The Athletic’s Aaron Reiss says there’s a chance Texans RB David Johnson could lead the team in targets, especially if Houston’s wideouts can’t stay healthy. 
• Out of that bunch, Reiss believes WR Brandin Cooks has the best chance to be the “No. 1 receiver” over WR Will Fuller because he has less of an injury history.
• Reiss expects the defense to look mostly the same under new DC Anthony Weaver, as he came up under previous DC Romeo Crennel. However, the team has talked about wanting to be more versatile and employing a more robust rotation at certain positions. 
• Reiss could see a bigger role for DL Charles Omenihu, as Weaver lobbied for Houston to take him in the draft. 
• According to the NFLPA, the Texans are one of eight teams to have their Infectious Disease Emergency Response plan approved by both the NFL and NFLPA. The other 24 are submitted and are being reviewed.