HOUSTON – When the Texans hired Nick Caley as their new offensive coordinator, the defending AFC South champions put their trust in a strategist with a successful background who’s versed in two different offensive systems.
Caley, 42, absorbed a ton of knowledge with the New England Patriots while working under Bill Belichick and Josh McDaniels as a younger position coach who was tasked with coaching two colorful, talented veteran tight ends in Rob Gronkowski and Martellus Bennett and earned two Super Bowl rings.
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Now, Caley is learning on the job as a rookie play-caller tasked with competing against an aggressive, elite defense headlined by pass rushers Danielle Hunter and Will Anderson Jr. and All-Pro cornerback Derek Stingley Jr.
Friday was another rough day for the offense in terms of interceptions, allowing penetration to the defense at the line of scrimmage in pass protection and run blocking. There have been too many false starts from the offensive line with most of them committed by right tackle Blake Fisher, who has been running with the second-team offense behind rookie Aireontae Ersery.
As Caley puts his stamp on the Texans’ overhauled offense that includes a new-look receiving corps and a significantly different offensive line after trading five-time Pro Bowl left tackle Laremy Tunsil, he’s maintaining a big-picture perspective.
Not every defense is going to be as good as the Texans. Plus, the offense expects to make progress as they absorb more knowledge and achieve a comfort zone in Caley’s offense.
In a game based on timing and chemistry, quarterback C.J. Stroud didn’t have enough time to set up properly in the pocket Friday. That’s been a recurring theme, though, for the offense.
“I think it’s everything,” Caley said. “I think it’s timing. I think it’s anchoring a little bit more at times in the protection piece of it. Being able to play more on time. I got to do a better job myself of getting some more quick options there early on, too. I think it’s collectively, it’s everything. It’s not just one person. It’s never just one person or one facet. I just think we got to continue to all evolve and get better, collectively.”
Because the secondary applied such tight coverage, it took too much time for plays to develop. There were a series of incompletions from Stroud, sacks from Hunter and Darrell Taylor, an interception from cornerback Kamari Lassiter and Anderson Jr. busting into the backfield to stop running back Nick Chubb in his tracks in a tackle for a loss.
Yes, as football people say frequently, iron sharpens iron. The key is for the offense to not get demoralized while playing against a defense led by team captain, middle linebacker and signal caller Azeez Al-Shaair and a loaded secondary that includes Stingley, Lassiter, nickel Jalen Pitre and safeties Calen Bullock and C.J. Gardner-Johnson.
Stingley excelled in single coverage against Pro Bowl wide receiver Nico Collins. There was an interception by Pitre in coverage against slot Christian Kirk one play after Kirk caught a touchdown in red-zone one-on-one drills.
“They’re competitive every single day,” Caley said. “So, we’ve got to get our stuff in, and we’ve got to make sure that we’re trying to clean up the things that we can control to give ourselves an opportunity to compete against them. But it makes us better.
“It’s what you expect out of this unit and it’s what we expect from ourselves is to go out there and compete, too, and battle. It’s as hard of a look as we’re going to see down after down and that’s a good thing.”
The offensive line was comprised again of left tackle Cam Robinson, left guard Laken Tomlinson, center Jake Andrews, right guard Tytus Howard and Ersery.
Although there have been some breakdowns in pass protection, Caley sees progress overall from the line. The offensive line is coached by Cole Popovich, a former New England Patriots colleague of Caley who doubles as the Texans’ run-game coordinator.
“I’ve been pleased,” Caley said of the offensive line. “There’s been improvement, there’s been steady improvement every single day. It’s a matter of continuing to refine it. I mean, we get as good of work as we’re going to get against our defense.
“It truly is iron sharpening iron. So, we’re getting some good looks, we’re getting to correct some things. We’re getting to clean up some things, but there’s been steady progress. So, I’m happy with it.”
The back-and-forth between the receivers and the secondary has provided some serious juice to the competition between the offense and the defense.
Caley embraces that kind of edge.
“Oh, it’s fun,” Caley said. “It’s competitiveness. That’s what you love. We got a great spirit about the guys on this team. Our offensive guys, they enjoy it. It’s as good a competition as you’re going to see day after day after day and it’s going to make us better.”
The Texans’ receiving corps, led by Collins and Kirk, has been breaking in rookies Jayden Higgins and Jaylin Noel.
Higgins, the Texans’ top draft pick, is an imposing downfield target at 6-foot-4, 217 pounds. He’s off to a fast start at training camp.
“He’s mature beyond his years,” Caley said. “He’s a pro. He’s got the right demeanor. He’s in here all the time.”
Caley utilizes a fullback in his offense with Jakob Johnson, a former Patriots lead blocker. Johnson provides blocking punch and knowledge of what Caley wants to run.
“It allows you to activate a different personnel grouping, obviously,” Caley said. “You can do some different things. He has versatility to not just play in the backfield, you can activate some different schemes.
I think that fullback position in general, and I would say it’s an extension to the tight ends, that brings a toughness to a football team. It enhances the toughness. I’ve got experience with Jak. He’s all in. He pours everything he has into it."
As the Texans head to West Virginia on Saturday for practices at The Greenbrier through Thursday, Caley is looking for greater precision and less mistakes.
“Just continuing to play cleaner, to be more refined fundamentally and then just really to build on the latter stages of the installation process as we get going here,” Caley said. “So, we’re about the tail end of the core install and then we’ll start to chip away at some different things here moving forward.”
A former student assistant coach at John Carroll University, the same alma mater as Texans general manager Nick Caserio along with pro personnel director D.J. Debick, special teams coordinator Frank Ross and senior offensive assistant-passing game specialist Jerry Schuplinski, became even more advanced as a coach the past two seasons working for Sean McVay as the Los Angeles Rams’ tight ends coach and passing game coordinator.
It’s an ultra-successful coaching foundation that gave the Texans a ton of confidence in hiring Caley, a first-time offensive coordinator and play-caller, as the replacement for dismissed offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik. They interviewed Caley, Texans quarterbacks coach Jerrod Johnson, Texans senior offensive assistant Bill Lazor, Syracuse offensive coordinator Jeff Nixon, Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterbacks coach Thad Lewis, Green Bay Packers offensive coordinator Adam Stenavich, Washington Commanders assistant head coach/passing game coordinator Brian Johnson and new Jacksonville Jaguars offensive coordinator Grant Udinski.
The high-energy style of Caley resonates strongly with Stroud, a former NFL Offensive Rookie of the year. Caley frequently texts and calls Stroud, at all hours of the day.
“Nick is a fiery young coach who loves to yell and run around,” Stroud said. “I love it. He brings juice to the building every day. So, I’m excited to work with him every day and try to build a relationship. He’s done a good job relating to the players and always asking us what we want, how we want to do things and making it player owned. I love that of him.”
Watching Caley at practice, he’s in constant motion. He’s filled with intensity.
“Man, you can tell by his enthusiasm every day,” Collins said. “He’s a great coach. You can tell in the meetings. He talks about the plays, the install, just explaining the install, just his grit, his mind behind it, his energy, dog. You can feel it. He gets you pumped up to go out here and play.”
Readiness is a recurring theme with Caley.
The Ohio native and St. Thomas Aquinas graduate played football at Walsh University before working as a student assistant at John Carroll University, a Division III powerhouse where Caserio was a record-setting quarterback throwing passes to McDaniels.
Caley grew up in Canton, Ohio in a football-oriented household just three miles away from the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He looked up to Thom McDaniels, a high school football legend in Ohio who’s the father of Josh McDaniels and Texans receivers coach and passing game coordinator Ben McDaniels.
“High school football was big,” Caley said. “At about the age of nine, I knew I wanted to be a coach. My dream early on was to be a high school football coach in Stark County, Ohio, similar to Thom McDaniels.
“I watched him at Camp McKinley as a kid growing up. I’ve always wanted to coach. It’s part of the fabric of my life and my dad took me to a lot of games as a kid.”
Before moving on to several stops as a college assistant coach at Florida Atlantic where he recruited Texans team captain and starting linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair working at Akron, Iowa State, Arkansas, Auburn and Eastern Illinois, Staley broke into the coaching ranks at John Carroll.
Working for Regis Scafe, the head coach at JCU, Caley built a reputation as someone who embraced any work assignment he could gets his hands on. Whenever he finished something in the recruiting department, he asked for more and more work to do. When he was taught how to do something, he learned it right away and didn’t make mistakes.
“He did a really good job as a student and we put him in charge of gameday visits,” Scafe said in a telephone interview with KPRC 2. “I look at where he is now and you’ve got really admire and respect what he did, the way his career has taken off. What he did in college, so many stops and, of course, what he’s done in the NFL, he really put in the time. He was always very efficient, very organized. No one has given him anything. He really deserved this.
“He worked his butt off. He has all the experience with the Patriots and the Rams. He coached Gronk, one of the greatest tight ends ever, and he did a good job. Look at his career, step by step. He’s ready. It’s amazing. He decided early on that he was going to go into coaching. With the Patriots, I think they slept in the office. Belichick would get guys in there and see if they’re good enough and if they work hard enough and understand enough.”
When Al-Shaair was playing high school football in Tampa, Fla., his recruiter was Caley. Caley built a relationship with Al-Shaair, whose family was dealing with homelessness at the time.
“Nick Caley is literally somebody who’s known me from the time I was a 16-year-old homeless kid,” Al-Shaair said. “He’s been to my motel that I lived in to now, you know, for both of us to be in the position that we’re in, you know, literally 10 years later. It’s just crazy, you know, because we kept up with each other.
“He actually never coached me at FAU. He left as soon as my class signed. He ended up leaving to go to the NFL right away. But he literally called me and talked to me all the time from that point forward. And you would have thought he coached me for all those years. But we always had a really close relationship, and he always kept up with me. So, I’m grateful to have him here. He’s just an old friend that just reminds me of how far I’ve come as well.”
Now, Caley takes over an offense in flux that regressed last season under Slowik.
Instead, they have hired Caley to rejuvenate an offense that dipped to 19th in scoring as they averaged 21.9 points per game and 22nd in total offense with an average of 319.7 yards per contest for a team that won its second consecutive division title under Ryans’ leadership.
The Texans’ offense regressed under Slowik, who struggled to make adjustments on the fly when his game plan wasn’t clicking, didn’t adapt the protection schemes to better protect quarterback C.J. Stroud, who was sacked eight times and hit 14 times overall in an AFC divisional round loss to the defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs, and had lost the confidence of the locker room, including key offensive players as well as now-former colleagues on the coaching staff, according to league sources.
Having a coach with Caley’s experience working in the creativity of the McVay system, an offshoot of the version of the West Coast offense first popularized by former San Francisco 49ers coach Bill Walsh and adopted by Mike Shanahan and Kyle Shanahan, is regarded around the league as a positive for the Texans’ outlook.
There will be familiarity for Stroud, who will need to speak the same language from a scheme standpoint as Caley. Caley is expected to put his own personal stamp on an offense in need of an overhaul and some new tweaks and wrinkles.
What will the Texans run under Caley’s direction? What’s his vision? Is the offense going to have pieces of the Patriots and Rams’ schemes his background stems from in the NFL?
“It’s going to be Houston’s,” Caley said. “It’s going to be our scheme based on what we do. I don’t say that to throw any curveballs. It really is. As a first-time coordinator, I’m really excited to have the opportunity to evolve this scheme. It’s not going to be my spin, it’s going to be what’s best for our players.
“It’s always going to be what’s best for our players. We’re not pounding a square peg into a round hole. It’s going to be based on the strengths of our quarterback, the players and the guys on this team. That’s what it will always be designed around.”
#Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud @CJ7STROUD on the knowledge he's gaining about Nick Caley offense with #Patriots roots by watching vintage early 2000s tape of Tom Brady @TomBrady @KPRC2 pic.twitter.com/drt0g4ZExE
— Aaron Wilson (@AaronWilson_NFL) July 23, 2025
Caley was hired by Ryans with input from Caserio and other key members of the organization, including consulting with players like Stroud during the process. Stroud was sacked 52 times to rank second in the NFL as he passed for 20 touchdowns and 12 interceptions in a drop-off from his NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year numbers of 23 touchdowns and five interceptions.
The Rams ranked 10th in passing offense last season as quarterback Matthew Stafford had 3,762 yards, 20 touchdowns and eight interceptions
With the Rams, Caley became well-versed and instrumental to what Sean McVay runs to capitalize on the skills of Stafford and wide receiver Puka Nacua.
Now, Caley takes over an offense in need of a boost.
The best offensive player in franchise history, Pro Football Hall of Fame wide receiver Andre Johnson, is a believer in Caley and how he can provide an edge for an offense that reached a crossroads last season with shortcomings in pass protection and a lack of adjustments to complex defensive schemes.
“I think it was a great hire,” Johnson told KPRC 2. “Very creative mind, just very excited. To see what we have right now for the organization, things have been trending in the right direction.”
From Johnson’s standpoint, he’s optimistic that the collaboration between Caley and Stroud will be mutually beneficial.
“I think it’s a great thing,” Johnson said. “He has worked with some great players and C.J. is a great player. I’m sure they’ll be picking each others’ brains. C.J. is a kid who really wants to learn. He’s always trying to do something to better himself. The future is bright for the organization. I can’t wait for next season.”
Caley emphasized that the Texans will tailor their weekly strategies as a “game plan team.” Those words echo what Bill Belichick frequently said in New England and believed in to create a competitive edge.
“If that meant we were going to run duo and gap schemes and run the ball 45 times a game to win the game, then that’s what we were going to do,” Caley said. “If we had to run more perimeter plays, wide zone, and we felt that was going to give us the edge, we were going to do that. We’re going to ask our guys to do what they do well. But it’s going to be based on what we do to help us win. At the end of the day, we want to win, and that’s the priority for us.”
The challenge of upgrading a Texans offense in flux is more than physical. It’s about learning the mental aspect of the game and adjusting the strategy.
“It’s teaching the fundamentals of and the intent of what we’re doing,” Caley said. “So, that started in the spring. It’s continued now. I think if you understand the intent of what we’re trying to get done and you’re trying to put guys in position to utilize their strengths, which you’re trying to do. You’re not trying to ask somebody to do something that they can’t.
“Then, you’ve got to start building it towards, trying to refine what we’re going to be as we start to evolve in this beginning to middle part of camp. We’re in that process right now of finding out what we can do and also trying to bank some reps. We don’t get to rep every single run that we have in, three times a day. So, some of that’s carried over to other days so we can continue to look and evaluate those things. It’s an ever-evolving process.”
Aaron Wilson is a Texans and NFL reporter for KPRC 2 and click2houston.com.