Looks like he has been with the Patriots for most of his career.
Houston must love those Pats connections… Bill O’Brien and Romeo Crennel must’ve not been enough
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Looks like the Patriots have an opening for Quinn to come back now.
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Well, we definitely didn’t want him. Bob Quinn 2.0
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Sounds like they ignored all advice from their agency and chose the guy they wanted. Gonna keep trying the Patriot way. Best of luck Houston.
Good luck with that Houston! 
More importantly, this is the first chair filled in the GM musical chairs game. I imagine this is going to start the dominoes falling.
Really surprising that they would give O’Brien complete control as GM and Coach, then fire him. And then replace him with another lifetime Patriot. That’s like us replacing Patricia with Josh McDaniels!?
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What advice? The only thing I heard was Tony Dungy saying, "Hire my BFF Jim Caldwell. "
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Dang, I wonder how that will go for them. Shame Watson is being wasted like that.
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How many division championships did they have with a Patriot-influenced front office? Speaking of Josh McDaniels… Wonder if he’s part of Nick’s plans?
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Legit question: has any former Patriot succeeded outside of that organization?
Flores and Grabel are trending well, but they just don’t have the history for a final verdict.
To this point, O’Brien had been the standard bearer for ex-Patriot coach success.
I can’t remember where I saw it. They talked about the search firm that Houston paid all this money to and gave them a long list of executives but that name was never on the list. Basically Houston just wasted a bunch of money and time on interviews before deciding to take the guy they wanted in the past. I’m not saying it won’t work but poaching people from the Patriots organization might have me a bit jaded currently after our colossal screw up. I’m just jealous I don’t have that much money to waste 
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Vrabel and O’Brien got away from the Patriots and rose up to NFL HC going thru other organizations. To me that seems to be the thing that Patriots coaches need to do, to deprogram themselves or something. Or at least rise up on their own merit and not riding Belichick’s coat tails. Flores would be unique if he could sustain success, because he would be the only one straight from the Pats organization without going somewhere else first that pulled it off. BUT REMEMBER, its only one year. There have been a few ex-Pat coaches that pulled off a single year of success before flaming out immediately afterwards.
To me I’m okay with Patriots personnel guys. They seem to be “okay” and understand how to beat the bushes for talent. But I wouldn’t touch a Pats coach with a 10 foot pole. It will be interesting to see if they pair up this guy with a coach that’s not part of the Pats circle of life.
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For those in the Rick Smith camp. How does it make you feel that Houston never even gave him a sniff to come back?
If his old team didn’t want him back then how does that make you feel about him?
Never go back.
Maybe Smith declined any approach after losing the power struggle with O’Brien there.
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You have a real vendetta against Rick Smith 
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That’s kind of how I see it. They gave O’Brien way too much power for some unknown reason. There may have been large areas of disagreement and he just said he’s had enough.
The fact that I did not want Caserio as the Lions GM, and that I’m glad Houston’s off the board with a great, young QB to lure top prospects, probably means that …
… he’ll be wildly successful.
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Smith wasn’t a Patriots guy. It seems clear that particular infection has taken root in Houston.
I just don’t believe in the Parcells tree/system. When you carefully consider the rate of success as a percentage, you have Bellichik and Sean Payton, and an extremely long list of failures. The system seems clearly designed to squeeze every ounce of talent out of these guys, operating in a very specific system and a pressure cooker atmosphere.
Like you saw with Quinn, their comfort zone relies on recreating that atmosphere, no imagination or thinking required.
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