The Houston Texans’ ownership group is surely looking for answers after a deeply questionable performance while the Kansas City Chiefs put up 41 unanswered points on the way to a 51-31 win.

The Chiefs are headed to the AFC title game. The Texans are not — even after leading Kansas City 24-0 after 19 minutes on Sunday.

The answer to the biggest question — who should be the Texans coach in 2020? — is, literally, right in front of owner ‎Janice McNair. Houston should fire Bill O’Brien and hire Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy. Inexplicably, he didn’t get a job during this hiring cycle.

What are we doing, folks?

The Texans have the chance to amend the mistake that the rest of the NFL made. They can hire one of the NFL’s most brilliant minds, the man who helped mold Patrick Mahomes and the man who made Matt Moore look better (for two games) than Tom Brady in 2019. The Texans’ solution was so obvious that folks were making the suggestion before the game was over.

The offensive coordinator had helped the Chiefs overcome a deficit which was one point shy of the New England Patriots’ 28-3 scoreline in Super Bowl LI. And not only that, but Bieniemy and the Chiefs flipped the score into a total blowout.

We’ve taken Mahomes’ development for granted, perhaps because he came along behind the scenes. But there was a time when the Chiefs elected to start quarterback Alex Smith ahead of Mahomes. There was a time when he was a prospect that caused general managers (in Cleveland, Chicago, San Francisco, Jacksonville, Tennessee, New York (Jets), L.A., Carolina and Cincinnati) enough anxiety to avoid him. There was a time when Mahomes was a work-in-progress.

Bieniemy helped everyone forget about that phase in Mahomes’ career. Bieniemy was there when Mahomes became an MVP. Coincidence? Impossible. The Chiefs had the top-ranked offense in yards and points per game in 2019. In 2020, while managing Mahomes’ knee injury, they finished with the seventh-most yards and the fifth-most points. This comes in the same season when the Los Angeles Rams saw Sean McVay and Jared Goff regress to 11th in points per game and seventh in yardage.

And that’s the kind of electricity that Deshaun Watson needs. O’Brien has gotten the benefit of the doubt with bad quarterbacks. He has gotten the benefit of the doubt with a handful of bad offensive line groups. He has gotten the benefit of the doubt beyond reasonable doubt. His mistakes in these playoffs have been glaring, between the collapse in Kansas City and the near collapse against Buffalo. His time in Houston is up — perhaps there’s another opportunity on the horizon. But Bieniemy, 50, can apply the same creativity he’s had with Mahomes to a player like Watson, who is equally physically gifted even if those physical gifts are fairly different.

There was a moment in Sunday’s game where both quarterbacks, Watson and Mahomes, were 22 of 33. But the Chiefs had 48 points and the texans had 31. Mahomes had 29 more yards than Watson — along with three more passing touchdowns. There are a million things that go into those statistics, but still, the moment felt telling. On the same total of completions and passes, Bieniemy was getting more out of Mahomes than O’Brien was getting out of Watson. It would be nice to see if Bieniemy can do what O’Brien can’t seem to do: maximize upon Watson’s potential.