Do the Texans have the right coach to lead the franchise to its first Super Bowl appearance — and trophy?

Do the Texans have the right general manager?

The right offensive play-caller?

The Texans being the Texans — beat New England on national TV, trail Denver 38-3 the next week at home — all of the above questions are currently wrapped up within the same name: Bill O’Brien.

Which is exactly why chairman/CEO Cal McNair should use the team’s final three regular-season games (and whatever potentially awaits in the postseason) to fully evaluate whether O’Brien is the right name for the job(s).

Don’t get too excited, all you card-carrying members of the Fire O’Brien campaign. The Texans went a horrific 4-12 just two seasons ago. The answer? O’Brien received a four-year contract extension, won a long-simmering power struggle with then-longtime GM Rick Smith and handpicked the Texans’ next GM.

Last season, the Texans were booed off the field during a depressing home wild-card defeat to Indianapolis. The top-down answer? New GM Brian Gaine was fired, O’Brien received Bill Belichick-like organizational power and the team’s sixth-year coach partnered with Jack Easterby to make Patriots South fully operational.

Six years.

That’s how long O’Brien (50-43 regular season, 1-3 playoffs) has been running, changing, fixing, rewriting and improving the show.

But have the Texans truly improved?

And right now, with the season, division and playoffs all on the line, are you ready to commit to a seventh year for a coach/GM/playcaller who currently only has one home wild-card win on his professional résumé?

That’s what McNair should already be evaluating. Can his coach win the Super Bowl next year? Can his unofficial GM build the best roster in the league?

Good luck reading sealed lips.

Jim Crane, with the Astros in the middle of an in-depth investigation by Major League Baseball, has recently spoken to the media (and, thus, the fans) more than McNair. Tilman Fertitta, when the Rockets were in the middle of an international political controversy, was more open and forthcoming than the Texans’ CEO.

“It’s a flatter organization with a faster management style. The organization is totally re-energized with a team-based approach and new leadership based on sub programs, with each sub program being fully optimized as a goal,” McNair told the Texans’ flagship station in July. “I know it’s a lot, but it’s a lot of improvements and we can’t wait to get out of the office, on the fields and get back to winning football games.”

Since then, radio silence from the man above.

A convincing 28-22 victory over the Pats says these Texans (8-5, tied with Tennessee for first place in the AFC South) are on a path to better days.

A humiliating 35-point deficit to the rebuilding Broncos screams same ol’ Texans, who haven’t come close to an AFC championship appearance since their 2002 inception and have struggled with week-to-week consistency under O’Brien since 2014.

Consistency should be old news in Year Six. A serious leap forward is still required and the Texans will enter the Titans’ Nissan Stadium staring at yet another defining crossroads.

Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes won the NFL MVP and reached the AFC championship game last season. This year, Andy Reid’s Chiefs are 9-4 and appear to be peaking at the right time.

Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson is a near-lock to win the MVP this season, which is just his second in the league. John Harbaugh’s Ravens shredded the Texans 41-7 in Week 11 and hold the best record (12-2) in the sport.

San Francisco is an NFC-best 11-2 under Jimmy Garoppolo, and third-year coach Kyle Shanahan has the 49ers playing like Super Bowl contenders.

New Orleans under Sean Payton. Seattle under Pete Carroll. New England in the playoffs under Belichick, even with Tom Brady at 42.

That’s a lofty, silver-trophy bar, not the Texans’ traditional 9-7 acceptance. But it’s exactly how the franchise’s CEO should be thinking, considering how much power the organization has given to the team’s coach/GM, and with a seventh year looming.

This isn’t about overreacting to a Week 14 defeat or failing to recognize that the Texans could win their division and make the playoffs for the fourth time in six seasons, if they can overcome Mike Vrabel’s Titans.

This is simply what all modern Super Bowl winners ask themselves on the path to winning it all: Do we have the right coach? The right GM? The right offensive and defensive coordinators?

Gary Kubiak, who faced a much tougher overhaul, received almost eight full seasons on Kirby Drive. He also coached a franchise-best 12-4 team in 2012, never received GM power and won a Super Bowl with Denver in ’15.

Are the 2019 Texans significantly better than they were in ’16, when they played New England tough for three-plus quarters on the road in a divisional-round defeat?

The easy answer is yes, because of the wonders of Deshaun Watson.

The real answer, with everything we know right now, is no. The 2016 Texans were held back by the failed Brock Osweiler experiment and only went 9-7. But they were propelled by one of the NFL’s best defenses and defined by a gritty identity.

With Watson, the Texans should be more explosive, dangerous and consistent — on both sides of the ball. Serious contenders.

Now remember that the 24-year-old franchise quarterback, like Mahomes, is expected to receive a massive contract extension this offseason, altering the Texans’ salary-cap landscape. That, before the 2019 season, the Texans traded away two future first-round picks and a second-rounder with O’Brien as the team’s unofficial GM. And that a team that has already hit the reset button multiple times under its current head coach — quarterbacks, GMs, offensive coordinator, assistant coaches, veteran players — faces another critical offseason.

Maybe the Texans win their next three, get hot in the playoffs and make this easy. O’Brien collected the power, keeps it and will be set to pass Kubiak for the team’s franchise record for coaching wins in 2020.

But if the Texans again fall short when it matters?

The question won’t go away: Does Houston’s NFL team have the right coach in place to lead it to its first world title?

brian.smith@chron.com

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