Romeo Crennel might be calling it a career

The Houston Texans have decided on a replacement for defensive coordinator Romeo Crennel after the longtime coach decided to leave his post.

After a 50-year coaching career, Romeo Crennel might be ready to retire. At the very least, he will not be coordinating the defense for the Houston Texans in 2020.

On Saturday, the Houston Chronicle reported that Crennel was undecided about his future—whether or not it was time to retire from the game completely or remain with the team in some sort of advisory capacity. Either way, the Texans had their next man up already in-house in former NFL lineman Anthony Weaver. Adam Schefter reported on Monday that Weaver was promoted by the team, meaning Crennel is now officially out even if the future remains unclear.

Crennel’s most recent season with the Texans was a successful one as the team made the Divisional Round of the playoffs, including a Wild Card victory over the Buffalo Bills. However, the final game of Crennel’s tenure might go down as a 51-31 meltdown against the Kansas City Chiefs.

Chiefs fans will be very familiar with Crennel and the associations will likely be both positive and negative. On the one hand, Crennel proved himself to be a solid defensive coach during his tenure with in Kansas City and his players always genuinely loved playing for him. On the flip side, Crennel was perhaps the most abysmal hire as a head coach in team history, a short stint that lasted from an interim role in 2011 to a one-year official capacity in 2012. That was the same year the Chiefs finished with the single worst record in the NFL.

Crennel began his career in coaching as a line coach for Western Kentucky all the way back in 1970 and made the leap to the NFL one decade later as a special teams coach for the New York Giants. He would hold that post for the entirety of the ’80s before being moved to defensive line coach. The New England Patriots struck a few years later and Crennel’s association with Bill Belichick’s success in Foxboro catapulted him further up NFL food chains.

Crennel, who is 72, served as head coach for the Cleveland Browns from 2005 to 2008 and finished with a career coaching record of 28-55. He has been with the Texans since 2014.