HOUSTON — Even if they don't pick hometown favorite Vince Young in the draft, the Houston Texans will have a native son leading the team.

Denver offensive coordinator Gary Kubiak, who grew up in Houston, will be hired as coach of the Texans, team owner Bob McNair said Sunday.

McNair said the hiring won't be completed until later in the week. The Texans couldn't negotiate a contract with Kubiak until the Broncos were eliminated from the playoffs.

The announcement came about an hour after Denver lost to Pittsburgh in the AFC championship game.

"Hopefully we'll have him down here by the middle of the week and he will then be assembling a staff," McNair said.

There's been speculation for weeks that Kubiak, 44, would become the Texans' second coach, replacing Dom Capers.

Capers was fired a day after Houston finished its season an NFL-worst 2-14. He led the team since its inception four seasons ago.

Houston won four games in its first season, five in 2003 and seven last season before its meltdown this past season.

Kubiak has been a highly regarded coaching prospect for several years, but this will be his first head coaching job at any level. He spent the last 11 years with Mike Shanahan in Denver, helping the team to back-to-back Super Bowl wins in 1998 and 1999.

"To lose him is going to be tough," Broncos quarterback Jake Plummer said. "He really helped me step up in my career. We'll miss him, but at the same time you're excited for him. He deserves it and he's a great football coach."

The Texans formally interviewed six candidates, but Kubiak was the front-runner from the beginning. It certainly didn't hurt that he played in Denver for Dan Reeves, who is working for Houston as a consultant to McNair.

McNair said he chose Kubiak because he wants to revive Houston's sagging offense, which was ranked 30th in the league and managed just 253.3 yards per game in 2005.

"I think that the biggest challenge that we have is from the standpoint of putting together an effective offense," McNair said. "We've had difficulty with that process in the past."

What direction the offense is heading will hinge, at least in part, on what the Texans do with the top pick in April's draft.

Will they select running back Reggie Bush, the Heisman Trophy winner from Southern California, or Young, a quarterback who led Texas to the national championship?

The Texans already have David Carr, a former first overall pick, at quarterback and seem reluctant to give up on him.

A third option is that the Texans will decide they have too many holes to fill and trade down.

Kubiak, who starred at Houston's St. Pius high school and Texas A&M, played for Reeves and backed up John Elway from 1983-91. He had a 4-1 record as a starter.

He returned briefly to coach at his alma mater — in College Station, about 90 miles from Houston — then joined Shanahan on George Seifert's staff in San Francisco in 1994. With Shanahan as the offensive coordinator and Kubiak as the quarterbacks coach, the 49ers won the Super Bowl and Steve Young was named the MVP.

Shanahan became the Broncos' coach the following season and took Kubiak with him. Since then, the Broncos have had one of the league's top 10 offenses in 10 of 11 seasons. The Broncos ranked fifth in total offense in 2005.

Kubiak was a candidate for the job the first time around and was interviewed in 2001 before the Texans picked Capers.

McNair said he told Kubiak after the 2001 interview that he thought he needed "a little more experience" before he became a head coach.

McNair said Kubiak recently told him: "'You were right back then, but I can just tell you I'm ready now.'"

"And I thought he was," McNair said.

McNair said that many of Kubiak's relatives live in Houston and that his roots in the city played a role in the hiring.

"I think that had a lot to do with his desire to be with the Texans as opposed some other team," he said. "He's been approached over the years by other teams to go elsewhere and I think this is where he wanted to be."