DRAFT SZN
Here are the underlying factors heavily influencing Houston Texans draft
Apr 25, 2023, 6:53 pm
The NFL Draft gets started this Thursday night! Composite Getty Image.
Houston Texans’ fans need to remember one thing come Thursday night’s NFL draft.
Back in 2011, you pee’d and moaned and threw up your hands when the Texans announced they were taking a defensive lineman named J.J. Watt with their first pick.
Watt went on to become the greatest and most celebrated player in Texans franchise history. So don’t judge a defensive draft pick by its cover. Even if it’s a cover 4 zone.
With the 2023 draft clock ticking down, it’s still anybody’s guess who the Texans will take with the coveted No. 2 pick. So-called experts are all over the draft board predicting which talented student-athlete will be a Texan next season.
I heard one ESPN analyst said, “only general manager Nick Caserio knows who’ll the Texans’ll will pick.”
And I’m thinking, yeah, right after new head coach DeMeco Ryans tells Caserio who the Texans will pick. It’s Ryans’ show. This week Caserio met with the press and answered questions about the draft sounding like the boys’ lawyer in My Cousin Vinny – the boys’ first lawyer before Vinny Gambini and Mona Lisa Vito show up to save their hides.
Experts’ mock drafts have the Texans taking Ohio State quarterback C.J. Stroud. They have the Texans taking Alabama defensive All-American Will Anderson. Others go a different direction, like ESPN 97.5 FM host Lance Zierlein, who was the first to zero in on Texas Tech edge rusher Tyree Wilson (with others jumping onboard after Zierlein).
I can’t put too much stock in Zierlein since he’s never been able to explain to me why it would take at least five years for a left offensive tackle to make the switch to right defensive tackle when the positions are about as different as left Twix and right Twix.
However, I have a sneaking suspicion that Zierlein is right about Tyree Wilson. He is what the Texans need, though perhaps not what Texans fans want. You can hear the boos now if Wilson’s name is called.
Other analysts have the Texans trading the No. 2 pick at the last moment, moving down from No. 2 and moving up from No. 12 (their second pick in the first round) in hopes of still capturing a premiere quarterback, fingers crossed, Hendon Hooker of Tennessee. That actually makes so much sense that it would be a shocker if the Texans pull it off. Other scenarios have the Texans pitching a trade with the 49ers for suddenly expendable quarterback Trey Lance. Right now the Texans have quarterbacks Case Keenum and the returning Davis Mills. Cue fans yawning and planning Sundays at home next season.
That’s the most compelling aspect of this draft – what will the Texans do? Anything is possible. It’s been a long time since the Texans were A-block news on SportsCenter.
This week Caesars Sportsbook posted odds on who will be the Texans’ pick at No. 2. They have Kentucky quarterback Will Levis the favorite at -140, followed by Wilson (+275), Anderson (+420) and Stroud (+425).
Yes, defense wins games, but defense doesn’t win fans. You saw all those empty seats last year. Season ticket holders, who already paid for their seats, stayed home. Even the last-minute scalpers on Kirby stopped showing up. I know the NFL announces attendance based on tickets sold – the Texans supposedly drew 67,911 fans per game in 2022. Please hold your laughter until the end. My guess: maybe 22,000 actual fannies in seats.
Last week Taylor Swift, over three nights of concerts at NRG Stadium, possibly filled more seats than the entire Texans 2022 season. Try and shake that off. Swift could have sold twice that many tickets. And that’s with Zierlein having Swift a late fifth-round pick at best.
More than any other team the Texans desperately need to hit a home run in this year’s draft. The team is teetering on irrelevancy. It was former NFL commissioner Bert Bell who said, “On any given Sunday any team can beat any other team.” It’s not so with the Texans.
Forgetting the draft order, the Texans are a team void of any star players or, judging by attendance, any reason to show up for games. That’s why the league almost always schedules the Texans games on a given Sunday afternoon, rarely Monday or Thursday night. One draft pick, if it hits, can change all that.
The first round of the draft will air at 7 p.m. on ABC (Channel 13), ESPN and the NFL Network.
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Adding a player of Kevin Durant’s caliber was too valuable an opportunity for the Houston Rockets to pass up, even though it meant moving on from Jalen Green just four seasons after they drafted him second overall.
Durant was officially acquired from Phoenix on Sunday in a complicated seven-team transaction that sent Green and Dillon Brooks to the Suns and brought Clint Capela back to Houston from the Hawks.
General manager Rafael Stone is thrilled to add the future Hall of Famer, who will turn 37 in September, to a team which made a huge leap last season to earn the second seed in the Western Conference.
Asked Monday why he wanted to add Durant to the team, Stone smiled broadly before answering.
“He’s Kevin Durant,” Stone said. “He’s just — he’s really good. He’s super-efficient. He had a great year last year. He’s obviously not 30 anymore, but he hasn’t really fallen off and we just think he has a chance to really be impactful for us.”
But trading Green to get him was not an easy decision for Stone, Houston’s general manager since 2020.
“Jalen’s awesome, he did everything we asked,” Stone said. “He’s a wonderful combination of talent and work ethic along with being just a great human being. And any time that you have the privilege to work with someone who is talented and works really hard and is really nice, you should value it. And organizationally we’ve valued him tremendously, so yeah very hard.”
Green was criticized for his up-and-down play during the postseason when the Rockets were eliminated by the Warriors in seven games in the first round. But Green had improved in each of his four seasons in Houston, leading the team in scoring last season and playing all 82 games in both of the past two seasons.
Pressed for details about why Green's time was up in Houston, Stone wouldn't get into specifics.
“It’s the NBA and you can only do trades if a certain amount of money goes out and a certain amount comes in and there’s some positional overlap or at least overlap in terms of on ball presence,” he said. “And so that’s what the deal required.”
In Durant, the Rockets get a veteran of almost two decades who averaged 26.6 points and six rebounds a game last season and has a career average of 27.2 points and seven rebounds.
Houston loves the veteran experience and presence that Durant brings. Stone noted that the team had arranged for some of its players to work out with him in each of the past two offseasons.
“His work ethic is just awesome,” Stone said. “The speed at which he goes, not in a game … but the speed at which he practices and the intensity at which he practices is something that has made him great over the years and it started when he was very young. So of all the things that I hope rubs off, that’s the main one I think is that practice makes perfect. And I think one of the reasons he’s had such an excellent career is because of the intensity with which he works day in day out.”
Durant is a 15-time All-Star and four-time scoring champion, who was the Finals MVP twice. The former Texas Longhorn is one of eight players in NBA history to score at least 30,000 points and he won NBA titles in 2017 and 2018 with the Warriors.
Now he’ll join a team chasing its first NBA title since winning back-to-back championships in 1994-95.
“Everything has to play out, but we do — we like the fit,” Stone said. “We think it works well. We think he will add to us and we think we will help him.”