2014 NFL Draft: Houston Texans General Manager Rick Smith Says, "“I Absolutely Know Who I Want”

The right honorable Mr. Dunsmore included this in the Battle Red Newswire today, and I wanted to dig into it a bit more. Deepi Sidhu of HoustonTexans.com spoke with Rick Smith yesterday afternoon, and Smith is saying the mystery of who the team will take with the first pick in the 2014 NFL Draft is a mystery no more:

"I absolutely know who I want," Smith said in an interview with "Texans Huddle" on Fox Sports Southwest. "I know the guys we like. The fortunate thing about having the first pick is I’ve got the pick of the litter, so I will know exactly who I want at that point."

"Now where the game is played is if there’s an opportunity to move and, in this case, obviously to move back if somebody else wants to come up to that first pick," Smith said. "Then you weigh what the opportunities are versus who the individual is that you want to take and what that value is relative to the value that somebody might be offering you. But as you move through the draft, obviously you don’t know who’s going to be picked when."

The perfect formula for drafting is the intersection of value vs. need, according to Smith.

"I’ve said very often that if you are able to take a player at a corresponding value and it fits a position of need, then you’ve hit the homerun," Smith said. "You’ve done a great job."

After reading that (and with the always present caveat that it could be nothing more than misinformation designed to further camouflage what the Texans actually intend to do), I believe that your Houston Texans have in fact decided who they are going to take with the first overall pick of the 2014 NFL Draft...if they keep the first overall pick in the 2014 NFL Draft. That second quote above leads me to believe that the Texans remain wide open to trading the top pick. Whether that means they're actively working the phones trying to proactively move the pick or simply fielding phone calls from interested teams who are feeling the Texans out as to what it'd cost to move up, I have no idea.

If they can't trade back, I believe the Texans have settled on who Roger Goodell will announce as the first pick in the 2014 NFL Draft. Who is it?