The Texans Are Falling

Spring time predictions of fall results are often based on free agent acquisitions, draft picks, and staffing changes. More often than not, there’s a team universally considered a Super Bowl favorite that crashes and burns when the season rolls around. Equally so, there’s a team everyone pans that rises to the occasion when kickoff arrives.

Do you think your Houston Texans are in either of those categories? A riser or a faller? Bleacher Report certainly thinks they’re in the latter category. In fact, they think the Texans are leading the pack when it comes to driving off a cliff.

Bleacher Report:

The Houston Texans, regardless of who they trot out under center in 2021, didn’t do much to improve this offseason after a 4-12 record in 2020.

That sounds almost ridiculous for a team that added nearly 30 free agentsthis offseason. But that speaks more to the size of the rebuild after finally putting an end to the Bill O’Brien era. There’s no guarantee the roster is any better, both because few of the names appear to be impact players and most of the deals were small one or two-year pacts, with punter Cameron Johnston receiving the highest dollar amount of any signee ($8 million).

Even worse, the Texans didn’t have a draft selection until the third round, where they used the No. 67 pick on quarterback Davis Mills out of Stanford. He joins journeyman backup Tyrod Taylor, though it doesn’t seem likely either will be able to fill in for the near-MVP-level play of Deshaun Watson.

A team that lost J.J. Watt and several offensive linemen, did not have a top-50 pick or any notable free-agent signings and still hasn’t come close to fixing the DeAndre Hopkins mistake figures to stumble backward significantly—and that’s before taking into account a possible league-worst regression under center.

In some ways, if you tilt your head to the side and squint really hard, you might see a method to Nick Caserio’s apparent madness of roster rebuilding. He took over a team the previous regime all but stripped of quality players. Former Texans football czar Bill O’Brien inherited a team sporting the likes of J.J. Watt, DeAndre Hopkins, Arian Foster, Andre Johnson, Owen Daniels, Wade Smith, Chris Myers, Duane Brown, Derek Newton, Antonio Smith, Kareem Jackson, A.J. Bouye and Brian Cushing. He left behind a team that had Deshaun Watson, Justin Reid and Brandin Cooks.

It would be interesting to see what Caserio could do if he inherited the 2013 Texans versus the 2020 version of the team. What do you think? Is Houston heading in the right direction? Listing at sea? Or continuing to drive the bus off the cliff?