Are the Houston Texans Preparing For Brandin Cooks’ Exit?

Earlier this week, we touched on the potential for the Houston Texans to trade their top wide receiver, Pro Bowl pass catcher Brandin Cooks.

Since then, things have certainly not unfolded to douse any rumors that Cooks will soon join the ranks of ex-Texans.

Houston’s second best receiver, Nico Collins, was injured in last weekend’s game against the Las Vegas Raiders. Speculation quickly arose surrounding the severity of the injury. And as rumors go, the gamut was run from “he’ll play next weekend” to “out for the rest of the season.”

Thankfully, cooler heads offered more mature speculation:

On the surface, it makes total sense that Houston general manager Nick Caserio brought in Tyron Johnson to fill Collins’ shoes in a struggling offense.

However, when you look a little deeper, it gets fuzzy.

First Collins and Johnson are completely different receivers, skillset-wise. Collins is a big bodied, Andre Johnson type of pass catcher who can cut through traffic and make contested grabs using his huge frame and long reach to block out opposing defenders.

Tyron Johnson is a burner. Dude can fly. Like Will Fuller V fly.

That makes you wonder why Caserio would bring Johnson in to fill Collins’ presumably empty spot.

Especially when the Texans already have a speedster on the team.

More from the “cooler heads” crowd, with what seems to be fairly on point granularity:

So, Cooks has liked some tweets about him getting traded, so what you say? Well, as the ever-awesome Steph Stradley points out, Cooks would have to dig for some of those tweets, indicating a desire to find tweets discussing his potential upcoming trade.

Where there’s smoke...

To summarize:

• Trade rumors abound that teams are actively trying to acquire Cooks from the Texans
• Houston signs another receiver with an eerily similar skillset and offensive role to Cooks
• Cooks is on twitter looking for tweets about getting traded

Over the last 24 hours, rumors have connected the Green Bay Packers, Dallas Cowboys and New York Giants to Houston in trade talks for Cooks. None of those are AFC teams, so Caserio needn’t worry about Derek Stingley having to chase Cooks all over the field on a regular basis. Each of those teams has the cap space and trade capital to make a deal happen.

Right now, the only thing stopping it is Caserio holding fast to get the best deal possible. And, if he has three other teams actively trying to acquire the Archer, then let the bidding war begin.