The Texans will win the AFC South

You make up some completely arbitrary and unrealistic measuring stick for a GM of “must acquire top 10 players at their position in first two off-seasons, without having a first or second round pick in the first off-season”. Presumably you’d want them to do this without overpaying in free agency.

Using surplus draft picks, they attempt to meet your demands.

You then complain that they gave up too much, citing losing out on “top 9/10/29 non-QB prospects”. How these players have a better chance of meeting your criteria than two top 3 players is a bit of a mystery to me currently.

If the team exceeds the low expectations you’ve set for them, you will undoubtedly credit the coach for overachieving with the horrible roster he was given by the GM. You’ll give the GM no credit for hiring the coach.

Why exactly should your opinion on the Texan FO be taken seriously?

 

My contention is that he hasn’t acquired *any* - and I would extend that to his disastrous first two coaching hires, in which he managed to land the worst head coach in the NFL in consecutive seasons. Is this something you actually want to dispute? Are you ready to list all the talent Caserio has apparently acquired that I’m unaware of?…

He’s had three offseasons. Like… what is *your* standard if you’re just going to thoroughly dismiss how barren his roster is - even now, after this draft… they have a significant number of glaring holes.

I’m not arguing the players won’t meet any standard - I’m arguing 3 is more than 1.

Why should yours, if you’re defending a team that’s picked top 3 in the two most recent drafts?… Like, what could the defense possibly be?

If this off-season proves to be an improvement - and it’s looking that way, on paper - I’ll credit them finally hiring a competent coach who could communicate a vision for the team. What I don’t understand - and you can’t explain, beyond making convenient excuses for Caserio - is why it took him three years to hire that competent coach?

 

(The Chiefs paid less to trade up for Mahomes than the Texans did to trade up Will Anderson. Like… significantly less…)

 

Outside of drafting Gardner, who had a great first year, the only way for them to acquire an elite player would have been free agency. What elite player is signing with the Texans for market value? Assuming they even had the cap space, why would the rebuilding Texans want to sign such a player? This is why it’s a ridiculous expectation. I suspect you knew as much though.

They didn’t just hire a competent coach, they hired the best candidate on the market. What you are advocating for, is them settling in the last couple of years for an inferior candidate that was more respectable than the ones they ended up hiring. Which of the candidates that they interviewed in the last couple of years was better than Demeco? The only option I can think of would be Gannon, who no one was talking about as a hot candidate last year, but whom the Texans had the foresight to interview before this year. He was also reportedly Caserio’s preferred choice over Lovie (Cal).

 

I’m sorry…did the chiefs trade up to No. 3?

He wasn’t even considered a top 15 talent

 

Omg now we are playing this game? Patriots didn’t give up anything but a 6th rounder for Tom Brady. Not sure why we drafted a qb before that.
#3 is worth a lot more than #10. In any draft. Why don’t you talk about what the niners/panthers/bears/rams/etc all gave up for top 3 picks..
Instead you just pick the greatest player in the league who happened to be there at 10, and use it as a value point for all trades… no one is gonna change minds, I’m gonna remain optimistic, you seem to hate whatever happens, spend too much/don’t add enough talent/don’t spend enough in FA/spend too much in FA.. there’s no winning so let’s just wait and see.

 

Curious to see many wins you consider “appreciably more?”

I’ve been down on this franchise as much as the next guy but to call it a miscalculation is a bit premature. They still have a full allotment of picks and the most cap space in the league come next offseason. I understand wanting to stockpile talent, but I’m just glad they are taking a shot for once.

 

Wanted to touch on this last part too, is there a chance we paid too much as in Will Anderson isn’t worth it? Maybe. But as far as getting fleeced, that was the market price for that spot. It was literally THE MOST TALKED ABOUT draft position to trade for. It was either teams going all in for stroud, or going all in for the best non-qb. We were smart enough to make it be the cheaper option.. that was the price. You can be mad we spent it, but don’t act like cards we’re hoping to get a 3rd rounder and #12 and we just threw more picks at them because of how dumb we are…

 

KC didn't get 2 of the top 5 players in the draft. We needed them! It would have cost us more picks to draft Will first and then try to trade up for CJ Stroud. Too many teams were eager for a QB. I think it was a smart strategy. We got two top players at positions needed most on our team.

 

Calm down. @deb4rockets said they were still upset about the Chiefs jumping the Texans to draft Mahomes, and I made a joke about it costing less than Will Anderson. I'm not otherwise making any point there at all...

... a) for two years, they literally did nothing. Were you thrilled with the Culley/Lovie hires? Excited when they signed Rex Burkhead? Fired up when they drafted Davis Mills? They were a full-blown train wreck, and Caserio - handpicked by Jack Easterby - was at the helm for ALL of it; b) what about this offseason have I hated? I capital-L Love the DeMeco Ryans hire; I'm optimistic they actually signed legitimately useful free agents; I'm excited about the top of the draft (was underwhelmed by the rest of it).

Just because I don't agree with their methodology of continuing to give away draft picks - a completely reasonable take, given the roster, which, even now, remains a wasteland - doesn't mean I "hate whatever happens." I do think Nick Caserio is actively bad at his job. But, hey - if they fired him, I sureashell wouldn't hate that!

 

I think they'll win 6 games this year.

I was calling the Laremy Tunsil trade a miscalculation. But, as I said, I fear this one could turn into that. Nick Caserio has to stop giving away draft picks. This team needs quality quantity, too.

The first thing Jeff Luhnow did with the Astros was flood their system with prospects. Given the shape of the roster Caserio inherited, he should have taken the same approach. But he's been wildly irresponsible with picks. It's maddening.

This is not a joke/troll - if I were the owner, and Caserio traded *up* in that first draft (as he did to select Nico Collins - what a brilliant move that was!), I would have sincerely considered firing him. At the very least, I would have read him the riot act to never be that stupid again.[/QUOTE]

 

The strategy involved was that the Texans in reality were trading up for CJ Stroud if that makes the deal more palatable. Hindsight being what it is sure it looks like the entire NFL sans the Chiefs "missed" on Mahomes, but he did not have the name recognition at Texas Tech that Stroud and some others had from their big time schools. Mahomes playing in an Air Raid offense put up some crazy yardage stats in school and obviously had the tools to play in the NFL and landed with the best situation for him. CJ put up some monster numbers too in a not so gimmicky offense. Doesnt mean that it will translate nearly as well, but that comparing trades in the draft with the benefit of hindsight and applying them to a still not determined outcome isnt an apples to apples comparison (yet).

 

And the year after that? To me, this is similar to those calling Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, Trevor Lawrence, etc…busts after one season. Or calling the Mahomes trade a miscalculation because he couldn’t beat out Alex Smith and the Chiefs actually had a worse record the year after.

Yes the trade has the potential to sting bad come next April but there is no way of saying that we will know the full impact from the trade then.

Flooding the system with prospects is never a sure thing which is why we see teams seemingly stuck in the Top 10 of the draft year in year out. When you look at teams that have "rebuilt" themselves, how many of them had two 1st round draft picks for 3 years in a row? Hell I'm not sure any of them had 5 which is what the Texans will still have. Simply put, Caserio is gonna have to hit on these picks, doesn't matter how many he has at his disposal (which is plenty IMO).

I'm not a Caserio fan by any means but if you are going to trash the Collins trade (which I didn't like either), you would have had to applaud the Kenyon Green trade last year right?

 

....maybe they should have drafted Gardner, then? Maybe not trade back with the next pick, passing on Kyle Hamilton to draft one of the worst starting guards in the NFL? Maybe, if Caserio wasn't irresponsibly trading away so many picks, he would have given himself a larger pool of players, from which a surprise late-round pick might've hit?...

This is one of the standards from Caserio apologists: no one wanted to play for the Texans! Bullshit. Good players sign with bad teams ALL THE TIME. He was clearly not interested in signing good players, and we know this because, for two offseasons, he exclusively worked the margins and only signed fringe players. Even this offseason - which was significantly better than the previous two - he was working the edges. The Texans did not sign any of the elite free agents that flew off the board. They stayed on the sidelines and picked through the leftovers. Again, I think he made some nice deals - and I love the Mason deal. But it felt like more of the same from Caserio.

Here's one of my biggest gripes: why didn't he pour money into the offensive line, not only an urgent need - but a necessity if the idea is to build around a rookie QB? Here's a list of top 10-ish interior linemen available the past three years - Caserio signed none of these guys:
Joe Thuney
Kevin Zeitler
Brandon Schreff
Alex Cappa
Matt Feiler
James Daniels
Connor Williams
Laken Tominson
Corey Linsley
David Andrews
Michael Onwenu
Ben Powers

Again, he dealt for Mason and I like that deal. But there are three interior line sports, and Mason only plays one of them.

I'm excited about DeMeco. Great hire. Let's not crown him, though. And... they were in position to hire DeMeco because, for two years, Caserio embarrassed himself by hiring laughing stocks while heavy-flirting with Josh McCown. Total clown show.

I know everyone is desperate for, like, baseline competence from the franchise, and I think this offseason has provided plenty of reasons to be optimistic.

But I'm not sure why we should just dismiss the previous two years and give Caserio a pass? Nor do I think it's unreasonable to be cautious about a trade that - while fun & exciting - nonetheless detonated a valuable supply of much-needed draft picks.

 

I've never used the term "bust" - I've made no judgement of Anderson (or Stroud). I've said elsewhere if both are as good as we hope they can be, it'll take some of the sting out of the compensation paid.

But the Tunsil deal was a massive miscalculation. Not on Caserio - but it crippled the team, and we can see the impact it had. And Tunsil has been good. That's the thing - barring Anderson becoming LT, it's really hard for any player to counter a significant price teams make to acquire them. Anderson could be very good - they're still going to really miss those two picks, IMO.

Two things can true at once: I think the trade is exciting and it obviously makes the team better. At the same time, I don't feel like this team was in position to give up *that* much draft capital for a non-QB (or, frankly, a QB who isn't Trevor Lawrence).

Over the course of three drafts ('22-'24), the Texans had positioned themselves to draft 9 top 40 prospects. They are going to end up with 7 (if I'm doing my math correctly). That may not seem like a lot - but for a team with *this* roster... They need all their premium picks. And if Green is indeed a bust, and if Stingley doesn't make a leap, they've really screwed themselves even more.

Acquiring picks is admirable - but not at the cost of passing on an elite safety and certainly not if your target turns out to be a bust.

 

So trading back and getting EXTRA draft capital and Kenyon green is bad, but trading extra capital to move up is also bad.. it’s pick perfect players or you suck. Nothing else. Got it.

edit: and before you say, “well they traded back and got bad person” so after one season we are calling busts? Then I challenge you to find a GM that has none of those. And I also guess you would have given up on Peyton manning, Mahomes, burrow, etc… go yell at the eagles for trading up for Andre Dillard while you’re at it.

 

Sorry that was in response to the following:

“But.... they're not going to win appreciably more games this year and *that's* when the full impact of this trade is likely to hit you.”

To me, that is the same as calling a rookie a bust after their first year. You may not see appreciably more wins at first but that’s also not when you will see the full impact of it either.

Sure. But sounds like you bashed Caserio for trading up in 2021 and now bashing him for trading down in 2022. This is before we really know how all the picks will eventually turn out. Bit of a double edge sword if you ask me. And to be clear, I wasn’t a fan of any of those picks.

 

Let the expectations flow through the forum! Yesss!