I'd love to have Mariota. I don't think we will draft high enough to get Bridgewater. I kind of expect Mariota to outperform Bridgewater in the NFL due to the injury concerns. I also think that Taj Boyd would be a solid option if he drops to the 2nd round. I would not be completely pissed if they drafted Mettenberger if he falls due to injury concerns. I think whatever they do they should draft a QB early (within the first 2 rounds) and a second QB in the later rounds (5-7). I would not mind them taking a flier on Braxton Miller if he decides to enter the draft, although he'd be stupid to do so.
If Bridgewater is as good as advertised, I'd have no problem drafting him with our first pick. However, given how deep a draft this is at the QB position, if Bridgewater is off the board when we pick, we've got to go defense. I don't care what position because we have holes everywhere, especially with Antonio Smith's impending departure. O-line would be a terrible pick in the eRly 1st because we have Brown locked up long-term on a value contract for his position, and blowing the #2 or 3 pick on a right tackle would be foolish...especially when you don't know what you're gonna get from your 3rd round RT you drafted just last year. Teams don't draft RT's in the top 5 picks.
What I'm saying is I DON'T BELIEVE the QBs rated to go with the number 1 pick are worth drafting with the #1 pick... Teddy and Johnny look like they're one hit away from their careers being over and I just simply don't trust Marcus. I believe Murray is just as good if not better than those guys and he can be had in the 2nd or 3rd round.
And again... The point I'm making is this draft is like the Luck-RG3 draft IMO. Luck and RG3 were the big names but Wilson and Foles are just as good. And I bet Cousins is just as good as well. There is no Cam Newton or Andrew Luck sitting at the top of this draft that you just simply cannot pass him up... Teddy, Johnny, and Marcus all have major question marks and probably are not worth passing up on Barr, Clowney, or Mack to pair up with J.J... It seems in this particular draft... There will be QBs who can be drafted in the 2nd and 3rd rounds that are probably just as good if not better than the QBs going in the first (just like the Luck draft).. Like Boyd and Hundly, one of them should be there in the 2nd... And every team in the NFL has been scouting Jimmy Garopollo. But the Texans will probably fold to pressure and draft a QB... I'm not saying Teddy or Johnny can't be great.
Seattle didn't think Wilson was as good as Luck or RG3. If they had the #1 pick, they wouldn't have waited to draft Wilson - they would have jumped at Luck/RG3. If they thought he was that good, no way they let him fall to the 3rd round and hope that no one else sees what they see and picks him up first. And they certainly wouldn't have paid Matt Flynn all that money. Seattle got lucky in that Wilson turned out way better than they or anyone else thought he would. So again, if that's your hope on how it plays out, then you're relying on your own scouts being wrong.
I'm not disagreeing here - I don't know enough about the individual QBs to say who will be best. But if Teddy goes top 3 and Hundley goes in the 3rd round, then the consensus of 32 teams was that Hundley is a project that is nowhere near as likely to succeed as Teddy. If scouts actually thought they're similarly good, Hundley would go somewhere close to Teddy (accounting for team need). So if you're picking Hundley in the 3rd, you're again hoping your scouts are wrong and he turns out better than they think, or you're counting on the fact that you see something in him that you are sure 31 other teams don't see and won't pick him earlier.
No matter what player you draft in the NFL has a risk. Even can't miss prospects like Jamarcus Russell and Ryan Leaf.
Around ~30% of active players on NFL rosters are undrafted... there are more undrafted players who make it in the NFL than first round picks. I understand your above logic, but simply relying on "scouts rarely making mistakes" is not the best argument. Mistakes and mis-evaluations are made by all teams all the time. Just because every other team would make the same mistake, doesn't mean its not a mistake. I also don't know much more about these QB's besides the "hype"... but I do see enough failures in the NFL (along with enough "successful" non-top picks) to justify not going with a QB at the top of the draft in any given year (provided you're a team with holes everywhere... which the Texans are).
I don't get the "I don't think we'll be in position to draft _______" comments. Maybe a few weeks ago when we thought we could still beat Arizona (4-4 at the time), Oakland, and Jacksonville. But now, especially after last week, how could we not be favored to be in position to take the first QB in the draft? Atlanta is the only team ahead of us now (based on strength of schedule) and they're not taking a QB.
That statistic is slightly misleading, just because the pool of undrafted players is much larger. For example, the Texans had one first round pick in 2013 but they signed 23 undrafted FAs. If a couple of those guys manage to make the back end of the roster (Cierre Wood, Justin Tuggle, Willie Jefferson) well damn, then from that one draft class you have 3 times as many undrafted players and you do first rounders.
Oh I agree that teams make "mistakes" all the time - they aren't even always mistakes. They are often players improving and proving themselves worthy later on. But if you're relying on that as your draft strategy - to assume that you're going to get the evaluations wrongs, so you might as well just draft someone you don't think is as good and hope that you're wrong, then your organization is stupid.
But there are failures at every position. If you draft an OT, you could get a bust too. It's silly to avoid the most important position on the field just because you're scared you might get it wrong. Is it any better to take a less important position that you might get wrong too?
Scouts aren't always right... And they can sometimes be consistently wrong. You're going with stats and I'm going with my opinion. And in my opinion there's not much difference between Teddy and Hundley if any especially with the fact that Teddy faced super weak competition. I would actually rather have Hundley of the two. In my opinion in this draft coming up there is not much difference between the #1 ranked QB and the #7 QB so why blow a top 1st round pick on one...
Doesn't matter... Fact still remains at this point that Wilson, Foles, and Cousins are probably just as good as Luck and RG3... Of course you couldn't pass up on Luck _ but what I keep saying is there are no "Luck" type prospects in this draft that you GOT TO TAKE which makes it easier for the Texans to draft a defensive player with that 1st pick instead of a QB... And there's a huge possibility that the Texans are in the same situation next year regardless of which one of these QBs they draft and next year's draft will be better than the Luck and RG3 draft if Famous J ain't in jail... Even more reason to draft a sure fire defensive player.
I agree with the first part of this statement but here is what I would do instead: Trade down to the 7 to 13 range, collect an extra 1st and 3rd rounder, or maybe 1st and 2nd. You then select Hundley as your QB, pick up an extra OL and fill defensive needs. Next year you'd probably have another one of those extra picks.
Hundley could probably be had later too, not many teams in the middle of the draft that will go with QB in the first round. So you could trade to 7-13 and then down again to 20-25 (and collect another 2nd rounder) and you could get 2 OL, Hundley, a defensive need and still have an extra pick next year.
I wouldn't trade to far back. I would like them to get Barr, Clowney, or Mack and they may have to stay in the top 10 to get one of them. I was thinking Hundley may be available in the 2nd but he could still go in the 1st but Boyd may be there... And I wouldn't be surprised if Johnny Football is sitting there in the 2nd round. I wouldn't burn too many picks on OL tho... They need to go out and spend some money on that position.
I'm not a cap expert but not sure exactly how much we could spend in free agency. Schaub's situation will make that a bit trickier too. If we are at about 20 and don't go QB, I would like to have Verrett from TCU, a great cover corner to help our secondary. But yeah if you told me Hundley would be there with our 2nd round pick, I would do that in a heart beat and trade down our pick. I've also been going on the assumption that we're a top 3 pick in my analysis, btw.
