my sentiments exactly. If a game changing WR like Hunter or Patterson is there, that's one thing, but otherwise, go passrush.
Finally some intelligent talk. I have always seen drafting a WR in the 1st round as a waste given our quarterback situation. I would rather build for the future and enhance our defense putting a great prospect player opposite of Watt. Can you imagine if we hit with a pro bowl caliber pick? Teams wouldn't know how to gameplan against our D line.... that would be awesome.
My understanding is that A Smith will be gone after this next year for cap reasons. Drafting Hunt, then, would fit in the pattern they established by drafting Mercilus. There was a long interview with him on the radio yesterday. Hunt had never even watched a game from beginning to end before the Giants/Pats Super Bowl. He has so much room to grow, and a great work ethic. He also said JJ Watt was who he watched last year to learn technique and for insperation. Having him on the same team with Watt to mentor him seems like the best possible chance to maxamize his potential to reach his potential. Personality-wise, he also seems to really fit with the personality of guys that Wade Phillips has built this defense with. That having been said, the fact that it makes so much sense means that it almost definately won't happen.
For comparison, look at Bruce Irvin last year. He too, was a freakish athlete with a very raw game. He was mostly listed as a 3rd/late 2nd rounder going into the draft. I think I saw a couple of projections of late first. When Seattle took him at 15, the reaction of the experts was curious. First, they wete all shocked to death - they couldn't believe he was taken that high. That was quickly followed by gushing praise for Seattle gett ing such an amazing athlete. If it was so praise worthy, why was it so shocking? Other super-athletes with raw game that had a similar jump were.Jason Pierre-Paul, and yhe giant, lazy DT from Memphis that KC took last year. You just need 1 team to fall in love with the potential.
my final mock Rd. 1 Zach Ertz, TE, Stanford Rd. 2 Quinton Patton, WR, La Tech Rd. 3 Baccari Rambo, FS, Georgia Rd. 3 Jon Bostic, ILB, Florida Rd. 4 Sean Porter, OLB, Texas A&M Rd. 5 Tharold Simon, CB, LSU Rd. 6 Ricky Wagner, OT, Wisconsin Rd. 6 Gilbert Pena, NT, Mississippi Rd. 7 Jakar Hamilton, FS, SC State
So, I guess I've taken on the role of defending Hunt. I like the idea of "twin tower" DE's knocking down passes and clogging up the passing lanes, I like the idea of him as a poor man's Watt mentoring under Watt, and I like what I know of him, but honestly don't know enough to be defending him like I am. But that having been said, Danny Watkins was a first round pick for Philly in 2011 at age 26, and Brandon Weeden was drafted in the first round at age 28(!) last year. There was a whole lot of discussion of the age issue for both, and many points for and against, but ultimately in both cases the age issue was not a deal breaker. In general, if the player is around long enough for the age to become an issue, the pick was already more successful than three quarters of the draft picks that are made.
They weren't deal breakers, but were they good picks? If you're going to draft an older player, they should be able to come in and play right away. Watkins lost the battle for the starting job to a street free agent. He eventually took the job back but lost it again last year to another street free agent and barely played after that. 2 years in and he's already considered a bust. The book's still out on Weeden but it's not like he played well last season. He was one of the lowest rated QBs and one of the few who threw more INTs than TDs. It may go to show that even older rookies are still rookies and still need time to transition to the NFL which makes them even older before things begin to click, if they ever click at all. That doesn't mean a 26 year old can't come in and play well and prove themselves worthy of a first round selection (though not drafted, Kurt Warner was 27 when he joined the Rams and was 28 when he made his mark). I just wouldn't be using Watkins and Weeden as examples in defense of Hunt's age.
I wish we would trade up for Hopkins.....maybe someone would take our 1st and 4th...it won't happen because the texans never take any chances
I'd still be surprised if we actually take a WR in the first round. I think they stick with a defensive player
2013 NFL Draft: Which Non-Wideouts Make Sense In The First Round For The Texans? By Brett Kollmann on Apr 15 2013, 4:30p Sometimes I get the feeling that Rick Smith refuses to take wide receivers simply to watch us all squirm. Today, we try to prepare ourselves for this inevitability by looking at prospects that don't catch the ball (often). Another year, another wide receiver bonanza for the Houston Texans in seemingly every mock draft on the internet. Just as everyone was absolutely positively sure that Stephen Hill, Alshon Jeffery, or Rueben Randle were going to be Texans in 2012, everyone absolutely positively sure that Keenan Allen, DeAndre Hopkins, and Robert Woods are all going to be dawning battle red in 2013. Every year Houston gets mocked a wideout, and every year Rick Smith does something else, gets scoffed at, and is ultimately proven right. Duane Brown, Brian Cushing, Kareem Jackson, J.J. Watt, and Whitney Mercilus are all about as far as you can get from the oft-desired "complementary receiver that can eventually replace the aging Andre Johnson", and yet all of them are huge contributors to a Houston Texans team that is now considered among the finest in all of professional football. Wide receiver, as always, is a need going into the draft, and yet I have the sinking feeling that Rick Smith will yet again pick something else. It’s not like the Texans' front office has done anything in recent years to discourage that notion. So, if Houston does grab a future All-Pro that every Texans fan will pretend in three years that they liked as a first round pick at the time, who could it be? Who are these overlooked college stars that make more sense than arguably the most open and shut pick in the entire draft? Alex Okafor For reasons I don’t understand, Alex Okafor has not been put in the first round in very many mock drafts. That’s right, a 6’4", 265 pound tweener prospect with 34 inch arms, excellent strength, and a wicked set of hands on the edge is somehow not in the first round. Bollocks. I would go so far as to say that I highly doubt Okafor will even be on the board by the 27th pick, but if he does somehow manage to survive until the late first round, I would not be shocked at all to see him picked up as another piece to Wade Phillips’ defense. I have often said that Brooks Reed will never move inside next to Brian Cushing so long as there is nobody else is on the roster that has capability to two-gap on a right tackle and let J.J. Watt do his thing inside. Alex Okafor, however, can two-gap on a right tackle and is a better pass rusher than Reed. It makes perfect sense – pair the gifted University of Texas product with Watt in the trenches and let the versatile Brooks Reed demolish the run game inside with Cushing. We’ve seen what Reed can do as a pseudo inside linebacker in nickel packages before, and it was glorious. Now imagine that full time, with a better pass rusher on the edge, for a team that has a fan base that for the most part adores everyone associated with the UT football program other than Mack Brown. Yep, it sounds right to me too. Damontre Moore Similarly to Alex Okafor, I’ve seen a lot of mocks all steadily downgrade the talented A&M product from top 5 pick to not even being in the first round at all. That makes zero sense to me. How does a man that powerful, that explosive, and that good at playing football drop 30 spots simply because he ran a slow forty time and didn’t bench 30 reps? Did everyone miss the part where he vertical jumped over 35 inches and broad jumped over 10 feet? Those are wide receiver numbers in a 6’4", 250 pound death machine that has 35 inch arms. It shouldn’t even be possible, let alone ignored by everyone. When you watch Moore on tape, that explosiveness flashes on almost every single play. His get-off from the snap is incredible, and even if he doesn’t have the sustained upper body strength to crank out a bunch of reps on the bench, his lower body explosiveness and authoritative punches are enough to overwhelm almost every offensive lineman he faces with quick bursts of sheer power. I see him more as a penetrator than Okafor; Moore probably would not be able to stack and shed against the run as well as his UT counterpart, but with Moore destroying one gap on the outside, Watt destroying another gap on the inside, and Brian Cushing/Brooks Reed cleaning up the mess behind them, I’m not really all that worried about the run defense. It would be just plain fun to watch. The Texans also love picking them some Aggies, so there’s that, too. Kawann Short As far as I’m concerned, there’s two ways that the Texans can approach fixing their interior run defense in 2013: Big nose tackle/small linebacker, or small nose tackle/big linebacker. Either they grab a penetrator that gets up field with reckless abandon in the trenches and pair him with a linebacker that is big and strong enough to take on guards on the second level alone like the Jay Ratliff/Sean Lee combination in Dallas, or they grab a big nose tackle that draws the guard away from the linebacker and focus on speed and range on the second level. Earl Mitchell falls in to the category of an undersized penetrator, which tells me that they will try to find a bit bigger of a linebacker to pair with him inside as insurance against the run (Brooks Reed of course is an option there if they can find a replacement for him at OLB). That being said, Earl Mitchell is not that good at…you know…being a penetrator. If Wade Phillips wants to continue with the concept of an undersized nose tackle, he needs to find his Jay Ratliff. That player, to me at least, is Kawann Short. Kawann Short has one of the best pairs of hands for an interior linemen in this entire draft. He has spotty (at best) timing of snap counts and fires out of his stance far too slow at times (or in the case of the Senior Bowl, at all times), but when he gets going he is tough to stop. Spins, clubs, rips, swims – he’s got them all. His ability to flash his hands into one half of a guard, bait them into a counter punch, and then counter their counter with a well timed club swim back the other direction is uncanny. He does have trouble with consistency at times, but considering that there was literally no one else on the Purdue defense to help him out, I’m not at all concerned with his disappearing acts. Short will be a fine player in the league and can anchor a Texans' three man front that would be nigh unblockable. Sylvester Williams Sylvester Williams is a bit bigger than Short at 6’3", 313 lbs., and he can probably stand to get close to 320 without losing much explosiveness. Williams would be a more traditional nose tackle in the sense that his primary job would be annihilating pocket integrity against the pass and standing his ground against the run. His penetrating ability comes more from speed and power than Short’s crafty hand usage, but he can penetrate well nonetheless. What I really like about Williams is that despite getting double, or even triple-teamed on every snap, he rarely lost ground. His ability to anchor is impressive, and combined with his quickness off the snap and sneaky swim move, it is almost impossible to contain him with just one blocker. Williams would be the big run stopping force on the line that allows Wade Phillips to employ a bit smaller, faster, more coverage based linebacker on the second level that can handle tight ends and slot backs while Brian Cushing and Danieal Manning blitz and fill extra gaps. Datone Jones The fact that Rick Smith refuses to extend Antonio Smith despite desperately needing the cap relief tells me with 99% certainty that the Ninja won’t be a Texan in 2014. Considering that I believe that in the interest of not "wasting" J.J. Watt against the left tackles of the league, Smith will be the 5-technique this season; that would naturally leave a giant hole at defensive end a year from now. Datone Jones went from being a mid round project to possibly the best pass rusher in this entire class all in a span of a few months. His hands, power, and overall polish were average at best during the 2012 season, but there was certainly potential there for improvement. I don’t think anyone was prepared for what we saw during Senior Bowl week. He was simply phenomenal, and left a wake of devastation and despair across every offensive linemen he faced. Even Eric Fisher, a top five prospect in this class, had trouble containing Jones. As far as five techs go, nobody even comes close to Jones in this class. His Senior Bowl tape looked on par with J.J. Watt’s Wisconsin days, and Watt’s tape is considered some of the best ever for a college 3-4 end. His hand usage was perfect, his speed as deadly as ever, and his ability to get into the backfield unmatched. I do not say this lightly – Datone Jones can be just as good as J.J. Watt. I repeat, this guy is a freaking monster. He’s a killer of dreams. A destroyer of worlds. A man that has no business falling out of the top 15 picks in this draft, but due to positional value and the general lack of need for one-gap five tech ends, has a shot at being there at 27. He shouldn’t be, but he might be. If selected, Watt and Jones very well may be the most dominating defensive end duo in the league for quite some time, and just the thought of having even a slim chance of Jones wearing battle red next season makes me all warm and fuzzy. 2014: Reed, Watt, Jones, Mercilus. Drink it in, everyone. Drink it in… D.J. Hayden Cornerback, as it stands, might be one of the best starting position groups on the team, but Kareem Jackson and Johnathan Joseph’s contracts both loom large over the coming years. Jackson, if he continues playing like he did in 2012, could get as much as $50 million from a team looking for a young corner that can play man-to-man against the likes of Calvin Johnson without getting destroyed. Rick Smith’s current freeze on spending suggests that he wants to set as much cash as humanly possible aside to pay Action Jackson in a couple years, but it’s very tough to bank on the Texans' ability to keep him while Brian Cushing and J.J. Watt are also on deck to make ridiculous amounts of money. If nobody else is on the board that the Texans really want in the first round, it might make sense to start hedging against the loss of Jackson and ensure the secondary remains one of the strong points of the team for years to come. D.J. Hayden has been under the radar for months, and even I admit to not watching him until a couple weeks ago. After putting the tape on, it’s easy to see why some scouting circles are excited about the University of Houston product as a possible first rounder. His pedal was fluid, his feet abnormally quick, and his speed…my god, his speed. When at full strength, Hayden very well might be the fastest player in this draft class, and it definitely looks that way on tape. His ability to play off, stop and start on a dime, and then close instantly on underneath routes is unreal. His ball skills were very well developed, and he showed a keen awareness and sense of timing when turning his head. I believe Hayden could step in day 1 as a slot corner in the Texans' defense while he is groomed to handle outside duties in the NFL as a potential replacement for either Jackson or Joseph. He certainly has the physical tools and skill sets to make it work. At his Pro Day in March, Hayden ran a 4.33 forty and broad jumped over 10 feet just months after tearing his inferior vena cava, one of the main veins responsible for bringing blood to the heart, which should have killed him. If he had not sustained this life threatening injury during practice his senior year, his buzz would most assuredly be higher. As a local kid out of Missouri City, Hayden has grown up watching his hometown team and maybe, just maybe, will get a chance to sport the colors this coming season.
