The right way to evaluate this would be to look ahead over the next several years. Duane Brown is 34 years old, so he doesn't have much runway in front of him. Tunsil is young and still improving. Brown is also a locker room cancer, so a couple of deal breakers there for him (age + attitude).
Wilson played behind one of the worst olines in the nfl for a some seasons. That's why they traded for duane
Clowney is on a super expensive one year deal with an escalator clause. Tunsil is on his rookie contract and making peanuts through the 2020 season. That's the difference.
Focusing on Tunsil’s contract, for the people who were mad we didn’t make Trent Brown(or Nate Solder) the highest paid lineman in the league, Tunsil is in every essence a level or two higher than Brown(and solder) are
https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/27506880/barnwell-bill-obrien-wants-patriot-way-trades-go-it Tunsil is in position to get paid. Tunsil is under contract for the next two years at a total of $12.5 million, but his deal is coming. That deal simply isn't going to be cheap. Since the Texans weren't able to sign Tunsil to an extension before completing this trade, the former Ole Miss standout holds the vast majority of leverage in negotiations. Houston can't feasibly pretend that it will be willing to trade Tunsil again or let him leave in free agency in 2021. Tunsil knows as much. He's primed to become the highest-paid left tackle in league history, as early as this upcoming week. Khalil Mack was able to make about 20% more than Von Miller, the previous standout deal on the edge, over the first three years of his new deal after the Bears acquired him last offseason. Apply the same escalator to the top of the left tackle market and you're looking at something in the range of a five-year, $100 million contract. Does Tunsil deserve that sort of money? Maybe. Given that the Texans are also shipping two first-round picks and a second-round pick to the Dolphins as part of the deal, though, they're also forfeiting the surplus value of those picks and essentially paying that to Tunsil as part of the contract. I wrote about the idea in discussing the Mack trade, but in making this trade, the Texans are realistically valuing Tunsil as worth something more in the range of $35 million to $40 million per season. Tunsil would basically have to be an MVP candidate on an annual basis to get this deal to make sense. Even the best left tackle on the planet would find it hard to make that work. All the surplus value in the world doesn't matter if the team wins a Super Bowl. That's the realistic new bar for O'Brien to justify this trade, given how much it cost to acquire Tunsil.
If he turns out to be the next Duane Brown, He would be worth the extra late 1st rounder. But like everyone has stated bob is in way over his head with the Clowney situation. Can't let the maniacs run the psychiatric ward. Which positions would they've used the extra first and second round they gave away? Who cares, TANIA!!!!! You're going to have to address CB and linebacker/DE help in free agency which wouldn't be so bad if not for the fact that only Ramsey and a 31 yr Ppat will be available in 2021. They could go after Darby next season. Don't think Ramsey would be a "culture fit" with all the things he releases. Also, Watt and Merciless have to stay healthy or it's going to be uglay. God don't like uglay. Definitely one of the biggest trades that comes to mind in recent NFL history: Herschel Walker trade, Ricky Williams draft trade, Griffin jr jr trade and this one. Here is hoping the line finally develops some cohesiveness otherwise it will never work. I'm not the type that wants to see them fail just to run a guy I dislike out of town.
It is important, but they haven’t done anything since acquiring Brown. They were much better when they had a defense
Meanwhile the tanking Dolphins just traded Kiko Alonso to NO for a backup/special teams LB. There was no way to get him included in the Tunsil deal?
Super expensive???? 15 mil is not expensive for Clowney and the Texans had the cap space. What are they saving money for? They should have just let Clowney come in and play on the franchise tag like he planned to and then trade him at the end of the season or trade deadline. Instead of paying 15 mil for one of the best defensive players in the league and owning his trade rights; they are paying 7 million for a guy who they already traded away. You think Clowney was expensive, wait and see what Tunsil demands. He is going to get Trent Brown money.
Another good way to look at it is this: on paper the Texans in 2019 might have their best roster to open the season since 2012, and maybe third best ever behind the 2011/2012 teams (the defense still looks extremely suspect). But in the NFL, injuries are not a bug, they are a feature. So much of who wins the Super Bowl each year has nothing to do with who can accrue talent in September but rather who wins that war of attrition by the end. If this year’s team suffers a catastrophic injury—Watson, Hopkins, Watt, Tunsil probably in that order—then we might be looking at a lost season. Even more than baseball or basketball, football roster building should be viewed through the lens of maximizing your opportunities to stay healthy and win on a year in year out basis. I can’t think of the last team that mortgaged its future and had that one magical year to legitimize years of lost, high draft picks. If the Texans were to hire an analytically driven GM tomorrow, they would understand two things about roster building: 1. Because football players so often can give all star level production within the years of their rookie contracts, you wanna maximize those picks because one superb class can net you a super bowl a la the Seahawks; and 2. Even more than any single position player, on par with a franchise QB, the factor most associated with consistent winning is a top notch head coach. So much of football can be taken out of the hands of the players and their innate physical traits, by a coach who can outsmart the opposition through focusing on favorable matchups, exploiting weaknesses, throwing in a few trick plays etc. Furthermore, instilling a coaching staff that can take players and extract more production from them than they had prior to joining the team will ensure that you are constantly in a buy low sell high mode. Every transaction gives you the probability of being won through coaching up the raw talent that you acquire. This is how the Astros have been since 2014 and how the Patriots are as well. All of this is to say that I see nothing of the sort from the Texans. I have no faith that we can extract more out of our players than they had coming in. Watson looks like he’s had better results just winging it rather than listening to BOB. A couple of key injuries, and this season’s a wash, and then what? Without draft assets we’ll witness the 2006-2009 Astros all over again, a slow decline into futility as other teams outpace us with younger, faster, and stronger guys. I’m fully prepared for another knife scene out of Saving Private Ryan. Not to say I won’t root for us to win. But damn Bill O’Brien for being this generation’s Purpura, and Cal for becoming the next Uncle Drayton.
The franchise tag is automatically calculated to pay the player something like top 3 positional money on average. I don't know you can consider that *not* expensive. Further, I'm making no argument for or against it. I'm simply pointing out the value differences. You can't just ignore the contracts the guys are on when evaluating a trade.
They don't have to keep franchise tagging him year after year. That would be ridiculous. What I am saying is to pay him the 15 mil this year and then trade him or sign a long term deal. 15 mil this is not expensive. Even more so now that we know they are paying him 7 mil and he is not on the team.
