In 2020, the Houston Texans are primed to set out on arguably their most interesting, exciting, and important season yet in franchise history.
It’s been a fascinating offseason for the Houston Texans as the team prepares for Year 4 of the Deshaun Watson era — and Year 7 of the Bill O’Brien era.
The head coach/general manager traded away franchise cornerstone DeAndre Hopkins to the Arizona Cardinals for David Johnson. While the move could be categorized as an interesting gamble at best and as an awful blunder at worst, the truth of the situation is it’s a bit of a head-scratcher no matter what angle you look at it.
This offseason isn’t just about O’Brien’s swap of Hopkins for Johnson though.
It’s also about whether or not Watson can challenge fellow AFC superstar quarterbacks Lamar Jackson and Patrick Mahomes for standing as the best signal-caller in the conference. Jackson and Mahomes have both won a league MVP trophy, and Mahomes also has a Super Bowl championship and MVP trophy, too.
Will 2020 be Watson’s turn to earn some hardware and league glory? We shall see.
Here are the five most pertinent and imperative questions we’ll be asking and following as we inch closer to the start of the new season.
5. Can Houston lock up Deshaun Watson to a new mega-deal?
Perhaps the better question is “when” the Texans will lock up Deshaun Watson to a new deal, as opposed to “if.”
Many fans are still reeling from Bill O’Brien’s questionable decision to trade DeAndre Hopkins and a fourth-round pick for David Johnson and two picks (second and fourth round). Even if the trade looks better this season — or further in the future down the road — than it does today, it does make one wonder just a bit as to whether there’s a method to O’Brien’s madness.
For example: He couldn’t possibly allow Watson to slip through his fingers and sign elsewhere … right???
There’s no question that the 24-year-old superstar deserves to receive a shiny (and lucrative) new mega-deal. If O’Brien and the Texans aren’t willing to give it to him, there’s sure to be no shortage of teams elsewhere around the league that would be falling all over themselves trying to get him inked.
Watson’s arrow is decidedly pointing up. Despite tearing his ACL midway through a phenomenal rookie season, he has shown no signs in the two subsequent seasons of any lingering concerns around the injury.
He continues to rush for well over 5.0 yards per carry and take off with the football in his hands whenever he deems it necessary, and his completion percentage through the air has been rock-solid in each of the past two years.
CBS Sports’ Cody Benjamin reports that Watson is expected to garner more than $40 million guaranteed per year in a new deal. Various theories suggest his contract could be worth a total of $200 million or more and last for four or five seasons in length, which would dwarf Russell Wilson’s current deal atop the pantheon of quarterback contracts.
After exercising the fifth-year option on Watson, the clock is certainly ticking to get a new pact in place.
4. Will David Johnson be able to resurrect his career?
After starting off his NFL career buried on the depth chart behind the likes of Chris Johnson, Andre Ellington, and Stepfan Taylor, David Johnson had a season for the ages in 2016. He logged 1,239 rushing yards and 879 receiving yards for a grand total of 2,118 yards from scrimmage — along with 16 rushing touchdowns and four receiving touchdowns (20 TDs total).
It was one of the best seasons for a running back ever.
Naturally, optimism was sky-high entering the 2017 season down in Phoenix, Arizona.
Johnson was the consensus No. 1 overall pick in virtually every fantasy football draft held that year, and “DJ” himself had claimed to set his sights on becoming the first player to log 1,000 yards each in rushing and receiving since Marshall Faulk did it in 1999.
Spoiler alert: It didn’t happen. Johnson injured his wrist in the first game of the year and ended up missing the remainder of the 2017 season. He came back to play a full 16-game season in 2018, and while his totals were still impressive (940 rushing, 446 receiving, 10 total TDs), they didn’t come close to the kind of breakout year he had in ’16.
By 2019, Johnson was losing snaps to ex-Dolphin Kenyan Drake in Kliff Kingsbury’s new Arizona Air Raid offense. He finished third in total rushing on the year behind Drake and rookie QB Kyler Murray.
To add insult to injury, he had just 42 more rushing yards than second-year back Chase Edmonds in the same number of games played — and Edmonds received 34 less carries overall.
Traded back in March as part of the Hopkins deal, can Johnson get back to his 2016-level now that he has a change of scenery? No one is expecting him to put up the kind of numbers he once promised he’d be able to deliver, but at the very least, he needs to make O’Brien look like he didn’t just execute one of the dumbest trades ever seen in the NFL.
Pressure’s on, DJ.
3. Can J.J. Watt make it through a full season healthy?
Doesn’t it feel like a whole lifetime ago that J.J. Watt was considered a bastion of health and productivity in the NFL?
It seems crazy to consider now, but Watt didn’t miss a game during his first five seasons in the league. He set the world on fire between 2011-2015, racking up a total of 74.5 sacks(!), 371 combined tackles, 15 forced fumbles, 12 fumble recoveries, and 45 pass deflections or defenses en route to collecting three different Defensive Player of the Year awards.
Then, in 2016, the narrative started to take a different course. Serious injuries to his back, leg, and pectoral muscle have crippled three of his past four seasons, costing Watt 32 regular season games during the timespan.
The good news is that, when healthy, Watt doesn’t appear to have missed a step in his claim to being one of the best — if not the best — defensive player in football. He played all 16 games in 2018 and logged 16.0 sacks, 61 combined tackles, and a career-high seven forced fumbles.
Watt is still just 31 years old — what many people consider to be the “prime” age for NFL players. Assuming he’s able to come back fully-recovered from his torn pec — and assuming he can make it through a full slate of games unscathed this season — there’s no reason to think he won’t reassert his dominance and standing as a true game-breaker on defense.
Ultimately, though, it’s all going to come down to whether or not he can stay on the field. Health seems to be the only thing that can stop J.J. Watt from achieving his peak performance any given Sunday.
2.) Just how much will the team miss DeAndre Hopkins?
There’s no easy way around it: Losing DeAndre Hopkins hurts … a lot.
Since the Texans took him back in the first round of the 2013 NFL Draft, Hopkins hasn’t just been good — he’s been exceptional. Easily the most reliable, productive, and explosive aspect of the Houston offense in the pre-Deshaun Watson era, Hopkins got even better once he finally had a top-notch QB throwing to him.
He had a career-high 13 touchdowns in 2017 and then a career-high 1,572 receiving yards in 2018, both with Watson lining up under center. Despite missing a game in two of the three seasons he played with his fellow Clemson Tiger, Hopkins never had less than 96 receptions, 1,165 receiving yards, or seven touchdowns over the past three years.
At just 28 years old, he has long since staked his claim to being arguably the best wide receiver active in the NFL today — especially with Antonio Brown out of the sport for the time being and A.J. Green constantly beset by injuries.
Perhaps only Julio Jones or Odell Beckham Jr. can challenge Hopkins for supremacy at WR, but even then, Hopkins’ accomplishments are all the more impressive considering the laundry list of subpar QBs he had to deal with during the first four seasons he was a pro.
Of course, none of this matters any more if you’re a Houston Texans fan … because Hopkins now plays for the Arizona Cardinals.
Just how much will Watson and his teammates miss Hopkins this season? That’s one of the most pressing questions entering the 2020 season for this franchise.
Will Fuller will assume the mantle of being the new WR1 in this offense. The former Notre Dame product has shown flashes over the past four seasons, but he also has yet to play a full season (he’s missed a combined 22 regular season games over four years).
His running mates will be newly-acquired veterans Brandin Cooks and Randall Cobb, Kenny Stills (who is in his second season with the Texans), DeAndre Carter (who is in his third season with the Texans), and home-grown former draft pick Keke Coutee.
Collectively, they’ll be tasked with replacing the best offensive player in franchise history.
1.) Can Houston take the next step and make it to the AFCCG?
For the first nine seasons of their existence, the Houston Texans toiled in relative obscurity. Sure, there was the occasional highlight here or the flashy player there, but mostly, the team failed to make a significant impact on the greater NFL landscape.
Then, in 2011, things started to change down in Texas. Gary Kubiak helped the team capture back-to-back division titles in ’11 and ’12. The only problem? The team failed to advance beyond the Divisional Round of the NFL Playoffs both seasons.
After Bill O’Brien came on board to replace Kubiak in 2014, there were growing pains again as the new coach established a new regime. But sure enough, the Texans came roaring back within their division, and have now rattled off four first-place finishes in five years within the AFC South.
There’s no denying that’s an impressive accomplishment for both O’Brien and for the NFL’s youngest franchise — but the fans are ready for more. Houston lost in the Wild Card game in half of those seasons and again in the Divisional Round in the other half.
In 10 total playoff appearances, the Texans are 4-6, having lost to the Patriots twice, the Chiefs twice, the Ravens once, and the Colts once. They’ve beaten the Raiders, the Bills, and the Bengals (twice).
More than anything though, they have yet to advance to the AFC Championship Game.
They came oh-so-close last season after racing out to a 24-0 lead over the eventual Super Bowl champion Chiefs on the road in the Divisional Round. But Patrick Mahomes led Kansas City back from the early deficit, and in the end, the Texans ended up losing by 20 points in a blowout.
Until O’Brien, Watson, Watt, and the rest of the Houston Texans take that next step into uncharted territory and play for the Lamar Hunt trophy with a trip to the Super Bowl on the line, it’s a sure bet that diehard fans of this franchise aren’t going to be satisfied with yet another division title, impressive as the feat may be.