Houston Texans: Many moves have been made that weren’t great
Here are the major moves — with a side note — made during these two years and there were a lot of them:
- Jadeveon Clowney traded to the Seattle Seahawks —The return was nowhere near Clowney’s actual value at that time.
- Texans trade for Laremy Tunsil and Kenny Stills — They received good player value, but was overpaid for, especially considering that one of the picks the Miami Dolphins will be using is a third pick in the first round.
- Houston Texans trade for Duke Johnson — Not a severe overpay but not a steal either, third round pick.
- Texans trade for Carlos Hyde — The rare trade heist for the Texans, they give up a lineman they were going to cut and get a 1,000 yard season out of Hyde.
- Extended contracts — Whitney Mercilus and Benardrick McKinney received some nice money to double-digit per year contracts. Maybe the the best overall decision.
You would think that since the trades become less lopsided overtime, then the Texans are getting better at their jobs, but it turns out that’s completely off as the next offseason happened:
- Traded DeAndre Hopkins to Cardinals for David Johnson and some draft picks — Do I even need to say anything about this? Most lopsided trade in franchise history, and the Houston Texans were on the losing end by the way.
- Sign Randall Cobb for three years — His production was not worth his contract his first year.
- Traded for Brandin Cooks — Good player who found chemistry with Watson, but a second round pick still feels like an overpay.
- Extended Laremy Tunsil and Deshaun Watson contracts — Expensive but necessary. Important to note that the Texans front office basically handed Tunsil all of the leverage in the world.
Let’s also note that in these two years, none of these moves involved a significant defensive improvement.
The Houston Texans invested a ton of cap space and draft picks into building an offense that never reached their full potential. The draft picks devoted to defense clearly didn’t help as it felt the Texans defense was getting worse one season at a time. The defense is very near non-existent now.