Houston Texans trade of Shaq Lawson to Jets needed to happen

The Houston Texans are getting closer to their 53-man regular season roster by making another trade.

Sunday was another busy day for the Houston Texans and general manager Nick Caserio as he made yet another trade of a veteran player. The trade is the Texans are sending defensive end Shaq Lawson to the New York Jets for a ’22 sixth round pick that originally belonged to the San Francisco 49ers.

Lawson was traded for this offseason by the Texans with the Miami Dolphins (along with a sixth round pick) in exchange for a seventh round pick and Benardrick McKinney, but he didn’t seem to work out with Houston.

On Saturday against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the preseason finale, Lawson didn’t record a tackle, and for the entire preseason he finished with five tackles, including one tackle for loss in a total of three games.

The reported trade was tweeted by Brain Costello of The New York Post with the following tweet:

Houston Texans: Moving forward from offseason deal

When the Houston Texans traded for Lawson this offseason they the Texans took a chance on the defensive end who had four sacks in 2020 with Miami.

Though it didn’t work out where Lawson was a member of the defense for Week 1 when the Texans are scheduled to face the Jaguars, at least the Texans turned that trade into a sixth round pick for the 2022 NFL Draft, and they have another contract off the books too.

When the Houston defense faced the Buccaneers on Saturday the entire defense of the Texans struggled against the Super Bowl champions, especially against Tom Brady and the first team offense of the Bucs, so the defensive struggles in that game weren’t all on him.

As for the Jets, they seem to be excited about the trade, with The Jet Press had this tweet about the trade as they needed another pass rusher on their defense:

It seems this deal works out well for both sides, but in Houston’s case the most important thing is their continued rebuild of this roster. Remember a championship team is built through the draft, so an additional Day 3 choice can’t hurt matters in that process.

If Lawson does become a starter for the Jets that is the best case scenario for him because it wasn’t a given how much he was going to play for the Texans. Another plus of this trade is Houston is a player closer to the final 53-man total they have to be at by Tuesday at 4 p.m. ET.

It is going to be interesting to see where the rest of the roster moves come from, and maybe the Houston Texans can make a trade of a player of another player who they don’t have listed in their long-term future.