5 lessons Texans can learn from Super Bowl champion Rams

The Houston Texans have lessons to learn, but what can they learn from the Super Bowl champs?

What a wild ride the Los Angeles Rams had this season, resulting in them winning the Super Bowl, but how could their success help the Houston Texans?

Let’s all face the facts the Houston Texans aren’t on the same level as the Rams, but that doesn’t mean that one day they can’t be at that level and celebrating a Super Bowl victory. Sure, those days seem to be a long ways away, but a couple trades, some quality scouting and being right with many decisions, and the Texans can be contenders again.

The Texans have already made a couple moves within their franchise in recent seasons and that is hire a general manager they believe in, which is Nick Caserio, and they’ve hired their head coach for ’22, which is Lovie Smith, who has helped build a winning Super Bowl caliber team in the past.

Let’s take a look at “5 lessons the Texans can learn from the Super Bowl champion Los Angeles Rams.”

5. Don’t be afraid to make roster moves how they see fit

One thing that can be said of the Los Angeles Rams is they won the Super Bowl their way this season. The Rams traded away future draft picks to gain the players they felt they needed to win the big one, and at least for them it worked.

Now don’t jump out of your seat here, the Texans don’t need to be trading away valuable draft capital for just any player who can win a few more games to get them to the playoffs. What the Texans can learn from the Rams in this sense is they need to be fearless in their belief on how they can become winners.

Houston will be making many roster moves in the coming months, some involving big names under contract like Deshaun Watson, Brandin Cooks and maybe even Laremy Tunsil, but they could maybe add some big names in free agency or through the 2022 NFL Draft. However the Texans bring in new talent or trade away talented players, Caserio and the front office have to do what they feel is best for the franchise, no matter how the outside world feels about it.

The Rams did so by adding veteran players to mesh with some younger talent, and it worked for them. Could it work for the Texans too?

4. Be convinced in who their starting quarterback is

One thing about the Rams is they knew who their quarterback was at the start of the 2021 season and they never looked back. The same can’t be said about the Houston Texans because they kept Deshaun Watson around, started Tyrod Taylor, went to rookie Davis Mills when Taylor was injured, went back to Taylor and then back to Mills.

It was a lot to take in, but for the Texans to be successful they need to make up their mind who will be the starting quarterback entering the ’22 season before Week 1 arrives. Granted, replacing Taylor for Mills when he was injured was one thing, but then came the flip of giving Taylor the job back when he returned, and that turned out to be the wrong move.

The same mistake can’t be made in ’22. Either the Houston Texans need to keep Mills as the starter in his second season, or bring in a very good to great veteran like the Rams did when they traded for Matthew Stafford and build around that player. Stafford is still 34 years old, and in today’s NFL he can still have five or six more years left as a starting quarterback, giving the Rams plenty of time to work around him to add to their success.

Mills is only 23 years old, so his entire career is ahead of him, and even if the Texans were to trade for a quarterback like Russell Wilson who is 33 years old, he’s a motivated player who has a desire to win. The Texans can do something like that since they still have Watson under contract, so who knows what this front office will do?

All we are saying is the Texans need to figure out their quarterback situation and do it fast, because most likely than not a Super Bowl winning team has an excellent quarterback leading the way.

3. Don’t overlook the defensive line

The defensive front of the Houston Texans wasn’t a lot to celebrate this season, and two years ago they let D.J. Reader walk and join the Cincinnati Bengals in free agency. The Texans have yet to replace the near-350-pound interior tackle, and for this team to ever be respectable again, the defensive line needs to be fixed.

Not only did the Rams defensive line and pass rush show up when needed in the fourth quarter on Super Bowl Sunday, but they showed the entire NFL how to clinch a championship, and that’s to cause havoc in the backfield of their opponent.

While watching the Super Bowl, everyone knew eventually Aaron Donald was going to become close friends with Joe Burrow, as it was evident that the Bengals’ offensive line wasn’t going to silence him the entire game. Once he got going, there was no stopping Donald, and the rest of the defense followed late in the fourth quarter.

What the lesson for the Houston Texans should be is to add not only an edge pass rusher in the ’22 NFL Draft – which they can, with the third overall pick – but later in the draft find the best available defensive tackle and not let them leave this time around.

Donald and the Rams’ pass rush in the fourth quarter was a difference maker in who was crowned the champions, and one has to wonder if the Texans can build up their offense with Lovie Smith leading the way as the head coach – and calling the shots on defense – could he build a defense like he had with the Chicago Bears, a team he led to the Super Bowl? That is the ultimate goal for the Texans.

2. Find a great wide receiver … later in the draft

The Houston Texans need to be like the Los Angeles Rams and find wide receivers in the later rounds of the draft, like they did with Cooper Kupp. Kupp was a third-round pick in 2017 and since then has built a solid career, but this season he went on a whole new level with Matthew Stafford as his starting quarterback (see, having the right QB does make a difference).

Kupp gained the “triple crown” for wide receivers this season, and he was also the Super Bowl Most Valuable Player, so having some good scouts to find the right players does help when rebuilding a franchise.

If the Texans don’t want to use one of their top two picks in the ’22 NFL Draft on a wide receiver, as they have other spots where help is needed as well on both the offense and defense, there could be a “diamond in the rough” waiting for them with one of their two third-round picks which are the No. 68 and No. 80 selections overall.

When it comes to the Texans, it isn’t about making a splash in the mid-to-late rounds of the draft, or even with their first two picks in the first and second round, what the Texans need to gain from this lesson by the Rams is to find the right players, and build them up through the draft. Maybe the Texans are doing that now with ’21 third-round picks quarterback Davis Mills and wide receiver Nico Collins, but that trend needs to continue so the younger players can work with some incoming free agent additions to improve the overall product of Texans football.

1. Set high expectations/goals and achieve them

Looking back at the 2021-22 Rams, one has to give them a tip of the cap by not only setting the highest of expectations – which was going all in on winning the Super Bowl, and then achieving said goal by doing whatever it took to become the champions of the NFL.

The Rams made big-time trade by letting go of a former No. 1 pick for another past No. 1 pick. They added free agents not many other teams wanted, they traded for a veteran like Von Miller before the trade deadline, and they trusted their head coach to do his job.

There were many more moves the Rams made, and they had some creative play calling on both sides of the ball, but their project of going all in this year showed a championship can happen with the highest of expectations surrounding them.

That hasn’t been the case for the Texans so far in this current rebuild, as it feels like this is the year when things get rolling a little more. Last season was getting players in uniform and seeing who could stick around for the long term, but now the Texans – since they finally have some draft picks to work with – can set some goals of their own and work on a way to not only meet them, but exceed them too.

There needs to be some pressure put on the Texans franchise to be more than division champions, and hopefully with general manager Nick Caserio coming from a place where he helped the goals be lofty, that comes to the Texans eventually.

For the long term, the Rams might have hurt their franchise without the first-round picks, but they did win a Super Bowl trophy, and that’s the goal. Teams are remembered for the championships they win, and for the Rams, they now have two Lombardi trophies.

The Texans are still working to win their first one, and at times it looked like they were close to doing that. Maybe they can learn from some of the lessons the Rams have given the NFL this season, because at least for them it has worked in the short term.