Can Jalen Pitre Replace Jordan Reid in the Texans Rebuilding Secondary?

Jalen Pitre Player Breakdown

Jalen Pitre is one of my favorite draft picks in the entire 2022 NFL draft. I mean, what’s not to love about his game? He does it all. Pitre was a huge part of the Baylor defense that dominated the Big 12 this year and having him in the Texans uniform is awesome.

Strengths

Pitre is an incredibly athletic linebacker/safety hybrid. With great athleticism that corresponds to multiple different parts of his game, there isn’t a whole lot of question marks within his game. What you see is what you get.

Pitre plays the game with speed and tenacity. With Pitre’s athleticism being through the roof, and with him being in a position where speed is important, it’s not outrageous to think that his speed would be good regardless. However, that’s not what makes his game so special. The best part of his game is his instincts.

Pitre did a great job this past season with diagnosing plays, finding gaps, and making plays behind the line of scrimmage. I mean, having 18.5 tackles for loss this past season pretty much tells the entire story.

I don’t generally enjoy looking at statistics as a scout because they are oftentimes not a good deciding factor when scouting. But, just this once, we’re going to take a look at his stats.

Pitre this past season played in 14 games for Baylor. In those 14 games Pitre finished with 75 total tackles, 3.5 sacks, 2 interceptions, 3 forced fumbles, 7 passes defended, and finally 18.5 tackles for loss.

Below I have some clips that show his ability to get in the backfield and make tackles. Just so you have a visual to show you the player we’d be able to get if we drafted him.

Weaknesses

I mentioned earlier in the article that Jalen Pitre doesn’t have the frame that reads “NFL starter”, now you get to read more about it.

Jalen Pitre, although a very talented player with a lot of upside in his game, is not exactly a very big safety. Therefore, his ability to finish on plays at the next level is going to be a bit scary for me because I’m not sure if he’ll be able to or not. But, you know who else wasn’t exactly a very big safety? Tyraan Mathieu. And he seemed to work out okay.

Pitre wasn’t exactly the biggest player in the draft, but that didn’t stop him from constantly making plays to help his team. However, playing at a Big 12 school is much different than playing at the NFL level. It’ll get a lot more physical, you’ll have a lot more guys fighting for yards, and it’s going to be his job to stop them.