The Houston Texans are looking for a major step up in production and quality in 2024. They're hoping to have more wins, better performances by their players, and a deeper playoff push. In order for that to happen, they need their best players to get a little better, their new free agent acquisitions to be as good as ever, and the young developing talent to take a massive step forward.
Those latter types of players are often the ones people look at when talking about guys who have the potential to "breakout" and redefine their expectations. Pro Football Focus looked at every team in the AFC recently and decided on which player, from which team is most likely to breakout. For the Texans, it was a rather unexpected name.
When looking at the players who had a solid or unremarkable year in 2023, the last name we thought would get the PFF seal of approval was Juice Scruggs, but that's exactly who they think will end up breaking out for the Houston Texans.
Scruggs was a second-round pick out of Penn State, not exactly an institute known for producing unimpressive talent. So he came from a great program and had the rookie hype, with many believing Scruggs could've been a late-first-round draft pick.
He fell to the second round, and the Texans picked up the guard, a position of great need. Injuries derailed the start of his career, however, and he didn't make it back until the latter part of the season, well into the last third of the games.
By then, you could tell he wasn't up to par with the rest of the team around. He was slower than he was expected to be, and he didn't have the same pop off the offensive line we had seen in college. A lot of that had to do with the fact that he didn't get the necessary time to develop as the season went on like so many others did.
So it does stand to reason that Scruggs could breakout in 2024, but with how loaded the team is, it's hard to say for sure who exactly is the most likely to turn things around in a big way this upcoming season.