- 2 days ago
Seth and Sean kick off the show sort of re-living what the Texans did in the 2023 draft, discuss who the Texans may pick at 28, and dive into a rumor that the Texans have been looking to trade up.
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00:02With the second pick in the 2023 NFL Draft, the Houston Texans select C.J. Stroud, quarterback of Ohio State.
00:16The Arizona Cardinals have traded the third pick to the Houston Texans.
00:23With the third pick in the 2023 NFL Draft, the Houston Texans select Will Anderson, Jr., linebacker, Alabama.
00:35That was a draft, man.
00:37That was a draft back in 2023.
00:40That shook the league.
00:43You know, you go back and you watch that, which I did this morning, Seth pulling that audio,
00:47and the reaction to that, maybe we were almost too close to it.
00:52That was, you look back at that night, man, picking a quarterback at number two
00:57and then making a huge trade up to number three to get two foundational players.
01:01And then Will Anderson, a guy who's ascending to be one, he's already one of the best in the game.
01:06That was a hell of a night in the moment, and it's really turned this team around, man.
01:12Well, if you think about the emotional part of it, too,
01:14is there are so many rumors that the Texans weren't even going to take a quarterback heading into that draft.
01:20It's extremely smoky out there right now.
01:22Very smoky.
01:23A whole lot of smoke.
01:25Supposedly, the Giants hate sunny styles, and the Texans are trading up,
01:31or trying to trade up in the first round, for those of you who missed it.
01:35So all this smoke out there, how much of it is real?
01:38But you go back to 2023, and there was all these people speculating that the Texans wouldn't take a quarterback
01:45at all.
01:45They take a quarterback, and then all of a sudden, boom, they're back on the clock again with a trade
01:51up,
01:51and they take Will Anderson.
01:53So nobody except Daniel Jeremiah, who predicted exactly this in his mock draft the day before,
02:01had a clue that was coming.
02:03So that's why ever since then, we've been looking at Daniel Jeremiah's mock draft to wonder exactly,
02:08all right, what kind of stuff is Jeremiah getting out there?
02:11Seven o'clock.
02:12Yeah.
02:12So we got it slotted.
02:13He gets his own mock draft injection.
02:16Jeremiah does.
02:17Okay, so we were all worried that the Texans wouldn't take a quarterback,
02:21and then they took a quarterback, and then they immediately traded up with an aggressive move.
02:26It felt emotionally like the pregnancy test came back negative, and then you also checked your lottery ticket,
02:34and you found out that you'd won a healthy jackpot, too.
02:37Yeah.
02:37Yeah.
02:38Yes.
02:38It was a great – what was a very nerve-wracking day turned into one of the most amazing days
02:43of all time.
02:44And I know – I'm sure we'll get CJ as a bum guy texting us right now or whatever.
02:48Say what you will, but that – you know, CJ's been a good pick.
02:52He's been a good pick.
02:53You know, he's – there's plenty of quarterbacks that get picked in the top three or top five that go
03:00completely sideways.
03:01Well, no, and even aside from that, don't diminish the moment by trying to talk about what's actually happened since
03:07then.
03:07That's true.
03:07The draft is all about unrealistic expectations.
03:10Great point.
03:11And planning – we will wake up on Monday morning, and 90% of Texans fans will be convinced that
03:18every single draft pick the Texans made this year
03:20is starting this year, and they're on their way to all-pro status.
03:24I used to fight against that.
03:26Now I embrace it.
03:27Yeah.
03:28I set myself up for disappointment.
03:30Right, right, right.
03:31But there are times – there are times where every draft – almost every draft pick does work out.
03:36The 2006 draft was incredible.
03:38Phenomenal.
03:39Some of the best Texans players in Texans history, including the current coach, were taken in that draft.
03:45Yeah, man.
03:45Yeah.
03:46Somebody they draft today might end up being the head coach for the Houston Texans.
03:50You never know.
03:51You never know.
03:52It's happened before.
03:54So that – man, I just – I love that audio.
03:57I got – I got into a wormhole in pulling that.
04:01I just sat and watched the whole thing.
04:03You know, I didn't just pull the actual Goodell announcement.
04:06You know, you start watching it, like, I want to see what they were saying about guys.
04:09It was interesting just listening to Mel Kuyper.
04:12And I think this is a lesson, too, that whoever the Texans pick, all these guys get picked tonight,
04:17whether you're watching the ESPN feed that has Kuyper on it
04:20or you're watching the feed that has Daniel Jeremiah on the NFL Network or whoever,
04:25there's going to be some draft expert on there giving their evaluation of him.
04:29This was Mel Kuyper.
04:30This was Mel Kuyper in 2023, just after Willie Anderson Jr. got picked.
04:36He's making his way up onto the stage.
04:39It's a lesson here.
04:40I think – and Will Anderson, it's a great lesson in that these guys are far from finished products
04:45when they're drafted here.
04:47Take a listen.
04:47Two years ago, he was spectacular.
04:49He said, boy, he's going to be the number one pick next year guaranteed.
04:52His stats, his numbers fell off a bit.
04:54Didn't test great, ran 4'6".
04:56As I said, Von Miller was 4'4", 4'4", 9 in that area.
05:00Will Anderson Jr., 4'6".
05:01He's got a long arm, 6'3", 254-pounder.
05:05Gives you everything he has.
05:06A defensive line, because you all about D'Amico, right?
05:08You think about the strip sack.
05:10He had zero forced fumbles the last two years, only one in his career.
05:14You like to see that number a lot higher for guys getting in that backfield,
05:17getting after the quarterback and wreaking havoc.
05:19That's going to be something they have to get him and coach him to do.
05:21That was wild to me, Seth.
05:23Two things, two things.
05:24The 4'6", 40, no surprise there that the Texans ignored that,
05:28that they weren't worried about how fast he ran at the combine compared to State.
05:32For all of those, you know when you've got a great defense
05:34and you're really concerned about whether your defensive end
05:36is going to be able to chase down broken up plays 40 yards downfield.
05:41Which, by the way, remember the play he chased down Josh Allen this year,
05:44running around and whatnot?
05:45So that was interesting to me.
05:46Number two, I didn't know this.
05:48I forgot about this.
05:49He had one strip sack his entire career at Alabama.
05:53And the reason that's important is because Will Anderson came in pretty raw.
05:58Obviously, a ton of really great traits that the Texans wouldn't have traded up to get him.
06:02And a lot of the traits had, you know, are not between the lines traits.
06:06They're behind the scenes traits.
06:07But that was something he talked about and still talks about,
06:10but talked about a lot after coming into the league and after his rookie year,
06:14even after his second year, about wanting to finish,
06:17wanting to get after the football,
06:18wanting to create more strip sacks.
06:20He talked about it this year in his postcard.
06:22Yeah, he still talks about it.
06:24That's his point of emphasis.
06:26Yep.
06:27Yeah, and he ends up having three strip sacks in the playoffs.
06:30In the playoffs, right.
06:30It's something that he's been working on.
06:31He had one his entire career at Alabama.
06:34He has three in the playoffs this year.
06:36It is really.
06:36Well, I think that everything that Kuyper said right there was accurate.
06:41The one thing that the Texans and a lot of other teams would have,
06:44if they were going to have an open conversation with Mel Kuyper, would have been,
06:47hey, your production wasn't as good as it was the year before,
06:53or his production wasn't as good as it was the year before,
06:56but you have to look and see they were using him differently at Alabama.
06:59So he wasn't necessarily put in the same type of position to make as many plays.
07:05And sometimes the nuance of that is lost in the shuffle a little bit
07:09when people are just looking at stats or looking at 40 times.
07:11But it is valid.
07:13If you talk about a raw but physically impressive defensive end,
07:18it's not always a slam dunk that, hey, they're going to work on these things
07:21and they're going to get that polish.
07:23Or even if they do work on it,
07:25that there's a certain knack for getting the ball out.
07:28Like there's a certain hand-eye coordination, the whole body coordination,
07:32where it's not as simple as it's just working on it.
07:35It's like saying a basketball player is going to work on his shot.
07:38Great.
07:39Some guys can't improve it and some guys can't.
07:41They take the exact same number of shots after practice and everything.
07:45Some guys just have a better ability for it.
07:47Trayvon Walker, the current defensive end for the Jaguars,
07:51he's more elite athletically in a lot of ways than Will Anderson is,
07:55or at least by testing standards.
07:58He had the same concerns and the same questions.
08:00He was very raw, but he ran around a lot, made a lot of great plays on a good defense,
08:05and that's a guy that hasn't developed at the same pace as Will Anderson.
08:08So that's just always the huge X factor is, man, we've got this lump of clay
08:14that's great clay, the best clay.
08:17Everybody says it.
08:18But you just don't know.
08:20You don't know.
08:20No, and I think that's kind of the lesson in that audio there is that whoever the Texans
08:26draft tonight, whatever that player, and if they draft tonight, and we'll get to Pellicero
08:31here in just a second with the rumor that Seth alluded to about the Texans,
08:34but if the Texans come away with a player tonight, or maybe more than one player,
08:38who knows?
08:39Just know that, you know, look at Will Anderson Jr.
08:41Even the best ones are not even close to a finished product sometimes.
08:45I am so excited about this Tom Pellicero audio.
08:49You want to play that now?
08:49Yeah.
08:50Okay, let's play that now.
08:51I'm so excited about this.
08:52Yeah, yeah.
08:53It means I might be able to get to bed earlier.
08:55Yeah, draft starts at 7 o'clock tonight here on Sports Radio 610.
09:00This was Pellicero with a little nugget on what Nick Casario might be thinking tonight.
09:05In the back half of round one, it's been abundantly clear for, frankly, the past week,
09:10that a lot of those teams would prefer to move down, pick up extra picks.
09:13That's a byproduct of the fact that teams only have 12 to 15 first-round grades
09:18on these players in this draft.
09:20Having said that, one team that was particularly aggressive about trying to move down,
09:24the Houston Texans, who have been calling for people for weeks,
09:26I am told Red have started to make calls about moving up,
09:29potentially into the middle of round one.
09:32Could they be potentially targeting additional defensive line help?
09:35That will be one to watch, given the fact that Nick Casario is never shy
09:40about moving around the draft board.
09:42Okay, so that's a very specific rumor.
09:44Not only is it, hey, they're looking to move up,
09:47but Pellicero has positional information there as well.
09:53Yeah.
09:54Defensive line.
09:55Yeah.
09:55Defensive line.
09:56But D'Amico may finally get his wish that they're drafting defensive linemen early in the draft.
10:00Yeah, and we've talked about this for a long time.
10:03You don't see it in the mock drafts a lot, but the Texans would love, I'm guessing,
10:09to have an extra edge rusher.
10:11Because right now, on the roster right now, they don't have D'Amico Autry,
10:18and they don't have, what the hell?
10:20Derek Barnett.
10:21Thank you, Derek Barnett.
10:22Yep.
10:22Oh, my God.
10:22You got this.
10:23I almost said Patricia Arquette.
10:25They don't have her either, by the way.
10:27I was picturing Patricia Arquette in my mind.
10:30You would have been right.
10:31They don't have her.
10:32They don't have her either.
10:33Yeah, you'd have been correct.
10:35They don't have Derek Barnett.
10:38And between those two guys, you're looking at a big chunk of plays last year
10:43where those guys were rushing off the edge.
10:45Yeah.
10:46And also, you think about the two-year outlook.
10:49Daniil Hunter's got two more years.
10:51Daniil Hunter's got two more years on his contract.
10:54It's going to be a great day.
10:55Daniil Hunter's got two more years on his contract.
10:57But he's getting up there in years.
10:59And, man, when Will Anderson's contract kicks in in 2028,
11:04they're probably realistically going to have a hard time paying both Will Anderson
11:09and Daniil Hunter.
11:10And your corners.
11:11Yeah.
11:11And safety.
11:12Yeah.
11:13And a quarterback.
11:14You.
11:14So for the short term and the long term,
11:18it would make sense that the Texans might try to trade up
11:21and get one of those guys that's there.
11:23Like, Akeem Mesidor, Keldrick Falk, Malachi Lawrence even.
11:29Like, one of those guys, whichever one they like,
11:33or maybe even maybe there's three guys that they like,
11:36but they just want to be sure they get them on the roster for this season.
11:39I could see that being very feasible.
11:41I could, too.
11:42I could see them, too, if they trade up,
11:43as long as we're talking about defensive line.
11:45I could see it being interior just because the experts say that's a thinner position
11:49than the edge guys.
11:51And it seems there's a lot of consensus that Caden McDonald,
11:55the defensive tackle out of Ohio State,
11:57is probably the first defensive tackle off the board.
12:00Yeah.
12:01So if they're thinking, all right, hey, we really want to get a young defensive tackle in there.
12:06And if – because the GMs, they look at the mock drafts.
12:11They look at what certain insiders are saying.
12:14You know, we've talked to Nick about this.
12:15Teams spend a lot of time and energy trying to figure out how do we –
12:19how do we decipher what other teams are doing
12:21and who are the pundits that genuinely are linked in and all of that.
12:25So, yeah, that could be very, very possible.
12:27I felt smart when that Pelissero nugget came out yesterday, Seth,
12:30because I submitted my bold predictions for the draft tonight for the Houston Press,
12:36like, middle of the day yesterday.
12:37And one of my – my first bold prediction was that Casario would zig when others are zagging.
12:43The rumor is that everybody's looking to trade back in this draft.
12:46And we know Nick, an avid watcher of things like CNBC and, you know,
12:51the stock market and things like that, that if everybody's trying to move back,
12:55that could be an opportunity to move up inexpensively.
12:58Yeah.
12:59So that was one of my predictions was he's going to move up in the draft.
13:02And I saw Pelissero say it, and I said, Sean, you had a good day yesterday, man.
13:06Well, and I think it all depends, too, when they say that they're looking to move up.
13:15You know, at this point, it's probably a lot of exploratory calls with just teams about, like,
13:21hey, what do you – you know, what kind of compensation would you want if we did this?
13:25We can circle back later after the draft has started.
13:28And Nick himself last year said, hey, at one point last year they had tried to move up into the
13:34mid-to-late teams.
13:35So it's certainly not a slam-dunk confirmation that they're definitely going to do it.
13:40But it's fun to know that, yeah, they're not looking at this draft and just thinking ahead of time,
13:44eh, we'll probably trade back.
13:46There's a very good chance they will trade back out of the first round,
13:49but there's, I think, probably just as good a chance that they trade up.
13:52Yep, the mock draft injection at 745 today, we've actually got two of them.
13:56And in one of them, the Texans move up, and in one of them, the Texans move back.
14:00So I wanted to explore what that could look like going either way for tonight.
14:05So that will be at 745 today.
14:06David Pollack is going to join us at 825 on the show today, former All-American at Georgia,
14:12longtime ESPN guy who's out on his own doing his own YouTube stream now, big college football guy.
14:18So he'll have – and he lives in Athens, I believe.
14:21So there's a lot of Georgia prospects, and we know the Texans like Georgia guys.
14:25Oh, Georgia, not Greece.
14:25Yeah, yeah.
14:26So that's – yeah, not Greece.
14:28That would be fun, though.
14:29Could.
14:30Might as well be these days.
14:30Yeah, you could do that nowadays, man.
14:32Might as well live in Southeast Asia and be a draft analyst.
14:34Just stream on YouTube and watch the film.
14:37So you were on Jacksonville yesterday, huh?
14:39I was on – yeah, I think on 1010 in Jacksonville, I think.
14:43I don't know.
14:44It was –
14:44It was just the phone number to you.
14:46Yeah, it was –
14:47Called in.
14:48Joe Cowart, whichever station he's with now.
14:50But it was funny.
14:52I was doing one of those – they're doing one of those things where they call somebody from every different
14:55city.
14:55Yeah.
14:55And we put in our selection.
14:58And I was there selecting – I ended up going with Chase Besantis.
15:04But the first – the first question they asked me, my old teammate, Leon Searcy, kind of caught me off
15:10guard.
15:11And he said, so, hey, Will Anderson gets that big deal.
15:14How do you think CJ's feeling about that, the fact that they paid Will Anderson first?
15:18And it kind of caught me off guard because I think locally we've been just almost assuming that, hey, the
15:25Will Anderson extension is a foregone conclusion.
15:28And we know they love Will Anderson.
15:31Will Anderson has certainly earned a new contract.
15:33It's probably going to set the new high watermark for defensive linemen.
15:37All of those things happened, and it happened relatively quickly.
15:41Yeah.
15:42So I hadn't even really considered it, but Leon asked it in such a way that, you know, I think
15:49he was asking, you know, like, is CJ going to kind of be looking side-eyed?
15:53Like, what the hell?
15:53What's going on here?
15:54Yeah, is he trying to start something here?
15:56Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
15:58And I think that I – it caught me off guard just because, one, those two have such a good
16:03relationship that I would have a hard time thinking that there'd be any kind of malice or jealousy or anything
16:09like that.
16:10But I think it's a fair question.
16:13I don't worry about it being a locker room issue or CJ getting overly offended or anything like that.
16:19But it does kind of put it into focus that, oh, yeah, that is the situation CJ's in right now
16:24where I think CJ himself understands, yeah, I know where the Texans would be coming from if they didn't want
16:30to extend me just yet.
16:32Yeah.
16:32But he's also a red-blooded American who, you know –
16:37He's a human being.
16:38Yeah, he likes the money.
16:41And more than anything, you also – you want the respect and you want the confirmation that, hey, the organization
16:48really likes you and wants you around for a long time.
16:51Yeah, yeah.
16:51I think that was a little bit of a theme of Will's press conference after he signed his contract was
16:56it's – yes, like, I'm never going to sit here and say it's not about the money.
17:00But the money is awesome, but it's also, all right, man, I know where I'm going to be.
17:06I know what I need to do, all of those things.
17:08And CJ's in kind of a gray area with that right now as far as we know.
17:11Who knows?
17:12Yeah, yeah, yeah.
17:12We'll see.
17:13I mean, all outward indications are, you know, he's in a good place.
17:16The workouts are good.
17:17He texted Will to congratulate him, all those things.
17:19It is something you don't think about when you draft guys back-to-back second and third.
17:23Are we going to have some sort of issue when one gets a contract and the other one's still here?
17:27Yeah.
17:27But you didn't have that issue with Stingley and Kenyon Green because Kenyon Green busted out.
17:31Yeah.
17:32But you don't think about that kind of thing.
17:35I told you yesterday, it's just – it's a bad locker room environment when you've got a bunch of guys
17:39who are kind of wired to be jealous of other guys getting their contracts.
17:42And I've been on teams before where you can see guys, when somebody else gets paid, a teammate gets paid,
17:47and they're not happy for that guy.
17:49Yep.
17:49They are seething.
17:50Yes.
17:51And they're vocal about it.
17:53And it's just – it's awkward, man.
17:54And I don't – I just don't think the Texans' culture is like that right now.
17:59I don't think they have a lot of guys like that.
18:00I don't think they do, and I don't think those two guys specifically, CJ and Will, fit that category either.
18:05So we'll be – we will be wall-to-wall practically on the draft today.
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