- 2 days ago
Seth and Sean use Pro Football Focus' auto-draft to fill out the other teams and decide who the Texans pick in their own mock draft in what we're now calling the annual Payne & Pendergast Wild & Wacky Mock Draft.
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00:00We've had texts from people, Seth, saying, hey, you guys play these mock draft injections from
00:04other people. Are you guys going to do a mock draft? And fortunately, we live in an age where
00:09we've got the technology to do this if we want to. We can do the old mockaroo. The computer can
00:16be the other 31 teams. You can do it with pen and paper. No, but you can do it quickly
00:22without,
00:23yeah, yeah. No, you can have somebody, you can have a computer. Yeah, you can have a computer
00:28pick for all the other teams. And then we'll pick for the Texans. So I'm using the PFF
00:34mock draft simulator. So I've got it set right now at fast. So it's going to quickly fill
00:40in the 27 picks. I'm not going to be able to read off all the picks. I'll just be able
00:45to
00:45tell you, Seth, who the top four or five are on the board. The juiciest guys. The juiciest
00:50guys. Give me some juicy fellas. That's right. That's what we want. It's what the draft is
00:55all about. Juicy fellas. Do we want care for their settings for this? So do we want
01:03teams to care for positional value in this mock draft? In other words, like maybe Jeremiah
01:10Love slips a little bit or safeties slip a little bit or do the teams in this draft not
01:14care really about positional value?
01:17We do. Okay. Otherwise, yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I'll put that a little closer. I know that
01:21Jeremiah Love is going to break it, break the bank a little bit. But other than that, yeah.
01:26Yeah. Okay. So I'm not putting it at an extreme more, but I'm putting it skewing it towards that
01:30end. Do we want teams drafting for need more or less? Well, every single GM in the history
01:37of GMs claims they don't draft for need. And yet, boy, it sure does seem like a lot of teams
01:42do. So yeah, let's have them draft for need. Okay. So I'll set that to a little bit on the
01:47more side as well. And then how much randomness do we want built in? A ton of randomness or
01:52very little randomness? How stupid are people these days? Yeah. It's a good question. Pretty
01:57stupid. Wait. Is this an era of human history? Yes, it is. Okay. So they're pretty dumb. Yeah.
02:04Let's add. Yeah. Let me get more random. Okay. So these settings, which default to being more
02:09on the less side, we've got set at skewing towards more for positional value. Yeah. Let's
02:15have a wild and wacky one. Wild and wacky. It's the pain and Pendergast wild and wacky
02:19mock draft. It's an annual tradition now. Nine o'clock draft day every year. We're going
02:24to do this. All right. Here we go. We are entering the draft room. They are loading it
02:29up and I am clicking start draft and they're filling up. The slots are filling quick. We're
02:34all the way to 20. Now we're getting to 20. Here we go. All right. Players that went right
02:39off the board before us. Oh, good news. Blake Miller is off the board. So we don't have
02:44to worry about it. Every mock drafter seems to draft Blake Miller to the Texans, but not
02:49this one. You want some random Caleb down slipped all the way to 24.
02:54Oh, see again. Yeah. That's positional stuff. Okay. We probably went too aggressive. Maybe
02:59a little. You know what? I can reset it if you want me to. No, no, no. A little more
03:01realistic.
03:02Okay. Okay. These are the, these are the five best players on the board. C.J. Allen, linebacker,
03:08Georgia, Cassius Howell, edge rusher, Texas A&M, Caden Proctor, tackle, Alabama, Caden
03:17McDonald. Oh, this went, yeah, boy, this went real random. Um, okay. Defensive lineman.
03:24Okay. This is the thing. If Caden Proctor has fallen all the way to 28, then the questions
03:30about his ability to manage his weight or his, uh, just anything else that there is questionable
03:35about him that it, it seems to be real, at least in the minds of teams. And I don't think
03:40the Texans are going to be the team that says we can fix them. Right. Uh, when it comes, uh,
03:45when it comes to that type of stuff. Yep. So I think you think he might not even be on
03:49their
03:49board. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that they, and they had him in for a visit and everything,
03:54but they might've just wanted to, so maybe they love them. Maybe they don't like him at all.
03:58I think there's a chance he's not on their board, but I could see why they would take
04:01him. He's an incredibly gifted, uh, uh, talent. Um, I think, uh, I think at this point,
04:07but Cassius Howell or Caden, uh, Caden McDonald. Caden McDonald is who we're taking. All right.
04:11With the 28th pick and the pain in Pendergast, wild and wacky mock Houston, Texas select Caden
04:17McDonald, defensive lineman, Ohio state. The pick is in. Uh, all right, here we go, Seth. Uh,
04:23uh, and we got a grade of a minus on that pick. Okay. Oh, damn. I forgot to set it
04:29for multiple
04:30rounds. Oh, all right. Well, there you go. All right. There's our pick Caden McDonald,
04:34just like every, uh, like the defensive tackle that goes most frequently to the Texans is Caden
04:39McDonald. So we succumb to the group thing and the computer overlords with Caden McDowell.
04:45Well, Cassius Howell is an interesting one though. The edge rusher out of A&M, um, that,
04:50uh, I think there's, this is the edge rushers are really interesting because there's a bunch
04:55of enticing, seven or eight enticing edge rushers that could go anywhere from, it wouldn't surprise
05:00me if some of them went early third round or late first round. And I think some of it just
05:05comes down to the individual preference and scheme of the, of the guys that, uh, the teams
05:11that are drafted. All right. I've got it set for multiple rounds and I took Caden McDonald
05:14again. So here's, here's who's on the board. Cassius Howell just went off the board to the
05:19giants at 37. Here's who's on the board. Top five players on the board at 38. Avion Terrell
05:25cornerback out of Clemson. Maxi on a chore is still there at 38. Yeah. Caleb banks is there
05:33at 38 tackle in Florida. Who's got a foot issue. Colton hood, the cornerback out of Tennessee.
05:39So two corners. And then Caleb Lomu is still there. The tackle out of Utah. So you got
05:44two good offensive tackles on the board. I think Maxi on a chore is my pick, uh,
05:49because, or wait, or this is your turn. Go ahead. Oh, yeah, no, you do. Okay. I'll
05:53make the argument for Maxi on a chore. Okay. This is exactly where you would want to take
05:58a guy that's very raw and need some refinement given where the Texans are right now. Nick
06:02always asks, okay, what's his role on the team? And I think when you've got area
06:06adversary entrenched at left tackle, you've got two veteran right tackles. And then you draft
06:12a guy in the second round who's new to football, but very gifted physically and has a lot of
06:17potential. He just needs refinement. You stick them in the shop with Cole Popovich for a couple
06:22of years. I like, I like this spot a lot for Maxi on it. You like the on a chore
06:27better than
06:27Caleb Lomu out of Utah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I did. And again, because for one, I I'm
06:35betting on the upside of the on a chore for sure. For sure. All right. With the 38th
06:39pick in a pain and Pendergast wild and wacky mock draft, Sean and Seth, I would have taken
06:44the on a chore to set, uh, take Maxi on a chore tackle out of Arizona state. All right.
06:48We're all the way down to pick 59. Now for the Texans, guess who's still on the board?
06:53Ty Simpson is still on the board in this one. Oh, really? Yeah. But guess who else is on the
06:58board set? Malachi Lawrence. Oh, really? Take him now. I don't need to hear anybody,
07:03anybody else. You don't want to hear Jennings Dunker out of Iowa with the ginger mullet going
07:09on. Yeah. No, that's too early for Jennings Dunker. The mullet has served him. Uh, people
07:14are waiting the mullet way too heavily on Jennings Dunker. Okay. Okay. Seth is running the card
07:18up to the commissioner. I want you guys to picture Seth Payne with a card in his hand,
07:24running it up to hand to Goodell to run out onto the stage. And with the 59th overall pick,
07:29Houston Texans select Malachi Lawrence, edge rusher out of central Florida. Boy, this is
07:33a draft of dummies. The other 31 teams were killing it in this mock draft right now.
07:39Ty Simpson is still on the board in the third round in this draft. That is, that's really
07:43rare. Now look, it's, uh, it's possible. Hey, Shador, Shador dropped all the way to the
07:48fifth round. Right. Yeah. And, uh, the, it's, uh, how many drafts I saw the set the other
07:52day, the number of drafts in the last 20 years where there's only been one quarterback selected,
07:56um, in the first round in the first round. Yeah. It's Kenny Pickett a few years ago.
08:02Yeah. Yeah. And the, the, I think that might be the only one, uh, over a long stretch of time,
08:07but the, it's really hard to believe. And, and is, you know, you were talking about this the other
08:13day, ever since they changed the rules to getting that extra fifth year option for the first round
08:19picks, that's where people, even if they're not really hot on a quarterback, they like the idea of
08:24taking a guy late in the first round. So if it works out, then you've got that one extra year
08:29of control and it's worth it that much. And I feel like there's going to be somebody that wants to
08:34take a flyer on Ty Simpson and he goes to the end of the first round. So here are the
08:38other names at
08:3969 right now. Uh, Jake Golday linebacker Cincinnati. Yeah. A lot of buzz. Yeah. Uh, Joshua Josephs is an
08:48edge rusher from Tennessee, Josiah Trotter linebacker, Missouri, and Mike Washington.
08:55Oh boy. Arkansas. Oh, some Arkansas are going to be really three, three 40 at the combine.
09:02It seems to be like this running back. I don't, I don't want to call them commodities or anything.
09:07Um, but right now go through the names again. Uh, well, Ty Simpson, we'll put him aside. Jake
09:13Golday linebacker, Cincinnati, Joshua Josephs, edge rusher, Tennessee, Josiah Trotter linebacker
09:19Mizzou and Mike Washington running back Arkansas. I think, uh, I'm going to, I'm going to choose
09:25between Golday and Trotter. Okay. So you're taking a linebacker here. Yeah. And I'm trying to figure
09:31out this Jeremiah Trotter's son, right? So there's, uh, Oh, is it really? Yeah. I didn't
09:36jeans. Yeah. Yeah. Which is exactly how you should be choosing your draft. You do it like
09:42racehorses. Yes. Um, I think that I, I gotta go with, I I've watched more Golday. That's
09:49why I'm trying not to be biased about this. I think there's more gold days and intriguing
09:54because he's a bigger guy, but there was a convert from a defensive lineman. And there's
09:59a lot of things that need to be either coached into him or maybe he doesn't have it. He's like
10:04a bizarro Petrie. Petrie went from safety to a sort of a hybrid linebacker. This guy
10:08went from being a, a big dude to being a linebacker. Yeah. So I almost might just go
10:13out with this. I might just base it purely on like raw athleticism and Goldays got more
10:19raw athleticism or at least the measurable athleticism and upside. So I'll go with Jake
10:23Golday. All right. With the 69th overall pick in the pain and Pendergast wild and wacky
10:27mock draft pain and Pendergast select Jake Golday. All right, here we go, Seth. So this, it spits
10:33out a grade. It's analyzing our draft. It's grading our draft. Oh, how are we doing? What
10:39do you think our overall grade was on our mock draft? Probably a plus plus, not a plus plus. No,
10:45no, not quite a though a minus. Okay. A minus. We got an a minus for the Caden McDonald pick
10:51and a minus for the, uh, Yana chore pick, which I feel is, uh, I mean, that's a really good
10:56pick
10:56at 38 B B plus for Malachi Lawrence at 59. No, because that's where, again, Malachi Lawrence
11:03is a guy that's talked about is, Hey, you might go in the first round, but also based on the
11:07various
11:08different people's grades. He's not, he's not necessarily a really high up there on the power.
11:13Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, that's the, uh, Lawrence is a Willie. Okay. A lot of people, people love
11:18this exercise by the way, for the text pages is flying right now. Um, sounds like there's a lot
11:23of really good edge rushers in this draft. Yeah, there are. Well, there's a lot of there's,
11:28and they're all kind of tightly. I don't want to say tightly packed. There's multiple guys that
11:34look like, Oh yeah. Slam dunk first half of the second round. That makes sense. Um, and then it's
11:39just a matter of, okay, where are teams really on them? And they've probably got a few of those guys
11:43rated higher. Some of them have them rated lower, but there's a lot of, there's a lot of viable
11:47options guys that you can get excited about whether you took them with pick 28 or if you pick them
11:52later on. Uh, and that's where it gets interesting for the Texans. Cause there's also a lot of people
11:56thinking that offensive line is going to fly off the board so that by the time you get down
12:01towards the back half of the, of the first round, a lot of those edge rushers, there's four or five
12:06guys that you could, you could feel comfortable drafting in the first round. That's when, that's
12:11when I think the Texans might start thinking about trading up and get one of them. Yep. Um, let's see
12:16people weighing in on the base power, uh, text line, uh, Simpson and price. I think they mean
12:22Jadarian price are both going in the top 25. I don't think Jadarian price is going in the top 25,
12:26but it wouldn't shock me if Seattle took him with the last pick of the first round. Yeah. Given that
12:32they just let Kenneth Walker, the third leave in free agency, I could see them wanting a cheaper
12:36option at running. I don't, this is the thing about, I think Simpson goes at the end of the first
12:41round, but I think it's 25 or later because I think, I think Simpson, I don't think there's a
12:46single team that's in love with Simpson. And I think that they are intrigued by him, but they,
12:52if they've got the option of taking somebody else in the top 20, for instance, um, they're going to
12:58go with somebody that can help their team more immediately. So if I had to, you know, let's say
13:03if I had to just handicap it, it makes more sense that it would be late in the first round.
13:09Yeah. So
13:10what did that texture say? He said top 25. Yeah. Yeah. I would put the over under on
13:1525 and I would take the over the over. Yeah. Later in the later in the first round. Yep. Um,
13:22yeah. So we got an overall grade of a minus Seth. We're basically a two headed GM is what
13:25we feel like we were helped out though, by amping up the randomness there. So there were
13:31a lot more prospects. We were able to draft a lot of prospects that were higher than wherever
13:35they are on the power. They were higher on the power rank. Yeah. Should I screen grab this and
13:40send it to Nick and say, here's the answers to the test. You're welcome. You know, that basically
13:45like Seth and I did your job for you. I'm just going to, I'm just going to screen grab it
13:49and
13:49text it to him and say, here, here you go. Does it show who was available before and after our
13:53picks? Is it like the whole printout? He's going to be interested in that. He will. He will. No,
13:57it just gives the grades of our picks. Uh, yeah. So anyways, the biggest rumor going right now
14:02in the draft is this from, well, with the Texans at least, is this from Tom Pellicero.
14:08In the back half of round one, it's been abundantly clear for frankly the past week that a lot of
14:13those teams would prefer to move down, pick up extra picks. That's a byproduct of the fact that
14:18teams only have 12 to 15 first round grades on these players in this draft. Having said that,
14:24one team that was particularly aggressive about trying to move down the Houston Texans who have
14:27been calling for people for weeks, I am told Red have started to make calls about moving up
14:31potentially into the middle of round one. Could they be potentially targeting additional
14:36defensive line help? That will be one to watch given the fact that Nick Casario is never shy
14:42about moving around the draft board. So defensive line help, which could mean edge and it could mean
14:48defensive tackle. By the way, Josiah Trotter, I said son of Jeremiah Trotter. Obviously,
14:55he's his brother. Not, I don't know why I said son. Oh, is he? Yeah. How old is, is Jeremiah?
15:01Jeremiah Trotter's an older son that plays for the Eagles, I think, doesn't he? Jeremiah Trotter?
15:06Yeah. Oh, that's what it is. No, nevermind. Yep. Yep. Maybe there's a younger brother of
15:11Jeremiah Trotter, the current Eagles linebacker. Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. We're both sons of the
15:15Patriots. They're all related. Yeah. They all have the last name, the same last name.
15:19Um, you, you, uh, you, uh, when they say, when Pellicero says defensive lineman there,
15:26it could mean tackle. It could mean edge. Your preference is edge. If they're moving
15:30significantly high up to go get to, to go get somebody. It sounds like what you've said today.
15:35Unless it's, unless they go up for Cade McDonald. But again, I think that one thing that a lot of
15:40the mock drafters are missing when they look at the Texans depth chart is that they don't realize
15:46that the Texans are deeper at defensive tackle right now in terms of guys who could, who you'd
15:51feel good about starting than they are at defensive end. But then on that defensive line as well,
15:56um, that they play, they play eight guys on a Sunday and that right now they don't have as much
16:03of a, a pass rushing presence with that third defensive end that they did last year without,
16:09uh, without Derek Barnett, without Danico Autry, I think there's a real good chance that they'd
16:13like to bring in a young guy. Cause remember too, that I like when Will Anderson's contract
16:18kicks in in 2028, they're probably not going to be able to afford Daniil Hunter and Will Anderson.
16:25Yeah. So you'd love to have a younger guy on his rookie contract still. Cause you'll also,
16:30by that point, Derek Stingley's contract will have kicked in. Uh, the Jalen Petrie's contract
16:34will have kicked in everybody else. Well, and I think that the same dynamic exists at cornerback,
16:39as you just said, like, I think they could, where, you know, where you're talking about them
16:43taking an edge rusher and there's the now and there's the future and Daniil's really expensive.
16:47If they draft a cornerback kind of high too, maybe that's a tell for what they see at the future
16:51at
16:52that position, which is maybe they, maybe they think they can't keep two $30 million cornerbacks
16:57out there. You know, we'll see. I think it was Texans Jacob on X and I don't want to, hopefully
17:02I'm
17:03not misrepresenting what he was saying, but I think that when somebody brought up the prospect of tech,
17:08the Texans trading up for a defensive end, um, that he just, he didn't want to give up that
17:14much for a guy that's only going to play 30 or 40% of the snaps. I'm, I'm cool with
17:18that just
17:19because that is part of the strength of the way the Texans operate is that they rotate and keep
17:24guys fresh. So you're just constantly putting pressure on those offensive linemen. And, uh,
17:29as, as Matt Burke calls it, he wants them throwing fastballs all the time. So I, I like, I like,
17:35I don't mind drafting a defensive end in the first round, even if he's going to be a
17:38rotational player, because it's that valuable to the way this Texans defense operates.
17:43Yep.
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