Taking a step back to review the Texans’ 2024 draft.
Life is full of ironies. The Value of Things got started as a way to insert analytics into football analysis. I say that as someone that works as a special education support teacher primarily in English classrooms. They don’t want me anywhere near a math classroom. Yet, here I am every week pontificating about numbers. The truth is though is that our job contains a lot of numbers and raw data that we have to make sense out of. So, I suppose I’m not a total dunce when it comes to numbers in my day job.
Today, we are taking a step back. I may or may not include any numbers today before diving back in later this week. See, the NFL calendar was set up by marketing geniuses that know exactly what they are doing. Free agency starts at a specific time to take attention away from the other sports. When that winds down the draft comes. When that winds down we release the schedule for next year.
When people stop talking about that, it seems like teams are showing up for walk throughs, voluntary activities, and then training camp. As everyone knows, things get in full swing. We will talk about the draft as long as we need to until something else occupies our attention. We do this knowing full well that we have no idea how any of these guys are going to perform.
It would be easy to say we do this because we have to. We live in a hot take world and clicks are the name of the business. I even caught myself searching for draft grades on Sunday as if any of those mean anything at the end of the day. Those outlets got what they wanted. They got my attention. I try to avoid that kind of foolishness as best I can here, but we are all a slave to the beast that is marketing and the media.
The Houston Texans draft will ultimately be a victim of unrealistic expectations. When you look at the annals of history, two Texans drafts stand out. The 2006 draft featured Mario Williams, DeMeco Ryans, Eric Winston, and Owen Daniels. Those were all long-time starters and at least occasional Pro Bowl players. Ryans was the Defensive Rookie of the Year while Williams would go on to have a borderline Hall of Fame level career.
The 2023 draft is obviously a bit more fresh, but it appears to have the same potential. C.J. Stroud and Will Anderson were both rookies of the year on their respective sides of the ball. Tank Dell had a promising rookie season before he was injured while Juice Scruggs started most of the second half at guard.
The Tank Dell news from this weekend shows that you can never know what the future will hold. Injuries and life both have a habit of going sideways. So, we won’t know about the 2023 draft for another few years or so. The key point here is to look at the 2007 draft as a reference point for how we can view this draft,
The 2007 draft wasn’t awful in comparison to the rest of franchise history. It likely was around average. Obviously, I could go back and do the math on that, but I promised no numbers and I want to stick with that promise. It was disappointing though because of the success the team had before. I imagine that the 2024 draft will end up being similar when all is said and done.
We have to keep in mind there were no first round picks. We could say that was a move to get Stefon Diggs and there is certainly a lot of logic to that. In that case, the 2024 draft would have to be viewed more favorably. Either way, get ready for a whole lot of nonsense for the next month or so about how each team did this past weekend.
I still invite you to consume as much as you want to consume. I would never tell you to stop reading our stuff here. I think we collectively know as much about football and the Texans as just about anyone. Whether you are a draft nut like Lance Zierlein or Mel Kiper or just a casual college football fan like me, you probably have as much of a chance in predicting the future as anyone in between. So, we will levy our best guess and give it the ole’ college try. Enjoy throwing it back in our faces and feel free to leave your own predictions in the comments.
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