It’s hard to believe, but we are coming up on Texans GM Nick Caserio’s sixth draft as the Houston Texans’ general manager, his fourth working alongside head coach DeMeco Ryans. It feels like just yesterday that Caserio and his staff had to sit and wait, back in 2021, for the 67th overall pick to make a selection, because Bill O’Brien had gutted the Texans’ 2021 draft with the Laremy Tunsil trade, back in 2019.
Times are better now. Caserio and Ryans, in collaboration, have built one of the better rosters in the NFL for a team that is one of just two teams in the league to have won a playoff game the last three seasons. The run up to the draft is way less about acute needs, and more about what kind of depth the team can build.
With that as the backdrop, Caserio, along with his two lieutenants, assistant GMs James Liipfert and Chris Blanco, met with the media on Monday this week to discuss the state of the team and next week’s draft. Here are the four nuggets from the press conference that I believe matter most to Houston Texan fans, along with the transcribed quotes and my thoughts (after “SP:”) for each quote:
Exercising C.J. Stroud’s fifth year option was a “no brainer”
CASERIO: “I don’t really think that affects his [QB C.J. Stroud] future. He’s our quarterback. We’ve said that from the beginning. DeMeco and I have both said it. I think that was really more of a procedural thing. I don’t want to say it was a no-brainer, but it was kind of a no-brainer, so we’re glad he’s here. Again, it’s more of a part of the process. So, we’re excited about his offseason. I think he’s had a good approach, had a good attitude here. I think he’s put a lot of work in from, I’d say, March and April. I’m so excited to have him around here in the spring and I’m excited to keep moving forward.”
SP: Stroud’s future with the Texans is one of the most intriguing topics league wide, heading into training camp this summer. The 2026 season will essentially be a referendum on Stroud’s future, with a good season probably getting a massive contract, and a subpar season, perhaps ending his time here. The option exercised by the Texans locks Stroud in through 2027, which means the team controls him, if they looked to trade him next spring. Hopefully, for all involved, things land on Stroud remaining in Houston, long term. Caserio’s comments do reflect everything we’ve heard, from Ryans and others, that he is putting in a ton of work and his focus on improvement has been very sharp this offseason.
Tank Dell’s status still seems somewhat tenuous
CASERIO: “Yeah, with [WR] Tank [Dell], I mean, honestly, it’s probably a day-to-day, we’ll kind of see where he is. Probably have a better idea as we get through the spring of what his availability is going to be in training camp. He’s been here pretty religiously, since he’s been able to do more once he’s gotten out of the rehab stage. As far as a receiver position, if there is a receiver that we like that we feel we want to add to the team then we’re going to take him independent of what’s going on. In the end, the competition will sort itself out. [Head Coach] DeMeco [Ryans] and I talk about this all the time. Get them in the building, they’ll figure it out. Not us.“
SP: I’ll be honest, the answers we’ve gotten the last few weeks from DeMeco Ryans and Nick Caserio on Tank Dell’s progress from his catastrophic knee injury of 2024 have not amped up my optimism for Tank’s contributing this season. Both have been very cautious in their answers. I hate this, because the videos that Tank has been dropping on social media, videos of his workouts, have me very excited! He looks twitchy and fast again! The problem is that “normal athlete twitchy” is much different than “elite NFL player twitchy,” but those differences are practically indiscernible to the naked eye of the average Joe, like me. Let’s just keep praying for Tank, and if the Texans draft a wide receiver, then so be it.
The Texans always draft the “Best Player Available,” so what does that mean?
CASERIO: “It’s trust the grades. There’s a reason that we put grades on a player. Again, we grade the players, we stack the board, we do it vertically and horizontally, and then you work across. If you have two players that are similarly graded, great. If you have another player that’s graded a little bit lower at a quote/unquote, position of need, you’re going to take the lesser player, when our grades tell us let’s do something else? So, again, it goes back to the integrity of the process. Trust the grades. There’s a reason that we grade the players. We’re not a round-based team. We assign a commensurate value to the player of what’s the value relative to what we think the role is going to be. That doesn’t mean we’re going to be right about it. It just means this is how we see that player if we were to add them to the team. So, work across, work vertically and then pick the players off as they come. I guess that’s what that means. So, I would say other than quarterback, there’s no position that we wouldn’t consider drafting if that’s what the board told us. That’s why we set the board.“
SP: This whole notion of the Texans always drafting the best player their big board says to, versus drafting for need, was a huge point of contention between Caserio and the media. In short, nobody believed him. To be fair, this is a battleground that’s fought every draft season in most NFL cities. It’s not unique to Caserio and the Houston media. The interesting thing is that, this draft season, people seem to be believing Caserio, because the Texans don’t have any glaring needs. As Caserio says here, they could draft any position other than quarterback (and I would submit, running back, too), in the first round, and you could put together a good explanation as to why. It seems most people are all aboard on the “BPA Express” this draft season!
On the heels of some sketchy drafting of offensive linemen, here are the tribulations of evaluating that position
CASERIO: “I’d say just generally speaking, the offensive line, it’s probably one of the, I don’t want to say one of the harder positions to evaluate… This is where you can use multiple checks and balances. Everybody watches the tape. A lot of the college systems are the college systems. A lot of the things that these players are going to be asked to do, it’s probably going to be a little bit different. What you see on tape, the one thing… Not just the Houston Texans, but league-wide, there’s probably some benefit to the individual player workouts, because you might be able to see something in a workout [that you’re] not sure if he really has it or you didn’t see him do it on tape that maybe put him through the paces and say, ‘You know what he actually does this better than maybe we thought.’ It’s either a technique flaw, it’s a body position flaw or his ability to take coaching. I think that position there’s a certain level of instinctiveness and certain level of awareness, certain level of toughness and to be able to take coaching and apply coaching.“
SP: Nick Caserio has, by and large, drafted very, very well as the Texans general manager. To this day, all five of his draft classes still have at least a couple contributors on the roster, going back to 2021, where his first two picks, QB Davis Mills and WR Nico Collins, were key components to the Texans’ 12-5 season in 2025. Caserio’s Achilles heel, though, has been drafting offensive linemen, a position where he’s seen some of his biggest flops. Kenyon Green, Juice Scruggs, and whatever Blake Fisher is, all come to mind. So it was interesting to get a detailed view from Caserio on (a) the difficulty of evaluating the position, and (b) what exactly he’s looking for. One thing to watch now is how the player development in the offensive line room functions with second year offensive linemen coach Cole Popovich in charge. Popovich clearly is respected by the players in that whom and by his bosses, based on interviews we’ve seen with both this offseason.
