Draft season is a funny thing. You spend four months watching days and days worth of college football, taking mental notes as to exactly who the best players are, and how they might fit with your favorite team. Once the season is over, there is the combine, there are all the workouts, and the thousands upon thousands of mock drafts that we all absorb like a sponge.
Then draft night rolls around, and all of those months of wondering which player the Houston Texans would take with the 25th overall pick end up not mattering one tiny bit, because when the pick rolls around, GM Nick Caserio decides to trade back to the early part of the second round, and we now all wait until Friday. That’s precisely what happened on Thursday night:
A combination of the Texans key draft targets flying off the board, including Texas receiver Matthew Golden at 23rd overall and Ohio State guard (and Houston native) Donovan Jackson at 24th overall, and quarterbacks like Jaxson Dart and Shedeur Sanders still sitting there for teams to come up and get all led to Caserio opting to trade out of the first round, pick up some extra draft capital, and call it a night.
While it’s not the sexiest way to spend an evening draft watching, and while the fans who braved the rain storms to attend the Texans’ outdoor draft party were probably not thrilled to stand around all night waiting for a pick that never came, this is a sensible approach. Extra picks are good, especially when the Texans are on the cusp of having to pay C.J. Stroud and Will Anderson, and they’ll need the cheap labor of players on their rookie contracts.
So now the Texans head into Friday night, and after this trade and a smaller trade with Cleveland prior to the draft starting on Thursday, here’s what the Texans’ pick inventory looks like:
2nd round / 34
2nd round / 58
3rd round / 79
3rd round / 89
3rd round / 99
6th round / 179
6th round / 216
7th round / 236
7th round / 241
7th round / 255
The second round of the NFL Draft begins at 6 p.m. on the NFL Network and ESPN 2.
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