It’s hard to believe, but Nick Caserio is heading into his fifth draft as the general manager of the Houston Texans. It seems like just yesterday that Caserio was preparing for the 2021 draft, in which he wasn’t making a pick until the 67th overall selection, the top of the third round, thanks to Bill O’Brien’s gutting of the first two rounds in the Laremy Tunsil trade.
Since then, Caserio has, by and large, done a very good job selecting players to build out the Texans’ roster, highlighted by the first night of the 2023 draft, when Caserio selected quarterback C.J. Stroud with the second overall pick, and then boldly traded up from the 12th overall pick (acquired in the Deshaun Watson trade) to the third overall pick to take defensive end Will Anderson, Jr.
That night reset the course of the franchise, and they’ve gone from a team whose listed needs are “everything” to a fringe contender whose needs are more specific. In this draft, the Texans should be looking for offensive linemen and wide receivers, first and foremost.
Caserio met with this media for his annual pre-draft press conference on Wednesday afternoon, and was his usual self, guarded on some topics and glib and upbeat about others. Amidst the 30 minutes of dialogue, these are the four most important takeaways, with transcribed quotes, courtesy of Texans Media Relations:
Caserio insists the team does NOT draft based on need
“Yeah, we’ve never Drafted for need around here. Never going to. We’re going to pick the best player we feel fits our program regardless of the position. I would say other than quarterback pretty much any position is on the table, like it always is. Try to stay true to the board. That’s the reason we created the players. We put the players on the board, we grade them accordingly to what we think the role is going to be, then we take them off the board as we see fit. That’s not going to change.”
For everyone clamoring for offensive line help with the 25th overall pick, or for those of you demanding wide receiver help in the first round, just remember this quote when Nick drafts a tight end or a defensive lineman that slips down to 25th overall.
Regarding extensions for Derek Stingley and Jalen Pitre, the formula was simple
“So, second part of your question relative to the players we were able to extend, look, we didn’t do anything. The players earned those opportunities with their play and performance. You know, these are players that we think can help our football team moving forward. They certainly embody the quality we want the Houston Texans to look like. They are good football players, and our goal is to keep as many good football players around here as for as long a period of time as we can. It’s a credit to the players and the coaches for putting themselves in that position. You know, I’ll kind of handle the behind the scenes and the finances or the finance. But those players, I mean, they’ve all been here. [S Jalen] Pitre has been here, [CB Derek] Stingley [Jr.] has been here. Talk about going back to last year with [WR] Nico [Collins]. He’s in here. I mean, so that says a lot about their commitment to winning and football, prioritizing their job and its importance.”
Caserio is not an easy guy to figure out on certain things, like which direction he’s leaning in the draft. On other things, though, like extending current players’ contracts, he is a very willing, open book. If you’re a good player who works hard, is present in the offseason, is a good teammate, and is low maintenance, chances are, you’re getting paid.
Caserio laid out the difficulty in evaluating small school prospects
“I think the nature of the Draft in the end, there is a projection element regardless of how much a player has or has not played. When you’re playing at ‘lower level,’ there is going to be an adjustment period that takes place. Is there an opportunity to evaluate that in the Senior Bowl or East West? I would say those two games did a pretty good job bringing in some lower-level, smaller-school players. It’s a huge jump. No question about it. How are they going to handle it. ….. You might have to not downgrade it based on level of competition, but there is a little bit of a difference what the guy does against LSU versus against Western Tennessee State or somebody like that if that’s who they’re playing every week. You’re not going to eliminate a player, but give him an opportunity, but not every player can make that jump. I mean, it’s case by case like a lot of this is. There is a projection element involved, no question about it.”
This is relevant because there is one thing that Caserio has refrained from doing in the draft — drafting players from outside of the power conferences. The only non-power conference player Caserio has drafted since arriving in Houston is Tank Dell, and even UH became a power school the year after Dell went pro. The one prospect that may put Caserio to the test here, if they stay at 25th in the draft, is North Dakota State’s Grey Zabel, an interior offensive lineman who embodies a lot of the intangible qualities that Caserio and DeMeco Ryans covet.
Nick Caserio uses mock drafts (kind of) as part of his intel gathering!
“There is a million mock Drafts. I would just say some are probably more relevant than others because some are getting the information from the teams. They’re not making it up themselves. They’re talking to teams saying, hey, so they’re getting intel. I would say agents are involved. They’re getting intel. All right, so you try to I would say gather information, but you have to be careful about how much you actually put in the information. And then what can you trust. What can you rely on. You’re just trying to get yourself in the ballpark. Okay, looks like if we’re around here, maybe these six or eight guys, we’ll have an opportunity to pick. Okay, all right, ‘Who are we interested in? Who do we like? This guy is not a factor. Hey, we can do this, move here.’ So, it’s a little bit of cat and mouse. I would say some of it you’re not going to know until Draft Day starts. I would say we talked about this before. Trades are player driven, so you don’t know if you’re going to trade up for a player until you get to Draft Day. You have to be careful about too much information, but utilize it and then be able to trust I would say reliable information from the sources that you think are reputable.”
Yes! Nick Caserio is one of us, scouring mock drafts, trying to identify trends, and sifting through website after website trying to decipher what’s right and what’s bull crap. Man, I feel so much more normal! Thank you, Nick!
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This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.
