As of Monday morning, the Houston Texans are three practices into their 2024 training camp. If you’re getting your intel on camp from articles like this, podcasts like mine, or radio shows on SportsRadio 610, then you likely can tell — it’s a pretty harmonious, drama-free zone. The culture established by DeMeco Ryans is the big reason for that, but it helps that the Texans don’t have any players angling for new contracts right now.
Nico Collins signed his three-year extension several weeks ago, and that was really the only contractual to-do for GM Nick Caserio. Around the league, though, there are several teams who are about to deal with holdouts and/or disgruntled players reporting to camp. Several quarterbacks (Dak Prescott, Jordan Love, Tua Tagovailoa) are looking for new deals, as are multiple wide receivers.
One of those wide receivers looking for a new deal is 49ers All Pro standout Brandon Aiyuk, who last week finally requested a trade. Aiyuk is in the final season of his rookie deal, set to make about $14 million, playing a position where the new ceiling for annual income is $35 million per year, set by Minesota’s Justin Jefferson a few weeks ago.
Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio shed some interesting light on the Aiyuk situation over the weekend, when he reported that, prior to the draft, there were five teams set to pay Aiyuk if they could have made a trade with the Niners:
At the time, the magic number was in the neighborhood of $28 million per year. That quite possibly has changed, given the market-shifting deal given by the Vikings to receiver Justin Jefferson.
Regardless, there were five teams, we’re told, who were ready to pay Aiyuk what he wanted before the draft. If they could also reach acceptable trade terms with the 49ers, he would have been traded.
That part didn’t happen. It’s unclear what the 49ers wanted at the time. They rejected an offer of a second-round pick from the Patriots. Other interested teams were, and potentially still are, the Steelers and Commanders.
So Florio identifies three of the five teams that were pursuing Aiyuk, and ready to pay him $28 million per year, likely for at least four seasons, at least — the Patriots, Steelers, and Commanders. Aiyuk himself has cryptically confirmed that the Steeles and Commanders may be interested in his services on various outlets.
So who were the other two teams kicking tires on Aiyuk, and could one of them been the Texans? It’s a fun question to think about. Here are a few reasons why the Texans make sense as a candidate earlier this year in the Aiyuk market:
DeMeco Ryans is very familiar with Aiyuk
Aiyuk was a first round pick of the 49ers back in 2020, so Ryans spent three seasons in the same building with him in San Francisco. The Texans are a team that values how a guy is behind the scenes and as a teammate, perhaps more than most NFL teams. Ryans’ intel regarding Aiyuk would have been crucial to the Texans pulling off such a deal. Aiyuk seems to come with some drama, as he’s been highly vocal about his contact situation in the media, so in the end, the information provided by Ryans might have arrived at a hard pass on Aiyuk’s services.
The Texans had the salary cap space to make it work
The Texans entered the offseason with more cap space than about two thirds of the teams in the NFL. Ultimately, they’ve had the cap space to be very active with high level free agents, and extend WR Nico Collins, so they undoubtedly could have made a multiyear deal for Aiyuk work. It would have been out of character for Nick Caserio to pay top dollar for more than three years to someone who wasn’t already a Texan, but they had the financial wherewithal to do it, if everything else lined up.
They were clearly looking for more receiver help (see: Diggs, Stefon)
On March 15, the Texans made their deal with the Vikings, in which they received an extra second round pick (in 2025), allowing the Vikings to flip flop 2024 picks with them, with the Vikings moving up to 23rd overall and the Texans moving back to 42nd overall. Ultimately, that 2025 second round pick is what the Texans sent to Buffalo for Diggs, but that Diggs trade didn’t go down until April 3, so the Texans could very well have acquired that pick with several subsequent trade targets in mind. Aiyuk would have made sense, but likely it would have taken more than that to get a deal done, with Aiyuk being five years younger than Diggs.
So, if you had to guess, who were the other two Aiyuk suitors?
I thought about this quite a bit, and if I had to bet money on it, my two mystery suitors would be Carolina and Jacksonville. The Panthers were scouring the league to get help for second year QB Bryce Young, and Aiyuk would have represented a sexy trade for a team whose fans are as apathetic as any in the league right now. Jacksonville lost Calvin Ridley in free agency to the Titans, so Aiyuk would have made sense for them. In fact, the Jaguars are still second on the odds board to acquire Aiyuk, if indeed the Niners cater to his trade demands.
Ultimately, based on everything that I’ve heard and everything I’ve seen with my own eyes out at camp, the Texans wound up with the right guy. Stefon Diggs in a prove-it year makes a lot more sense than paying top dollar to someone from outside the organization.
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This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
