The Houston Texans pass rush isn’t just being slept on; analysts are taking a helping of NyQuil to go along with it.
According to Sam Monson from Pro Football Focus, the Texans are tier five of six under the “declining forces” category. Starring in the Texans’ pass rush is new defensive end Jerry Hughes, who spent the past nine seasons with the Buffalo Bills.
Jerry Hughes is virtually a guaranteed 50 pressures to any defense he’s on, even at this age. He tallied 55 for the Bills last season and has averaged that figure over the past nine years. Hughes is still an effective edge rusher.
What is curios is Jonathan Greenard notched 8.0 sacks last season for Houston, well above Hughes’ 2.0 for Buffalo, who went on to lose in the AFC divisional playoffs. Greenard was playing on a hard-luck team that virtually had no offense complementing them for most of the season, and still managed to near the double-digit sack mark in 12 games.
Shouldn’t Greenard be the representative of the Texans’ pass rush? Isn’t there a tier Greenard can be placed in such as “young but underrated”?
The most logical tier Greenard should have been placed in is Monson’s “underrated veterans.” Take the San Francisco 49ers’ Arik Armstead, who had 6.0 sacks through 17 games last season after notching 3.5 sacks in 16 games in 2020. Shouldn’t Armstead go down to the “declining force” tier, everyone else in the “underrated veterans” tier moves up a spot, and Greenard can have No. 21? Armstead’s lone double-digit sack season was in 2019 when the 49ers qualified for Super Bowl LIV, losing to the Kansas City Chiefs.
What is fascinating about the “declining forces” tier is that former Houston Texans defensive end J.J. Watt is in that category at No. 25 overall, just under Hughes. Even if Watt would have stayed in Houston, analysts may have felt the same way about the pass rush as they do now.
