The Houston Texans didn’t become the worst team in the NFL strictly due to quarterback play between 2020-22.
The Texans had structural issues, and the 2020 season demonstrated as much as they had the NFL passing champion but just four wins to show. One could even argue the collapse began in the 2019 AFC divisional playoffs with the infamous 24-0 lead at the Kansas City Chiefs.
Houston seems poised to go all-in on a quarterback with their No. 2 overall pick in the 2023 NFL draft. Speculation abounds regarding who the Carolina Panthers might select ahead of them, and Houston will be handcuffed to the second-best signal caller in the class, barring an unforeseen trade-up scenario.
Alabama’s Bryce Young and Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud are neck-in-neck for No. 1 overall. The Texans will be left with who the Panthers don’t pick in this scenario.
While Young and Stroud may be the best quarterbacks in this class, that does not always reflect status on a big board. The overwhelming value of the quarterback position is unquestionable in the modern game, but neither Young nor Stroud sit atop most draft boards.
Instead, Young’s teammate Will Anderson, a polished edge rusher with all the tools and credentials a scout could ever dream of, stands alone as the single most promising prospect in the 2023 draft class. His pedigree is the stuff of legend, and if the Panthers and Texans weren’t so desperately in need of quarterbacks, Anderson would be a natural selection with the first overall pick.
What is likely to frustrate some of the Houston faithful is that their beloved Texans have been here before. They took David Carr with the first overall pick in 2002, their first season as an NFL franchise, largely because taking a quarterback was expected, and because Carr was the best available.
Future Hall-of-Famer Julius Peppers was selected second overall, and while Carolina secured themselves one of the league’s top pass rushers for the next eight seasons, Houston floundered with a mediocre-at-best quarterback whom they had to keep on the roster because of his draft status and contract.
None of this is to say that Anderson will become Peppers or that Young and Stroud are destined to be this generation’s Carr; it is only to elucidate the point that Houston has faced this same predicament in the past, and seems poised to make the same decision that hampered their growth from the team’s inception.
The situation the team is in now is vastly different than in 2017, the last time they used a first-round pick on a quarterback. The rookie entered an established system and the team was a playoff-winner the year prior. The basic structure of the roster was in place. They just needed a quarterback. They had an above average coach, offensive talent, and a halfway competent defense that still featured J.J. Watt.
This is simply not the case now. Houston has hosted a team completely devoid of talent at nearly every level for three years, with a culture that by all accounts has been among the league’s worst, and it has shown in their on-field product. The Texans have played absolutely atrocious football for almost half a decade, and the idea that a rookie quarterback, no matter how accomplished, promising, or capable will fix the structural issues that have plagued the team is simplistic at best, and outright irrational at worst.
Young and Stroud aren’t the only quarterbacks with talent in this class, and there happens to be an MVP quarterback on the free agency market at present. There is, however, only one player who many have considered the best overall player available in the 2023 NFL draft for months, and Houston will only have to get out of their own way to have him on their roster next season.
Anderson is not only the logical choice for the Texans with their second overall pick, he would be the right choice. Anderson would immediately bolster their lackluster pass rush and secure Houston’s flailing defense a legitimate star-in-the-making who could make an immediate and positive impact for the Texans.
Any quarterback they might select would ultimately be set up for failure without weapons to throw to, an established system in which to play, or experience to bail them out of tricky situations. Should they decide that their hands are tied to Young or Stroud, expect the growing pains to be difficult, frustrating, and hard to watch next season.
