With the Houston Texans taking former Houston Cougars receiver Tank Dell No. 69 overall in Round 3 of the 2023 NFL draft, the perception is the AFC South franchise had more familiarity with the speedster than they would most prospects.
After all, TDECU Stadium is just 20 minutes away from NRG Stadium.
However, even if Dell were playing for the University of Mars — a reference to former Oakland Raiders DL Otis Sistrunk’s fictional alma mater — the Texans would have been as thorough and familiar in their evaluation.
“I don’t know if it helped,” general manager Nick Caserio said. “We had a lot of exposures to him. We saw him play a bunch of times. Our area scout was over there. (Assistant director of player personnel) [James] Liip[fert] was over there, Tom Hayden was over there and I wandered over there a few times.”
More so it was the job the Cougars football program has done with Dana Holgorsen’s 2019 arrival that helped put Dell on the map.
“They’ve produced some players over the last few years,” Caserio said. “Tank sort of fits the profile, and they’ve got some other players who will probably show up over the next day or so that are going to end up on teams. I don’t think it helped other than like he’s close, but wherever he was, we probably would have found him regardless.”
Dell caught 109 passes for 1,398 yards and 17 touchdowns through 13 games for the Cougars last fall.
