Battle Red Blog
Houston Texans top tactics to team building through the draft
Houston has three seasons under its belt with General Manager Nick Caserio. It’s been a tumultuous but rewarding ride. It feels as though it’s been a millions years but also just finally getting underway.
We’ve learned a lot about Houston’s GM and how he constructs a roster. Caserio’s building blocks are one-year contracts for veterans, aggressive draft day maneuvers, and no room for veterans who don’t want to be here. For the draft specifically, we’ve identified five points of strategy during the Nick Caserio era.
Nick Caserio addresses ‘holes’ on the roster by selecting a top-end talent to start at the position, goes back to the well later in the draft to develop another player alongside the elite prospect. This both resolves an immediate need while building in a backup option in case the first one doesn’t pan out. In some instances, both players hit and the position transforms from a weakness to a strength. Here’s examples from the last two drafts:
2023: DEs: Will Anderson & Dylan Horton, OG/OC: Juice Scruggs and Jarrett Patterson, WRs Tank Dell & Xavier Hutchinson
2022: OL: Kenyon Green & Austin Deculus, DBs Derek Stingley & Jalen Pitre
Call it getting antsy, call it not leaving it to chance, but don’t call it passive. If there’s a player on Nick Caserio’s draft board that he wants, he’s going to expend the draft capital to nab him before another team does. What will be exeedingly interesting is how Caserio executes this year without a surplus of draft picks like the last two years.
Caserio has traded up to select the following players:
2023: Will Anderson Jr., Juice Scruggs, Henry To’o To’o, Tank Dell, Xavier Hutchinson
2022: Christian Harris, John Metchie III, Thomas Booker, Teagan Quitoriano
2021: Nico Collins, Garret Wallow
Do you realize how absurd that is? The entire draft is fluid. This isn’t a trend, it’s a primary draft strategy. It makes you consider that Caserio is likely to move back in the 2024 draft to bulk up on third-fifth round picks to increase their draft liquidity.
It’s logical, but not always the approach taken around the league. There’s plenty of opposing NFL teams who utilize an entire draft class to fix one side of the ball. Take a look at the Lions’ 2022 class; it featured six defensive players and just two offensive players. Houston’s last two classes are split as such:
2023: 5 offense, 4 defense
2022: 5 offense, 4 defense
2021: 3 offense, 2 defense
While the offense had more pressing needs over the past two offseason, defense is expected to lead the way this year. The offense returns nine of eleven starters from last year’s team while the defense could lose five to six starters.
