Battle Red Blog
It’s been three and a half seasons since the 2022 rookie class took the field and Texans fans have a good sense of who hit and who missed. Many of the woes the team is experiencing in the 2025 season are due to the mistakes of this class. Offensive line Conversely, the strength of the Texans stems from two key picks early in this class.
It’s difficult to call an entire class a disappointment when there’s an All Pro amongst the mix, but its difficult not to be disgusted at the number of high-draft picks that didn’t make it through their rookie contracts.
In today’s article, we’ll review the class and redraft players based on how they’ve performed thus far in their career. Several constraints to how I approached the redraft: if a player was already off the board at the time of the selection he could not be selected. Additionally, I tried to maintain relative draft pick value, which means I’m not selecting Brock Purdy in the second round (or at all, actually). The goal is to maintain some sort of reality of what a class would look like rather than every single Pro-Bowler or All-Pro drafted this year.
Rationale: Stingley Jr. is one of six All-Pros in this class, all of which are defensive backs. While CB Sauce Gardner is the only one with two All-Pro selections, Stingley’s play has been most consistent this season and has performed better against elite WR talent. Gardner was selected one pick after Stingley and the two will forever be compared with one another, but Stingley’s longevity appears more clear than Sauce’s.
The other option in this class is Trent McDuffie. McDuffie is one of the best CBs in the NFL and was selected with the 21st overall pick. McDuffie doesn’t have the statistical production that Stingley has, but that’s because teams completely avoid him in the passing game. Still opting with our guy.
Rationale: Linderbaum has established himself as one of the NFL’s top centers, and the Texans desperately needed talent on the interior of their offensive line. This move would solidify the center position for the foreseeable future. Linderbaum was selected with the 23rd overall pick, was 7th in the rookie of the year voting, and has made two Pro Bowls since joining Baltimore.
The Texans originally held the 13th pick from the Cleveland Browns as a part of the Deshaun Watson trade. Houston traded back two places for a haul of draft picks they would use and re-trade throughout the 2022 draft weekend. Unfortunately, that move back two spots changed the entire complexion of the Texans franchise for the worse.
The list of players selected before Kenyon Green is astonishingly impressive: Drake London, Garrett Wilson, Chris Olave, Jameson Williams, Jordan Davis, and Kyle Hamilton are all legitimate talents in the...
