2014 NFL Draft may have sealed AFC South for Tennessee Titans
By Will Lomas
Houston Texans
What they did:
Despite having a great EDGE/DL type player in J.J. Watt and it still earning them the first pick in the draft, the Texans doubled down on Jadeveon Clowney. He was the consensus top pick and he was supposed to be a no-brainer stud on defense.
Whoops.
Clowney is a good player, and probably deserves more credit as a run defender than he gets. However, when you take someone with the top pick in the draft and pair him with J.J. Watt, you expect him to end up being a game changing talent.
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Well, instead you have a player who has 10.5 sacks in his three year career. For reference, Karl Klug has 13.5 in his first three years and has never had a three year stretch with less than 7.5 sacks.
What they should have done:
The Texans had a ton of options to make this the draft that made them a transcendent team and they messed them all up.
How terrifying does J.J. Watt and Aaron Donald sound? Or Watt and Khalil Mack? Or the easy choice in retrospect: Derek Carr.
But it isn’t just limited to those players, the Texans could have had an elite receiver with any of Odell Beckham, Sammy Watkins or Mike Evans. Pairing them and Nuk Hopkins together in 2015 would have meant that you could just put any QB back there and win.