Jerome Solomon of the Houston Chronicle took the John McClain route today, advocating for the Houston Texans to trade up earlier in the draft for the chance to select Texas A&M linebacker Von Miller or LSU cornerback Patrick Peterson. With the 2011 NFL Draft approaching on Thursday, there has been a lot of smoke about the Texans potentially trading up, as even Peter King has them surrendering some picks to move up and get Peterson. This despite the fact that, as Nick Scurfield pointed out earlier this week, the Texans are historically much more likely to trade down than up.
The fact remains though that the Texans defense isn't a piece away from contention -- it's a ship with five or six holes that are taking on water at once. Getting one really good seal on there isn't going to keep the team from sinking. Especially if it costs you a bunch of money, as most Top 10 picks do.
Solmon points out that the Texans have one of the largest percentage of home-grown defensive players in the NFL, and I think what we're supposed to infer from that is that the Texans should trade up to minimize risk. No, what they should've done about this is fire their general manager, head coach, or whoever is making the picks. Trading down in the NFL Draft is the strategy that the odds are in favor with--I'm fine with gambling on trading up to a mid-round pick, but why you would ever want to draft at the top of the first round, where you're going to be paying the pick like he's already successful no matter what, is mind-boggling to me. To do it when you have maybe four or five total players on the roster that successfully played half the season last year and came out of it looking good? Lunacy.
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