Planet earth got rocked this week as J.J. Watt announced he was no longer with the Houston Texans. The future Hall of Famer will no longer be in Houston, so they need to look to the NFL Draft for a replacement. Luckily for them, there is no shortage of pass-rushing help this year, the only question is can any of them replace one of the best ever?
So this should be of no surprise, but Houston does not own any top-end picks in the 2021 NFL Draft after some disastrous trades under the Bill O’Brien era.
The mighty Houston Texans will need to look in the middle rounds for a Watt replacement, so the chances of getting an elite instant starter are not high. However, the prospect of trading prized quarterback Deshaun Watson could net them several high picks this year. That has yet to happen so we won’t focus on it, but if it does happen you can be sure they end up with an elite-pass rusher at some point in the top-50 picks.
There are multiple players we can look at for this replacement in the later rounds, and we have seen several mid-round pass rushers be effective in recent years, even undrafted free agents.
While we won’t likely see a Hall of Fame level replacement, what we can focus on are the facts of who/what Watt was over the last three seasons and while you can not replace a name. You can, however, replace numbers. Here are the numbers from Watt over the last three seasons with the Texans:
Looking at Watt’s impact on Texans over past three years
Sacks- 25
Fumbles- 10
Pass break-ups- 14
Total Tackles- 137
Let’s average out those numbers and see what they would need to actually replace. They would need someone who can get: Over eight sacks, three fumbles, nearly five pass breakups, and 45.6 tackles a year. That is still a tall order, no matter how you look at it that is a pretty impactful player. Well, we have several we think they can hit on in the middle rounds of the draft lets take a look.