Texans Fail to Address Interior Offensive Line in NFL Draft

Battle Red Blog writers collectively frustrated but trusting in Caserio

It was a wild — yet typical — Nick Caserio NFL Draft weekend. Houston completed seven trades throughout the draft and added nine prospects to form the Texans’ 2025 draft class. None of which answered the Texans biggest positional need heading into the draft: center and guard. Houston “addressed” the position via free agency, but those players as mentioned by several of the writers below are debatably mediocre at best.

I asked the writers to air their frustration and provide their thoughts on why Nick Caserio didn’t address the position in the draft:

The Texans didn’t draft a single interior offensive lineman in the 2025 NFLDraft. How concerned are you about protecting Stroud this next season?

VBallRetired:

I’m in wait and see mode. I have to hope they know something we don’t. Either they like the internal options more than we do or didn’t like the options in the draft. Crying over it won’t do any good. My fear is that neglecting it will force a Laremy Tunsil type desperation move like in 2019. It’s definitely not a good look but they get paid to do this and I don’t.

l4blitzer:

One might argue that even if Houston brought in 2-3 IOL prospects, the line might not be any more effective this year than last. That Houston only drafted ONE OL prospect period, and that an OT, indicates that Houston is likely okay with the various depth signings they made in free agency, as well as maintaining faith in incumbent Juice Scruggs and Jarrett Patterson to hold down the interior.

Likely they will keep Howard at guard (never mind he is better at Tackle, but Houston is [KITTEN]-bent on keeping him there) and they figure that Cam Robinson, Blake Fisher and maybe Aireontae Ersery can hold down the tackle spots. Maybe they hope that something emerges from the UDFA pool. If nothing else, hopefully Stroud was working on his running abilities like he said he would after the Division Round loss at Kansas City.

Kenneth L.

As I posted on Twitter/X, I thought Nick Caserio was going to address offensive line early and often, but instead drafted more QBs than guards or centers.

Ersery is a true tackle who I doubt can transition to guard due to his 6’6 frame. I don’t trust Jarrett Patterson to develop into a starting center nor has Juice Scruggs shown anything close to his second round selection.

While “Best Player Available” is a fine strategy, Houston had two critical needs: protect C.J. Stroud and add weapons around C.J. Stroud. They added weapons, sure… but Stroud won’t have time to throw to them if he is running for his life.

If this season goes wrong and Stroud is the most sacked QB in the league, the only person you can point to is Caserio for not doing his job

FizzyJoe:

Very confused by it. I can understand trading out of the first round, and I can understand taking receivers and a tackle in the second round, but to pass up on ALL of the options on day three? I know that there was a lot of controversy surrounding some of the guards and tackles available in day three, but I don’t understand refusing to take a chance on even one of them when your current starters are Laken Tomlinson and Juice Scruggs/Tytus Howard.

There is a possibility free agent signing Ed Ingram becomes the starting guard, but since he got benched in the middle of the season last year, I have my doubts. Moving Howard to guard will require Trent Brown/Blake Fisher/Aireontae Ersery to be starting-caliber at RT, which is a bet I’m honestly afraid to take.

I personally prefer trying to draft players at the position they’ve played most of their lives instead of bouncing tackled and centers around the line like musical chairs, but I’m no expert. Maybe Jaylin Smith will provide more value to the team than Marcus Mbow or Miles Frazier, but as of right now, I sincerely doubt it.

Patrick.H:

Of course I’m concerned. If you aren’t at least a little concerned, I’d think you weren’t paying all that close attention to the Texans last year.

However, I try to take a Socratic approach to it. The only thing I know for sure is that I know nothing… at least as far as the Texans are concerned.

At the moment, there’s still a bit of goodwill built up – I think – between Texans fans and the DeMeco Ryans/Nick Caserio regime, so I’m way more willing to see where this goes. They know more about the team than I do, than pretty much anyone that isn’t directly employed by the team does. Maybe Nick Caley and Cole Popovich sees something in the Scruggs/Patterson/Howard combination that Slowik and Strausser missed last year. Lord knows it wouldn’t be a stretch of the imagination to think those two last year might not have gotten the full potential out of those players that they could have.

The thing I keep coming back to with Scruggs/Patterson is that you could see flashes of potential in their rookie years that would lead you to believe that they could be the answer that just weren’t there last year. So it if was just bad coaching (and at the moment we have every reason in the world to think that’s the case), then this line might be way better off than we might think.

Either that or Nick Caley subscribes to the Mike Martz school of offensive coordinating and they’re going to let Stroud get annihilated to run a new Greatest Show On Turf knock off, in which case everybody needs to be fired immediately. But again, all I know is I know nothing, but this will be the first test of the team’s newly re-established goodwill. They better know what they’re doing.