The Houston Texans made bold moves in the offseason to add layers to their roster. The biggest move was to trade receiver DeAndre Hopkins to the Arizona Cardinals for draft picks and running back David Johnson.
According to Bill Barnwell of ESPN, the Texans shouldn’t have traded Hopkins; rather, the club should have worked with him on a new contract the way the Atlanta Falcons did with Julio Jones. Barnwell also says the club should have re-signed running back Carlos Hyde because his contract wasn’t as exorbitant in 2020 as Johnson’s is.
However, if Hopkins had to be traded, Barnwell would have preferred a different transaction than coach-general manager Bill O’Brien only getting a 2020 second-rounder and swapping a 2020 fourth-rounder for a 2021 fourth-rounder.
If O’Brien thought his relationship with Hopkins was unsalvageable and he needed to trade his star wide receiver away, that’s one thing. He simply had to get more out of that deal than an underwater running back contract and a second-round pick. Even if Hopkins wanted a new deal, the Stefon Diggs trade saw the Vikings send a less productive player with a reputation of creating drama inside his building to the Bills for a much greater haul, most notably a first-round pick. Beating the Vikings to the punch for that Bills deal would have been more defensible.
According to O’Brien, one of the considerations that went into the trading of Hopkins was finding a team that could take on his contract.
“Once we found that team that could afford DeAndre Hopkins in the future, now we then began to negotiate what the value of the trade was,” O’Brien told reporters on April 16.
After the trading of Hopkins, the Texans signed receiver Randall Cobb and traded with the Los Angeles Rams for wideout Brandin Cooks, adding more speed to their receiving corps.
With the first wave of free agency and the draft over, the Texans will have to work on their chemistry and cohesion as a team to improve in 2020.
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