Coming into the 2021 NFL draft, the Houston Texans had eight draft picks. However, they only made a total of five selections.
New general manager Nick Caserio brokered some deals and executed trades to allow for the Texans to take players they liked, not necessarily add a crop of youngsters to their roster.
“This draft today was probably going to be more about maneuvering around, and it’s relative to the supply and demand of players that you’re looking at and how they’re graded and what those opportunities are going to look like and when are you going to pick those players, who are you actually going to pick,” Caserio told reporters on May 1 after the draft. “Again, it was really more about positioning more than anything else. Again, when you make a move, whether it’s four spots or whether you make a trade at however many spots, everybody looks at it and says, wow, they moved up five spots or they moved up to get this player, when more than anything it’s just about sort of repositioning relative to what the inventory of players was that we were looking at.”
The Texans made three selections on day three in TE Brevin Jordan in Round 5, LB Garret Wallow in Round 5, and Roy Lopez in Round 6. The Texans had five picks for day three, but managed to take three players instead.
“I think going into this, I think as we sat last night and then again this morning, the expectation was we probably wouldn’t use all five picks just because of how they were positioned,” said Caserio. “So, I mean, I’d say we were actively just trying to look at maneuvering around and trying to see if we could put ourselves in the position that we felt we could actually pick a player that we liked as opposed to just picking a player for another reason just to pick a player.”