Other than actual games, the most popular milestone on the National Football League calendar is the NFL Draft. We are less than three weeks away from this spring\u2019s draft, and there are no shortage of storylines as we are full speed ahead to that weekend in Pittsburgh.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Houston Texans, as of right now, enter this month\u2019s draft in a very enviable position, from two standpoints. First, they\u2019ve got a surplus of desirable picks. Day 1 and 2, the first three rounds of the draft, are where the good teams make hay. The Texans have four of the top 69 picks in this draft. Second, with their active free agency season along the offensive line, the Texans head into the draft with almost no acute, painful areas of need.<\/p>\n
In other words, this is the most fun a draft can get for fans of an NFL team \u2014 your team has tons of picks, and can go any direction with them, and you\u2019re very likely to feel good about the picks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now, that said, there is a consensus being built via the mock draft community, the rehearsal drafts conducted online by everyone from reputed draft experts to high school students with a Pro Football Focus subscription. In today\u2019s technology driven world, I used ChatGPT (an AI resource) to inform me of the most frequently \u201cmocked\u201d players to the Texans out there on those mock draft streets. Here were the names they gave me:<\/p>\n
KADYN PROCTOR, OL, Alabama\u00a0<\/p>\n
Proctor Is a mountain of a human being, and sometimes that\u2019s been the issue. His nickname at Alabama was \u201cKrispy,\u201d an homage to his love for Krispy Kreme donuts, an addiction that, at times, drove his weight up to 400 pounds. He\u2019s settled in around 360 pounds, and has the athleticism and versatility to play tackle or guard. The big question is whether or not the Texans believe the discipline and maturity issues are areas that would get squelched in the very positive Texans\u2019 culture.\u00a0<\/p>\n
EMMANUEL PREGNON, OL, Oregon<\/p>\n
Pregnon is another interesting prospect. He is strictly an interior offensive lineman, which might make it difficult for him to get on the field as a rookie. He is exactly the type of player the Texans seem to be seeking out \u2014 tough, nasty, physical. He\u2019s an older player (24 years old), which is sometimes viewed as a negative, and a reason why Pregnon\u2019s draft stock is all over the place. Honestly, one of the reasons he\u2019s so frequently mocked to the Texans is because he could go 28th, 38th, or even 59th overall, all selections owned by the Texans.<\/p>\n
PETER WOODS, DT, Clemson<\/p>\n
KAYDEN McDONALD, DT, Ohio State<\/p>\n
Defensive tackle is probably the closest thing to a true \u201cneed\u201d that the Texans have, as currently constructed. Because DeMeco Ryans likes to rotate his defensive linemen, especially on the interior, there plenty of snaps to be eaten up behind Sheldon Rankins and Tommy Togiai. Woods is the more freaky athlete of these two. McDonald is more the workmanlike, \u201cget it done\u201d playmaker. Either one would be welcomed with open arms by DeMeco Ryans, who has yet to get the opportunity, as Texans head coach, to develop a high draft pick on the interior of the defensive line.\u00a0<\/p>\n
JADARIAN PRICE, RB, Notre Dame \u00a0<\/p>\n
Like I said with Pregnon above, my question to ChatGPT wasn\u2019t specific to the first round. I was wondering who the most mocked players to the Texans were in any of the rounds. There are hardly any mock drafts that have Price going in the first round, but plenty of them that have him as a fit for the Texans with the 38th or 59th overall picks. <\/p>\n
Price might be the second best running back in this draft, a feeling he\u2019s very familiar with, because the best back in this draft is Price\u2019s college teammate at Notre Dame, Jeremiyah Love. So yeah, the second best back in the country was also the second best back on his own college team. Price actually has a little bit of David Montgomery\u2019s running style in him, which would be appropriate if the Texans selected him, since Montgomery will be his new teammate and mentor.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Other than actual games, the most popular milestone on the National Football League calendar is the NFL Draft.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":853623,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2056],"tags":[1156,7,347,221,253,2368,6,901,1482,222],"class_list":{"0":"post-853622","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-texans","8":"tag-defensive-line","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-homepage","11":"tag-houston","12":"tag-houston-texans","13":"tag-houstontexans","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-nick-caserio","16":"tag-offensive-line","17":"tag-texans"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116347628722317614","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=853622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/853623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=853622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=853622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=853622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}