Barnwell – Bill O 'Brien wants the Patriot Way. His trades go against

There is no doubt that Texans are among the many organizations in the league that are trying to capture the essence of Patriot Way. They hired O & # 39; Brien as coach, imported Patriots coach Jack Easterby, and then attempted to hire Nick Caserio, chief executive of the Pats, in June to assume the duties of general manager, then to be sidelined by falsification charges. During the brief takeover by the Personnel Decisions Committee in Houston, it became apparent that the committee – which includes Easterby and O & Brien as undetermined but important influence has no idea what could be qualified as a model of the Patriots for success.

PTO

While each coach has at least one voice appearance when it comes to acquiring staff, few NFL coaches have the last word on the number of coaches. people. Those who have a lot of weight. Bill Belichick is Bill Belichick. Jon Gruden got a 10-year contract for broadcasting. Andy Reid and Sean Payton have served in this role during their long career. Other coaches may have some level of control, but the only other I can find is Kyle Shanahan, who controls all 53 people but assigns all other staffing decisions to the Executive Director. John Lynch.

Trades

None of the trades that the Texans have made over the past month is what Belichick has done since he's with the Patriots. Belichick is an expert in understanding timing and leverage. Whether you want to talk to O 'Brien himself or the Texans' new staff committee, the recent Houston moves have shown little aptitude or understanding of one or the other. ;other. Consider the three jobs that Houston has done:

A fourth round pick (likely to become a third-round pick) to Browns for RB Duke Johnson. While Johnson could play a larger role than expected after Lamar Miller tore his ACL, the Texans essentially traded a good choice for a player who could serve as a relief player. The Patriots have repeatedly targeted half-goals in the middle of the round and low-cost self-serve additions to the Belichick pass, with rare exceptions.

They traded a second-round pick against Corey Dillon in 2004 and had a great season, but Dillon slipped to three losses in another era and his contract extension was a mistake for the Patriots. . The Pats then used a first-round pick on Laurence Maroney to replace Dillon, before Maroney also eclipsed.

Johnson may be a valuable player, but he was buried in Cleveland's depth chart and was just a few weeks away from their third rope behind Nick Chubb and Kareem Hunt. Cleveland had no way of pressing and nevertheless got a major choice for a player he did not need. There is no sense of scarcity of position here.

Clowney to the Seahawks for a third-round pick and backup of Barkevious Lingo Mingo and Jacob Martin. Perhaps you could say that the Patriots have clearly downplayed the importance of paying big money for smugglers. In this scenario, Texans are probably better off than Clowney. In addition, if you estimate that the $ 16 million in cash that Texans had budgeted for the Clowney franchise tag will help pay the 2019 salaries of Stills ($ 8.0 million) and Tunsil (to determine), you can try to define it as a redistribution. Resource.

What the Patriots do not do very often is to wait until it is too late to exchange a player, with Jimmy Garoppolo as a rare exception to this rule. The Texans have totally lost their influence on Clowney, as our Sarah Barshop pointed out earlier Saturday. When the Seahawks traded Frank Clark in April, they were able to take advantage of a desperate team of leaders and take first and second round picks as the main return of their course.

The leaders were able to pay as much for Clark, in part, as they were able to sign Clark's long-term extension at the same time while closing the deal. Teams that are negotiating this type of deal for a player about to get a new contract lose all of their weight once the deal is over because no one wants to give up the first and second round choices of one. veteran, then let him go next. free agency.

After the July 15 franchise deadline, however, a franchisee player can not sign a long-term contract before playing the tag or being released by his original team. Any team trading for Clowney, like the Seahawks on Saturday, would be forced to keep Clowney on a one – year contract before likely to apply a second franchise label in 2020 before contract negotiations. This alone has significantly reduced the commercial value of Clowney.

The Texans could have kept Clowney for 2019, wait for his demands for a new deal, probably have seen him play at least one season, then franchise him again in 2020 before a more valuable exchange or let him go for what would be been a third-round compensatory choice. Houston would have lost this compensatory choice if it had spent money in free agency, which suggests that Texans expect to spend money in free agency next season. Of course, patriots almost always avoid free will to take these kinds of compensatory choices.

Two first-round picks, a second-round pick, T Julie's Davenport and DB Johnson Bademosi in the Dolphins for LT Larry Tunsil, WR Kenny Stills and choices for the fourth and sixth rounds. If there is a position that the Patriots clearly value outside the quarterback, however, it remains in the attack. Belichick used a second-round pick on Matt Light in 2001, then a first-round pick on Nate Solder. These two guys covered Tom Brady's first 18 years as a starting quarterback. When Solder became too expensive to stay freelance last year, Belichick chose Isaiah Wynn in the first round and traded a third against Trent Brown and a fifth. When Wynn tore his Achilles at training camp, Brown took over and excelled on the road to a Super Bowl LIII victory.

The Texans created their own mess on the left when they refused to give in to Duane Brown in his 2017 game, sending Brown and a fifth round pick to the Seahawks for second and third round picks. They have barely missed the solutions in the last two seasons. In 2018, they tried to sign Solder as a free agency, but only to allow the Giants to outbid. In the 2019 draft, Houston looked likely to postpone Washington State tackler Andre Dillard's 23rd pick, but only for the Eagles to use the fourth and sixth round selections to move from No. 25 to No. 22 and beat the Texans in the front row. punch.

If one or the other of these steps breaks the road to Houston, Texans do not do this business. Instead, the acquisitions made by the organization were half-measures. They raced with Davenport in 2018, which worked so well that Deshaun Watson was forced to take a bus for the Houston Jaguars game in Jacksonville because the team was worried about the air pressure of an airplane impacting his lungs and ribs. This season, Texans signed with Matt Kalil, an often injured Panthers striker, and used the 23rd pick on inexperienced striker Tytus Howard, who spent most of his time at the camp to the left and n & # 39; Was not in good health. Kalil was alternatively injured and ineffective at practice. While the Texans said throughout the summer that Kalil would be their left starting bull in the first week, the former fourth overall was just not a start-up challenge for the first time. years. .

Doing the same trade for Tunsil, Stills and two choices on the third day is an economic problem. The bill blocks quarters at below-market prices for five seasons, offering a huge amount of added value if the choice looks good. Watson will earn a total of $ 13.8 million between 2017 and 20 without even taking into account the value of its fifth-year option in 2021. A Pro Bowl quarterback generating a market value would likely yield about $ 110 million in cash. during the same period. Of course, there was no guarantee that Watson would work at that time, but on the bright side, if the move worked well, the interim cost could be justified.

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In the trading of Tunsil and Stills, however, Texans can not achieve the same economic benefit. They are giving up on preliminary choices – the best way to block helpful contributors at below-market rates from the cap – to acquire proven talent at market rates. The two years and $ 15 million remaining in the Stills deal are good for the team, given the soaring underdog market in recent seasons, but it's also a lot to pay for an outsider whose the skills are probably duplicated by Will Fuller. Stills offers Texans a third and wide insurance and valuable insurance if Fuller and / or Keke Coutee get injured, but it's hard to see how the 27-year-old increases production given the presence of both players and DeAndre Hopkins on the list.

This trade realistically concerns Tunsil, and the Texans will not realize any gain on his contract. The 25-year-old is one of the league's best left-back young strikers, and after falling on draft day following the infamous gas mask photo hacking incident, Tunsil is in a position to pay. Tunsil is under contract for the next two years for a total of $ 12.5 million, but his contract is coming.

This agreement will simply not be cheap. Given that the Texans were not able to sign an extension of contract before the conclusion of this trade, the former star player Ole Miss holds the vast majority of the pressure tactics necessary for the negotiations. Houston can not reasonably claim that it will be willing to trade Tunsil again or let him go on a free mission in 2021. Tunsil knows as much. He is ready to become the highest paid left tackle in the history of the league, starting this week. Khalil Mack managed to make about 20% more than Von Miller, the previous outstanding contract, in the first three years of his new contract, after the Bears acquired him last season. Apply the same growth factor to the top of the left market and you are considering a $ 100 million, five-year contract.

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Does Tunsil deserve this kind of money? May be. Since the Texans are also sending two first-round picks and a second-round pick to the Dolphins as part of the deal, they are also losing the added value of these choices and are essentially paying this sum to Tunsil as part of the deal. of the contract. Contract. I've talked about the idea while talking about the Mack trade, but by doing this trade, Texans realistically value the value of Tunsil as a value of more than the order of 35 to 40 million dollars per season. Tunsil should basically be a MVP candidate on an annual basis for this agreement to make sense. Even the best left tackle on the planet would struggle to do this job.

L & # 39; s future

The right way to conceive this is a huge risk. The Bears feel good about Mack's trade after the first year, but his contract is under water if it slips or gets hurt. Even if Mack continues to play like a star, the Bears could easily find themselves in a scenario in which the missing credits will prevent them from filling the gaps in their alignment or being improved on Mitchell Trubisky when the quarter-grade third would be expensive. . These opportunities do not make the Mack trade a good decision or a bad idea in a vacuum, but they must inform our way of seeing the trade. If the contract wins the Bears Super Bowl, no one will miss these preliminary choices.

The Bears saw the opportunity to get a Hall of Fame talent and went all-in. Tunsil does not have the same kind of stamp and does not have the same player caliber yet, but the Texans have a better quarterback and do the same kind of movement. This certainly increases their chances of competing in 2019 and 2020, when Watson will likely earn much less than the market value. After the Colts' defeat by Andrew Luck, the Texans should be the easy favorites to win the AFC South and hold a playoff game in January.

Philly has built his own Super Bowl winner in two years around Carson Wentz after being traded for the second pick in 2016, but the Eagles have appealed to players such as Byron Maxwell and Kiko Alonso for the first time. help with the cost of succession for Wentz. first round pick in the Sam Bradford case. Most of their other moves took place independently and did not require significant working capital. They did not do this kind of movement.

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Similarly, Belichick has never failed to send this type of capital to a single player. He has never packed a first and second round pick to go to a prospect or sent a first round pick for a veteran. The only times he sent a second-round selection in direct exchange for a player were in 2004 (Dillon) and 2007 (Wes Welker, a seventh round also heading to Miami). You can point to Brady and point out that Belichick is not forced to despair when he is arguably the best player in NFL history in his lineup, but it's clear that the Pats did not use their choice of repêchage in the list. as O & # 39; Brien did over the past month.

If that does not work over the next two seasons, I'm not sure that there is a way back for O. Brien. The Texans will miss out on the young talents for years, knowing that they will only have made a first round pick over a four year period between 2018 and 2011. The Texans will have awarded O & # 's Brien his quarterback, his character coach and finally his power. Now, after a breathtaking day of exchanges and a series of differences over Belichick's decision-making process, O & Brien will have to prove that he can win a Super Bowl in the manner of Texans.