The Texans went from No. 2 pick in 2023 to AFC South champions and today, after adding Joe Mixon in free agency, landed Stefon Diggs in a trade, getting another weapon for that No. 2 pick C.J. Stroud.
Goes to show how quickly a franchise can turn around with a new regime, and Grant & Danny think the Commanders can learn a lesson from Houston.
“They have been ultra-aggressive all off-season – and if you hit on the quarterback at No. 2 like they did, and you know you got yourself a star and you feel like you're set at quarterback on the cheap, I think what they should do next off-season is what the Texans have done this off-season,” Grant said. “The goal should be that if you hit on the QB, don't waste any time, get really aggressive, push the chips in and use that next three years, maybe four after you pick up the option, before a payday as your window to try to get business tended to.”
“It’s chicken or the egg, but you're also going, in order to make sure the rookie quarterback is successful, you drafted Juice Scruggs in the second round to play center, you went and got Laremy Tunsil, an All-Pro caliber left tackle. You've added weaponry six ways from Sunday,” Danny said. “So, correct, this is what you do to give the guy a chance to be any good. It turns out CJ Stroud is transcendent, which is awesome, now you give him that much more opportunity to excel to the next level as he keeps ascending. That’s something Washington has frankly never done; it's always been completely foreign to them to do everything you possibly can to build the nest, but this is what you're supposed to do.”
If all goes right, you end up extending the QB, but you can push some giant paydays down the road and it’s not that big of a deal, at least in Grant’s mind.
“It takes till the last few years of the deal when the money is huge for that to really become a problem, so it's not just the window until the end of your rookie deal if you get the extension done quickly,” GP said. “You can extrapolate out a couple more years before the money is huge, and then you can rework the deal and keep getting creative, but t's not just like a three or four year build, you could actually do it five or six years, maybe, before a QB is making the top of the league debilitating money. Teams will have to start making tough decisions around them a year out, like the Bills did with Stefon Diggs, but I just think if you're a Commanders fan, look at the Texans: that's the dream. You gotta hit a home run at No. 2, which is way easier to talk about than to do it – and it’s very unlikely that anybody is as good as CJ Stroud – but that's what could possibly happen here. That should be the blueprint."