Upon Further Review..... - SportsTop's Blog

SportsTop's Blog

Upon Further Review.....

Posted on December 2, 2008 at 05:14 PM.

(2)

I stand corrected.

Count me, among the many, that was sure the Houston Texans made a potential mistake the likes of the Trail Blazers passing on Michael Jordan when they took Mario Williams over Reggie Bush in the '06 NFL draft.

Although Bush has had more success this year (pre-injury) than he has the previous two seasons, it appears to me that the team has to adjust its offensive gameplan to fit his strengths, a lot of times to the detriment of the team.

On the other hand, Mario Williams has turned into a monster on the defensive line capable of taking over a game and wreaking havoc on opposing offenses. This, in turn, provides an immediate upgrade to the team's secondary and allows their linebackers to be more involved in pass coverage as well.

As if Williams being the better pick than Bush wasn't enough, the Texans were able to draft Steve Slaton in the third round of the '08 draft which is turning out to be the steal of the entire draft. In my limited exposure to watching Slaton this year I can immediately see that he does three things better as a rookie than Reggie Bush does in his third year:

He reads his blocks much better than Bush ever has at the NFL level.
He anticipates his cut-back lanes better than Bush.
He, most importantly, explodes through holes between the tackles with more authority (and success) than Bush does.

With Williams and DeMeco Ryans anchoring the Texans defense and Andre Johnson and Steve Slaton fueling the offense, the Texans need only to get a healthy year from Matt Schaub and they could very well be in contention for a wild card berth next season.

Kudos to Charley Casserly for seeing in Williams what many people, professionals includied, thought they saw in Reggie Bush.....a franchise player capable of taking over games for years to come.

Now excuse me while I grab the salt to help get this crow down.

Comments

# 1 rspencer86 @ Dec 2

Save some crow for me. I was one of the people laughing hardest at the Texans for making such a "stupid" decision in drafting Williams over Bush. Now it seems that they made the right call.