(SportsRadio 610) - With Deshaun Watson no longer on the Texans' roster and the team fully into its rebuild, attention turns to second-year quarterback Davis Mills.
The Texans' third-round pick last year, in general manager Nick Caserio's first draft, showed promise after taking over the starting job from Tyrod Taylor.
Notably, Caserio did not get Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield in the deal sending Deshaun Watson to Cleveland. This, despite the Browns obviously needing to trade Mayfield, a former No. 1 overall pick who should have some trade value of his own.
Does this say anything about the Texans' intentions with Mills, whether he is their quarterback of the future?
"Certainly wouldn't jump to any conclusions," Caserio said when asked Saturday. "I would say specific to Davis (Mills), Davis had opportunities last year and did a nice job with those opportunities. But we're going to start from scratch a little bit. I would say when you get into the draft, you really don't want to necessarily eliminate any position or particular player. You just want to look at it with the mentality and just figure out what makes the most sense for the organization. It's about picking good players, it's about picking the right players that you think fit what you're trying to do.
"We'll look at everything, we're knee deep in that right now and we'll have another five or six weeks left until we get to the draft to work through that process. But Davis has certainly earned an opportunity here, and that's kind of the extent of what he's earned. But I think he's excited about the chances that he has in front of him, and we'll see how it all unfolds."
Advanced metrics show Mills had the second-best rookie season among quarterbacks behind the New England Patriots' Mac Jones in 2021.
Leaguewide, Mills ranked 25th in DYAR, and 24th in DVOA, which Football Outsiders uses to measure efficiency. But those numbers were better than all rookie quarterbacks besides Jones, which includes No. 1 overall pick Trevor Lawrence, No. 2 overall pick Zach Wilson, and Justin Fields, who the Chicago Bears traded up to select at No. 11 overall.
After the Watson trade, Houston enters this year's draft with the No. 3 and No. 13 overall picks.
Brandon Scott is the senior digital content coordinator for SportsRadio610.com. Follow him on Twitter @brandonkscott .
