(SportsRadio 610) -- Texans wide receivers are working on new techniques.
It's part of the value of this time in the offseason. Coaches and players can nail down the nuances of route-running and concepts.
So, at organized training activities over the past couple of weeks, they slowed everything down to really work on it.
This involves their stance and starts, releases, the stem of the route, the break down and the catch itself.
Wide receivers coach Robert Prince, in his first season with the Texans after spending the last seven with the Detroit Lions, credited veterans like Brandin Cooks and Randall Cobb as leaders in this process.
They ask the right questions and offer input the coaches deem helpful. Both are willing to take coaching and set an example for the rest of the group.
“Sometimes you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable," Prince said.
Perhaps the most uncomfortable part of the season so far is the absence of Deshaun Watson, last year's NFL passing leader. You wouldn't know it based on how well the receivers are working with veteran newcomer Tyrod Taylor.
The Texans are clearly ready to move on.
Part of that progression is reimagining the offense without their former superstar.
Last year, as Cobb pointed out in October, a lot of the Texans' concepts were more downfield focused. That was presumably to take advantage of Watson's lethal deep ball, and speed on the outside with Cooks and Will Fuller.
The offensive line at times struggled to hold up and allow those plays to develop, and other times Watson would escape the pocket to make something out of nothing.
This offense will focus on getting the ball out quickly, as Taylor said last week, with the concept of allowing the skill players to make plays.
"There’s a lot of different techniques and there’s things that I’ve done in the past that I believe in," Prince said. "There’s a certain teaching progression and we’re kind of following that. We’ll be in the meetings, we’ll watch, we’ll talk about the techniques. We’ll watch cutups of the techniques. We’ll see how to do it, what not to do and then we’ll go out on the field and we’ll work the techniques.
"Like I said, some of them, they’re used to some of them and some of the techniques they’re not used to. This time of year is a great time to work on that kind of stuff. We’ll go out there when we do it and then what we say is once we get to the fall, then what we’ve got to do is make these lines come to life. They can add their little flavor to it, but right now we’re trying to say, ‘hey, these are the techniques we want you to use.'"
The personnel changes Houston made to the wide receiver group are worth noting. Fuller left for the Miami Dolphins in free agency, and the Texans traded up in this year's draft to select Nico Collins in the third round.
They also signed veterans Chris Conley, Donte Moncrief, Andre Roberts and Chris Moore.
Collins, at 6-feet 4 inches, presents a large catch radius and was known for making contested catches in college at Michigan before opting out of last season due to COVID-19.
Prince said the biggest adjustment rookie wide receivers have to make is understanding the difference of what's considered "open" in the NFL versus college.
"You can have a step, you can have inches on a guy and the quarterback’s seeing you as open, and we’ve got to be ready to expect the ball," Prince said. "That’s the one thing with Nico (Collins), we loved his size and his catch radius and understanding that he had the opportunity to make a lot of contested catches and we felt like we needed to add a player like that to the room."