(SportsRadio 610) -- Texans head coach and general manager Bill O'Brien addressed his highly-criticized offseason moves in a nearly hour-long conversation with media members Thursday morning.
Before fielding any questions, O'Brien repeated what he's said about trading DeAndre Hopkins being in the best interest of the team.
O'Brien was then probed to explain this line of thinking, since the All-Pro Hopkins was traded for running back David Johnson and the 40th overall pick in this year's draft.
Johnson has not been an elite player since 2016. And the belief among fans and media is that trading a player of Hopkins' caliber, at age 27, should at least yield at first round draft pick.
O'Brien explained the uniqueness of trading Hopkins -- a player with three years, $40 million left on his current deal -- and the limited potential trade partners in that scenario.
Here's what O'Brien said when asked specifically about the value:
"Anytime you make a trade, each trade is unique unto itself. So when you're trading a player like DeAndre Hopkins, who has three years left on his deal and you're trying to find a trade partner, you're not talking to 31 other teams. So you're finding a trade partner No. 1 that's going to be able to pay DeAndre Hopkins. So that was a big part of it. Once we found that team that could afford DeAndre Hopkins in the future, now we then begin to negotiate with what the value of the trade was. So we feel very, very good about being able to get the 40th pick, being able to get David Johnson. We feel really good about, when we look at the analytics of it, based on the production that was leaving our team and the production that we were bringing in, and what we were able to do. Again it is very incomplete and we have several roster moves to go, including the draft.
"The best thing I can tell the fans is to please -- I know the media's job is to evaluate right away and I get that -- but I think we have to let it all play out. Let it play out. Let the whole thing play out, whether it's that trade or anything else we've done. I would say let's review a year from now, two years from, three years from now. Let it all play out."
The other big offseason trade was for Brandin Cooks from the Los Angeles Rams. From O'Brien's back patio in Houston, he and Jack Easterby traded the 57th overall pick in this year's draft to get Cooks, who is expected to be one of Deshaun Watson's primary targets in 2020.
The Texans also signed Randall Cobb to bolster their receiver group and address a need at the slot position.
O'Brien is excited about all three of these additions -- Johnson, Cooks and Cobb -- because of their reputations as professionals and locker room guys.
Fans and media might believe Johnson, at $13 million, and Cobb, at $9 million are overpaid. That can be frustrating if the issue with Hopkins, a far better player than both of them, was about money.
O'Brien wants fans to wait and see. Let it all play out.
See if the offense is just as productive and if the veteran leadership provide a tangible added benefit.
O'Brien said it was going to be difficult going forward to pay an elite quarterback (Watson), an elite defensive end (J.J. Watt), an elite left tackle (Laremy Tunsil) and other players, along with giving Hopkins a raise.
"We felt like after layers of research, the best decision for our team was to move him to Arizona and that's what we decided to do," O'Brien said. "Again, each deal that comes like that is very unique. He's not the first player to ask for a raise and he won't be the last. That's not anything that has to do with why we moved him. We moved him because we felt like that was the best deal for our team relative to this year, next year, three years down the road."
