Seth Payne, Co-host of Payne and Pendergast on SportsRadio 610 in Houston

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Minimum monthly payment, down payment, tax and delivery may be required. See store for details. And away we go. Our number two of our radio program. It is the Zach Gelb Show, coast to coast on CBS Sports Radio. Let's welcome in former NFL defensive lineman. Now you can listen to him for a while on Sports Radio 610 in Houston along with our friend Sean Pendergast. And that of course is Seth Payne, kind enough to join us once again on the show. Seth, appreciate it as always. How you been my man?

I'm good. It's been kind of crazy around here. The Texans free agency period started very, very, very slow. There was one signing while all the big names were going off the board.

Lonnie Johnston came back to the Texans and nobody knew what to make of it. And then all of a sudden day two, it was just an absolute flurry. So it's been exciting. It's been exciting. A little bit weird, but also exciting. Yeah. So it's always funny whenever we bring you on, there was a two or three year stretch where every time we brought you on, it was just so negative.

It was so ugly. It was so nasty with the Texans. And then that one draft last year changed the entire perception of the franchise, getting CJ Stroud, getting Will Anderson Jr. And the Texans had a marvelous season this past year. And now there's like actually legitimate buzz and respect for what the Texans have been able to do.

Yeah. And I think that, you know, it's always hard to say how much that's going to matter when it comes to free agency, because for the most part, the big name guys go where the money is. The first hint that we saw that things might be a lot different now in terms of recruiting players is that Daniel Hunter is from the Houston area. He's from Katy, Texas, went to high school here and was home during the Texans playoff game versus the Browns. And then he talked about it in the press conference today.

He kind of felt the energy and excitement. There's a guy that grew up in Houston and knows and has heard about D'Amico Ryan's and obviously CJ Stroud. I think that the Texans were perhaps able to get him on a deal that maybe he wouldn't have done for somebody else. It's a two year deal. I mean, it's a boatload of guaranteed money.

48 million of the 49 million is guaranteed. However, I do feel like that that glow between D'Amico Ryan, CJ Stroud and everything else probably had a little something to do with with Daniel Hunter being available. It's weird to say it because he's been in the league since 2015 and he has 87 and a half career sacks. But for some reason, the name Daniel Hunter just doesn't resonate nationally when we know how great of a player he is. It feels like this is the most underrated signing so far of the offseason period, even though like anyone that actually watches football knows the impact of a Daniel Hunter.

Right. And, you know, the Vikings took on Jonathan Grinnard and I like Jonathan Grinnard. Grinnard came from the Texans up there and almost ended up being like a swap of pass rushers. Jonathan Grinnard has youth on his side and I think he's got a whole lot of upside. But if you look at Daniel Hunter and where he is now and what he's done, you know, each of his last four seasons went healthy. He's been pretty much like twice as effective as Jonathan Grinnard in terms of QB pressures, sacks, everything else. He's just he's that established and he looks like he's still very much in his prime. That's where the two year contract was really intriguing to me because I think Casario, you know, you talk about taking advantage of the of that window where you have your rookie quarterback on his rookie contract, your quarterback on his rookie contract. The Texans have spent at least as of this morning about the seventh most money in the NFL, but they're right up in the top two or three when it comes to money paid in the first couple years. So they're just they've got these two and three year contracts. They're paying a lot of money up front and without hopefully having the risk on the backside of some of these guys that are in their 30s, you're taking advantage of this window where CJ Stroud is so cheap. We know the player Daniel Hunter is we also know what will Anderson can be and he started to show that towards the end of the season, bringing in a Daniel Hunter does what for the impact with Will Anderson? I think, you know, in terms of maturity or anything else like that, like Will Anderson is there.

He doesn't need like some older guy to put his arm around him. Right? Yeah.

Yeah. Like, not to say. So there is a lot for Will Anderson to learn. But he's certainly not one of these guys that needs to grow up a little or something like Daniel Hunter's probably he might get annoyed with Will Anderson and how much like Will Anderson asks questions of him and everything like Will Anderson is just he's a sponge.

He just wants to take it all in. And the one big thing that will figure it out about midway through the season was how to finish on sacks because he was he was winning pass rushes. You know, he was getting double teamed a lot. He was getting pressures, but he wasn't getting the quarterback on the ground.

And he really started to figure out exactly how to finish. If you look at Daniel Hunter, like Daniel Hunter is really the opposite in a lot of ways of a guy that was here, Genevieve and Clowney, because Clowney would win a lot of pass rushes. But he just he has a hard time in those last two steps getting the quarterback on the ground. He's just just kind of stiff when he gets there.

Daniel Hunter is the opposite. Like he's Gumby when he gets to the quarterback. And you know, he can like be blocking the pass lane with his right hand while like wrapping the quarterback with his left hand. And that's the kind of thing that Will Anderson really needs to focus on because he's such an excitable guy. Like he's so hyper in a good way. But man, when you get excited about sack on the quarterback, it's sometimes the worst thing in the world because you get there and like I missed a sack on Brett Favre once that it still haunts me to this to this very day because I got so excited. And I just tried to gun at him as hard as I could and he took a little sidestep and had like a 30 yard completion.

Like Will's had a couple like that. And I think being around Daniel Hunter is going to help him a lot. Talking to Seth Payne right now, when we get to CJ Stroud, I think already he's the fifth best quarterback in football. I look at the Texans going into the season as a Super Bowl contender.

How far are you willing to go with CJ and this group heading into this season? This, this really all hinges on the running game to me. And yeah, I know in the modern NFL, it shouldn't matter that much, except that in this offense, they've been so effective with the play action and and you know, you don't have to run the ball effectively to set up the play action. You know, like people linebackers are still bite as long as you're committed to the run. And that's what the Texans did last year.

They're committed to the run. And because of that, they got people to bite on the play action. But the problem was that too many times they were getting stuffed on first and 10 and second 10.

So yeah, the play action was working, except they were having to they're having to cover way too much ground to make up for the bad rushing attack. Joe Mixon hopefully should make a difference. You know, Devin Singletary did a great job in the second half of last season. But it was also the first season in which Devin Singletary had ever had more than 200 carries. And you know, I don't I don't think you can run Devin Singletary like that for an entire season, whereas Joe Mixon is built for that, you know, when he's been healthy, he's getting 200 plus carries in a season. And, and I think also as D'Amico starts to spread the ball maybe to the running backs more mixing just I think any more reliable three down back then Singletary was but Singletary did do a great job for us.

Thanks for talking to Seth Payne. So CJ shroud, it's, it's weird for a talk show host to usually say that someone had a flawless season, because we always usually find like a finger to that people could really chew on and criticize, but he was just so sensational. Using your defensive brain here. Is there anything you see that maybe teams will catch up on with CJ shroud that they could, I don't want to say expose him, but maybe slow him down or have a sophomore slump and you're You know, it's a it's a really good question because you follow the rookie quarterbacks are young quarterbacks through all of that, and you kind of each step along the way figure out okay, what are what are teams throwing Adam and when is he going to overcome this. Deshaun Watson was he was here the safety and corner blitzes were an issue for the first couple years, some of the disguise blitzes were an issue and CJ saw that really around, like the Jaguars game or maybe like week three or four of the season this year. He saw defenses start to try to really bait him as a rookie and show some of the disguise looks.

They realized that they couldn't just be vanilla versus them, and any kind of just figured it out over the course of a few games, you know, early on. Early on, he was not throwing any interceptions whatsoever. And really, he had a long stretch of not taking sacks either. And it got to the point almost where he was so good at being careful and getting rid of the ball quickly, that he self adjusted and realized he had to be a little bit riskier sometimes, you know, he had to take chances with the football, he had to hold on to the ball a little bit longer, he started taking a few more sacks.

But all of that's been really good. The ugliest performance of the season, you know, after he came back from his injury was the Baltimore Ravens game. And going back and watching that game, it really was all about interior pressure from the defensive line from the Ravens, and there wasn't really a lot he could do standing in the pocket.

So I think for him, a lot of the rudimentary stuff, or at least the base level stuff he's figured out, I think the next step for him is now that he's established himself, becoming that true taskmaster as a quarterback, you know, whether it's whether it's Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, I don't know if you're Tyree kill telling the story about Pat Mahomes cussing out the whole team a few years ago. I think that's like, I hate to I hate to say that, like, I hate to say that a quarterback has to cuss out his team ever because I don't think you have to it's part of it, though. But yeah, yeah. There's always a moment where you guys got to say, guys, let's get our bleep together.

Let's go. Right, right, right. No matter how you go about it, I think he was very, very careful about being deferential to veteran players last year. And you know, he never lacked for confidence or anything.

But he also knew that he had to earn people's respect. Now he knows he's the man. Right? That's his franchise now. It's him on the offense side of the ball. Will Andrew some defensive side of the ball? Right?

Yeah. And I think that when it comes to like, taking real, like, not just ownership, I think he takes ownership of it already. But yeah, understanding that, you know, Tom Brady, honestly, I think one of the best things Tom Brady did as a quarterback, because I've watched him, I got to watch him in practice a few times.

He might have been the best receivers coach in the NFL. And, you know, demanding so much attention to detail from those guys. And knowing that they're going to adjust to passes and coverages and everything else the way he wants them to. I mean, that was half of the secret with him.

The other stuff's the pre snap recognition. So like in, I think the biggest obstacle that CJ's overcome that some rookie bat rookie quarterback stone is like, he knows that there's things that he doesn't know. And he's wide open to learning them. And and that's the that's the fun part about watching him.

He just he, there's stuff placed in front of him and he figures it out. I don't know if we'll love this as we're talking to Seth Payne is going to be a successful starting quarterback. But I like what Tennessee has done the last two offseasons getting DeAndre Hopkins, even if you're overpaying for Calvin Ridley, you bring in Tony Pollard. They're putting enough around him to get a fair evaluation. How did you process the deal yesterday, Calvin Ridley 92 million over four years 50 million guaranteed wind it up in Tennessee. I feel like you know, that's kind of a that's kind of a proven strategy at this point, isn't it?

At the very least, if you want to find out if a guy is viable, then give him give him a really good weapon. Now Calvin Ridley is not AJ Brown. Ironically enough, he could have been thrown to AJ Brown. He's not Tyree kill. Rabel still cursing out john Robinson over that one.

She's got it. You've got to have you've got to have some semblance of talent to throw to to really figure out what you have in a guy. I think I'll say about watching Will Levis is the kids like he might be too gutsy for his own good man. Like he's, he took some hits playing the Texans that I got to hand it to him for getting up and keeping going. He got the first time they played this year. I think he got sacked seven times.

So like he's tough. And I think he shows a lot of courage standing in and making some of the throws he does. For him, a lot of it is going to be getting on the same page with Calvin Ridley. And I'm fascinated to watch that because in Jacksonville, you know, you'd hear from different people that either either Trevor Lawrence wasn't picking up things and he was a first three quarterback or that part of the problem was that Calvin Ridley and some of the other receivers weren't where they were supposed to be and they weren't on the same page. So I think you can you can almost start to figure out all right, was it was it a Trevor Lawrence problem or was it a Calvin Ridley problem? And not that he was awful in Jacksonville or anything, but he'll he'll be working with another young quarterback now and see if he can be more of a bomb for him than he was for Trevor Lawrence. Do you think the concerns last year with Jacksonville them regressing will carry over into this year? Do you see them turning around to get it back to where they were in the first year of Doug Harrison being their head coach?

The thing that I'm trying to figure out, there's two things. One is, all right, I don't I don't know if Gabe Davis is the guy that's the guy I think he would have been a nice compliment to Calvin Ridley. So we'll see exactly how Gabe Davis is incorporated into it. And then the other side of it with Trevor Lawrence was, I mean, he was just banged up like the entire season, even when when the Jaguars caught him the second time around, he he looked like he was healthy for the first time he was moving around a lot more and it was a much more effective Trevor Lawrence. And then he had like two more big injuries after that. So I think with some of the setback there, it might be as simple as Trevor Lawrence was banged up. And you know, obviously quarterbacks can't be using that as an excuse, always and forever.

But it might have been a valid excuse last year. If you had the first pick tomorrow in the draft, let's just say and the two options were CJ Stroud or Trevor Lawrence, which one would you take? Oh, well, CJ Stroud.

I'm biased, but that's also kind of easy right now. I the thing I wonder about with Trevor Lawrence is, you know, he doesn't it everything looks like a little bit like methodical, almost too methodical sometimes because he's a long limbed guy. And I think sometimes for somebody like that, where you can't quite just snap it at will, that you got to really be nails with everything else, because he's going to have to be predetermined a little bit and make his decisions that much faster. So sometimes with somebody like that the learning curve is also going to be a little bit longer. It's not that he's not smart or anything. But he also like he came out of a Clemson offense that's incredibly simplistic compared to like an Ohio State offense. So what CJ Stroud or Bryce Young or a lot of these other guys have done in college, it's just way more advanced than what what you saw with Trevor Lawrence and then Trevor Lawrence, basically, you know, didn't get any advancement or any real tutelage in his rookie year either. So he's I feel like he's a little bit behind the curve for reasons that aren't necessarily his own fault.

But I've just also, I've seen too much of the really good Trevor Lawrence to think that somehow he's, there's there's not that potential in him to be an upper echelon guy. Last thing I'll ask you. I kind of unintentionally went viral yesterday. Oh, did you? Yeah, it regards the Texans too. Oh, that's right. No, I know this.

Yeah, you don't tell me. So I was sitting here and I'm like, it's weird that Justin Jefferson doesn't have the contract. It's either because they're not seeing eye to eye with the contract and what he's worth or he's waiting to see what the quarterback is. And I said, I would set a deadline if I'm Justin Jefferson. And if you don't get the deal done, then I would request a trade to the Houston Texans.

I didn't think it was polarizing. But from a lot of Texans fans, it's been split, where some say, Yeah, you got to do it. Others say, Oh, no, you can't give up all those draft capital, then give them a contract like that. I was surprised on the back end of that from Texans fans. That, um, okay.

I mean, the idea is so enticing to be just like super loaded. When you have, you've got both a, you'd have a tank Dell, you'd have Nico Collins, and then Oh, yeah, Justin, you guys went from the house to the penthouse. Now, like, I'm saying Justin Jefferson should go to the Texans, it shows you how good of a spot they're in moving forward. I think, okay. So for one, you change as a team, you'd end up being like a three wide receiver team all the time, some of the rushing issues and concerns wouldn't be as much of a concern as they were this year, because you could just run from spread all the time.

So I'm intrigued by that. I do think that one thing about last season is that I've really had to fight from getting ahead of myself. And thinking like the same the same mistake that I think a lot of us made with the Jaguars last year. I was like, Whoa, whoa, look at the Jaguars made this push at the end of the season, make the playoffs Super Bowl contender. Yeah, just extrapolate it right up into Super Bowl contender and then they ended up taking a step back. Like the Texans still have holes at spots and they still have to fix this running game. And I just there's too many like this is not a situation yet where I think you can just trade for a cherry on top to really push you through to to becoming a Super Bowl contender.

I think it's very much still a work in progress and they've got a tougher schedule this year. So and then the other part is, you know, obviously, Justin Jefferson doesn't have total control and who he gets traded to but with a guy like that usually teams don't want to trade for him unless he wants to come here. I don't know if Justin Jefferson, even though he might get the huge contract and everything.

Does any receiver really want to go to a place where there's already an established one and two and potentially take away targets from you? Because like, yeah, he had Adam Phelan opposite of him, but it wasn't Adam Phelan in his prime like what KJ Osborne was like the third option receiver a couple years ago when he was so when he was so prolific, so I don't I just wonder if how higher people on Nico Collins because I've always been a fan of Nico Collins took a big step this year. But if you get Justin Jefferson clearly Jefferson so the one and Nico Collins is the two and it's a strike to Yeah, and Nico Collins also, you know, he'd be coming up on the last year of his contract too. So if you got Justin Jefferson up, he's probably into it. Yeah, Justin Jefferson can stick around college to go get paid elsewhere.

Right? I mean, there's just so few people that are Oh, no, I can't I can't look look, their big splurge was Will Anderson, the Will Anderson trade was like like a gutsy ballsy, like they spent way too much for willing and it worked. And it worked out.

Yeah, like I take that take your money, just take your $500,000 on who wants to be a millionaire and call it a day like you just that. That's good enough. We don't need to double down on like another extreme risk.

Well, also, because you got to remember to the Texans had a surplus of draft fix because of the Deshaun Watson trade, where now we're sitting with like, like, like normal people with a normal amount of draft fix. So I got the price is too steep, conceivably, for me. Wow.

How about that? He is Seth Payne. You listen to mornings on sports radio 610 in Houston, along with Sean Pendergast. Seth, appreciate the time as always. Yeah, I just turned my nose up to Justin Jefferson. I gotta go think about this. I'm gonna go drink. Good. Go take a bath.

All right. Clean yourself off after that ridiculous take. There is Seth Payne joining us on CBS Sports Radio.

Always love when he joins us. It's amazing how many people in H town have been kind of pushing back at my take. I'm trying to give you Justin Jefferson. I don't think they're even that they're in a good position. I don't think you're in a position of your Texans fan to say no to that. It's almost like Texans fans are afraid to really be going all in.

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