San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Caserio takes advantage of combine to help rebuild
INDIANAPOLIS — The situation was kind of funny, Texans general manager Nick Caserio said.
Of all the 20 years he spent working for the Patriots, of all the NFL combines he spent jotting down a player’s measurements and speed and notes from interview sessions, of all the nights he spent in a city spilling with reporters and coaches and agents who fill bars with the sound of info and gossip deep into the chilly dawn, Caserio never before had addressed the media during a combine session.
There was no combine in 2021. Caserio then was only months into his first job as a general manager. He, like other NFL executives, had to rely on pro days and Zoom interview sessions while the league’s most centralized predraft event was canceled amid health concerns with the coronavirus pandemic.
Considering the state of the Texans’ roster back then, the timing couldn’t have been worse. Deshaun Watson, the team’s franchise quarterback, had demanded a trade and allegations of sexual assault were beginning to emerge. By the summer, Caserio had overhauled the roster, filled it mostly with cheap free agents on one-year deals and spent the team’s limited five draft picks — starting in the third round — on players who’d eventually become starters.
The franchise’s salary cap situation was a clogged closet. Caserio jettisoned 12 players via cut or trade, which ballooned Houston’s dead money budget restrictions to a league-most $35.4 million, according to Over the Cap. All of this while the Texans slogged through a 4-13 season in which both sides of the ball produced some of the lowest numbers in the franchise’s 20-year history and ended with the firing of coach David Culley after just one year.
“It’s hard to believe it’s been a year or so that I’ve been on the job,” Caserio said.
Take a quick glance around the podiums inside the Indiana Convention Center, and it’s hard to find other executives dealing with such dire circumstances.
Maybe Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, the first-year general manager whose Vikings replaced fired coach Mike Zimmer with Kevin O’Connell and must clear $15 million worth of players salary to reach the cap requirement.
“Teambuilding is a big puzzle, right?” said Adofo-Mensah, who previously was vice president of football operations with the Browns. “We’re trying to figure it out together, how to sustainably put together a championship team, and the salary cap is one of the challenges and obstacles that we face in that puzzle.”
Even the Patriots, a franchise that has been a frequent champion, aren’t as stable as they once were. A month removed from getting blasted 47-17 by the Bills in an AFC wild-card game, they are in danger of losing their decadeslong grip on the East Division, and coach Bill Belichick must replace key staffers Josh McDaniels and Dave Ziegler, who left to lead the Raiders as the franchise’s head coach and general manager, respectively.
How will Belichick handle that challenge? It was Titans coach Mike Vrabel, a former Patriots linebacker, who fielded that question.
“I have no idea,” Vrabel said flatly. His expression shifted upon understanding. “Did he have a media availability, or did he decline this year?”
Not this year, the reporter replied. Belichick hasn’t spoken at the NFL combine since 2014.
“Check him at the owner’s meetings,” Vrabel said. “I’m sure he’ll have his staff in place.”
Ziegler, formerly New England’s director of player personnel, is the most recent Patriots person to move on from that position. Caserio held hat role 13 years before joining Houston. Jason Licht, Tampa Bay’s general manager, held the same title with the Patriots for three seasons.
They’re all disciples of a New England player personnel department legacy who learned the franchise’s fundamentals for rolespecific scouting — Is this guy a starter? A special teams player? How can we use him? — and using a grading scale that assigned value to potential players, which helped the team weigh roster decisions against how they fit within the NFL’s salary cap.
Licht had to pull some accounting maneuvers to lessen the deadmoney hit of star quarterback Tom Brady’s retirement, which, according to the Athletic, will be $17 million spread out over the next two seasons. With backups Kyle Trask and Blaine Gabbert on the roster, the Buccaneers are in the market for a quarterback while they try to fit their other team needs with a small $2.7 million cap surplus, which ranks 21st in the NFL.
“Just assigning values,” Licht said. “Knowing when to move on from a player, knowing when it’s time for ‘fresh blood.’ But, at the same time, I don’t like to let really good players go if we can help it.”
Caserio will have to move some of the larger contracts on his roster if he wants to have the kind of flexibility that affords him the chance to retain the players he considers valuable to the franchise’s long-term success.
The legal timeline with Watson, who has not been charged with a crime, so far has dictated any potential trade; but if a deal is done before June 1, the Texans would clear a substantial $24 million in cap space.
More modest moves, such as cutting injury-plagued offensive tackle Marcus Cannon, 33, would clear about $5.2 million off the books. The Texans then could chase other free agents who could fill various depth needs and possibly afford to retain impending free agent safety Justin Reid.
But part of the whole combine process, part of why teams go to great expense and effort to build draft boards the size of a periodic table, is to identify and draft rookies who will be more cost-effective under their initial contracts.
Houston holds nine draft picks in the upcoming draft, including the No. 3 overall pick, and Caserio said they’ve been able to take advantage of a full college football season uninterrupted by the pandemic to better identify lesserknown prospects they could sign as undrafted free agents.
“I would say spending as much time on that group of players, knowing that group is just as important as knowing the top 50 players in the draft,” Caserio said. “Again, it really speaks to more of a comprehensive deep dive of knowing the overall board. There are however many players get drafted, 200, almost 300, and then there’s going to be another large group of players that are signed after the draft. You don’t want to kind of cast that group aside.”
The second year of Caserio’s rebuild in Houston should see the addition of more foundational pieces built on the demolition in Year 1. The promotion of former defensive coordinator Lovie Smith to head coach allows the franchise to retain its defensive scheme, which foreshadows the potential re-signing of Reid, defensive tackle Maliek Collins and perhaps linebackers Kamu Grugier-Hill and Christian Kirksey.
Chargers general manager Tom Telesco, Caserio’s college teammate at John Carroll University who was hired as GM in 2013, said his own first year as an executive was “a little bit of survival to kind of get everything the way you wanted it done, which you can’t always do in the first year.
“The second year, for me, things tend to slow down. Had the process more in place. Had the people in place.”
Caserio, who is already on his second head coach, is searching for the same.
“I think we’re excited about the opportunity to continue to build the team,” Caserio said. “A lot of change has taken place.”