NFL First-Round Recap: Houston Texans

As we get ready for the Patriots-Giants Super Bowl, FanHouse is looking back at each team's 2007 first-round pick. Here's a look at the 10th pick in the draft, defensive tackle Amobi Okoye.

Who They Took: Amobi Okoye, DT, Louisville

Who Else They Were Rumored to Consider: CB Derrelle Revis, Trade down for OT Joe Staley, Trade down in general. Other rumored players were off the board by pick #10.

What We Said At The Time: "[W]ith the Texans picking a defensive lineman in the first round for the 4th year in a row, you would hope that this fat salary cap money starts to translate into a pass rush....After the 9th pick, Mario Williams started texting the defensive line coach "Okoye Okoye Okoye" so apparently at least he appreciates having a potential playmaker next to him on the line instead of the street free agents that had to fill-in at defensive tackle for most of last season."

What Okoye Did: At the beginning of the season, I wondered whether this young, still developing player would be physical enough against the run and would be overwhelmed as a young guy playing with a number of other inexperienced players on the line.

Okoye started the year strong, winning Defensive Rookie of the Month in September, with 10 tackles, 4 sacks, 4 quarterback pressures and a forced fumble. Over the course of the season, however, Okoye admitted that he was hitting the rookie wall and his production leveled out.

If you look on the Texans roster, they have a lot of the same body types at DT. Okoye has been described as the "heaviest non-fat man in the world" but it would be nice to see a heavier body helping Okoye out some with the run.

GM Rick Smith hasn't targeted any of these heavier players, and it is hard to say if defensive coordinator Richard Smith even wants a heavier-type defensive tackle because we have little sense of what defense he is trying to run. The Texans' training camp is held in Houston summers, and sometimes you wonder if the players that make it through camp are the ones that acclimate to the heat better versus the ones that can hold up over the course of a long NFL season. But I digress.

Looking Into the Future: In sum, Okoye showed enough this last season that even without much of a secondary behind him and often the defense playing from behind that he has the potential to be a special player. Rookie defensive tackles often struggle, and few make a splash their first year. Finishing at year with 5.5 sacks for a position on the field where sacks are hard to come by is an accomplishment.

To put his season in context, his regular season sacks tied with Tampa Bay's Gaines Adams. Darnell Dockett led the league in sacks for defensive tackles with 9. Chicago's Tommie Harris, an athletic player that Okoye has been compared to, finished second in the league with 8 sacks, his highest career sack number. Harris, in his fourth year in the league, had never had more than 5 sacks previously.

Personally, I think he was better than expected, given the struggles in the Texans secondary and is one of the bright spots for this defense. The coaches praised his ability to run stop early in the season, but he appeared to struggle with the rookie wall and nagging injuries as the season progressed.

Would They Do It All Over? Probably. The Texans had Okoye as their highest rated defensive player on the draft board. Okoye is the type of high motor, high character player that the Texans want to build their defense around. That being said, Kubiak has mentioned recently the imbalance of the Texans defensive line. Former first round pick Travis Johnson was originally acquired to be that athletic explosive DT (not a space eater) that is the same role that Okoye has now. The Texans don't have a typical two gap DT. And the defensive end position on the other side of Mario Williams is filled by an injured guy not known for his pass rush and a try hard older guy. Adding Okoye didn't really help with that line imbalance.

Linebacker Patrick Willis was rarely mentioned for the Texans because they already had DeMeco Ryans, but I'm guessing that they would have been good together..

Grade: B+. He played significant time in all 16 games and showed some tremendous potential in a position on the field where it is difficult for rookies to shine. Is Okoye the phenomenal guy that the Texans saw the first half of the season, or the invisible guy who hit the rookie wall for the second half of the season? The Texans want to see more consistency from him game to game, down to down.