Did the Texans miss Laremy Tunsil?
The 2025 offseason began with a surprise – the Texans trading Laremy Tunsil and a fourth-round pick for a second-round pick, a third-round pick, a fourth-round pick, and a seventh-round pick over the next two years. Laremy Tunsil has been, if not an All-Pro in a league with Trent Williams, one of the three or four best left tackles in the league for the majority of his career. He also was part of an offensive line that had just allowed C.J. Stroud to get sacked 52 times in 584 dropbacks. In 2025 Stroud was sacked 23 times in 423 dropbacks (through 17 weeks), his lowest rate in a single season. Ergo, the trade was justified and the Texans win. Good piece, see you next week.
OK, OK, but this is the interesting part of it to me: I think this next month is when we actually learn the answer. Because while Laremy Tunsil was never going to make an entire offensive line play cohesively or turn it into a good unit all by himself, his actual purpose is to shut down star edge players. Josh Hines-Allen got Stroud in hell a few times in Week 3 through Aireontae Ersery in a game the Texans narrowly lost that is (as of typing) keeping them from leading the division. You can't win a game with one-on-one pass protection against a star, but you can lose it. And the Texans are going to play (at least one) high-stress playoff game where one-on-one pass protection can lose it.
Sacks allowed aren't the only element of this that matters – pressures matter too. Stroud's pressure rate has fallen from 38.6 percent in 2024 to 32.6 percent in 2025. The Texans have been somewhat successful (you still see it show up at times, like against the Chiefs, Seahawks, and Chargers) in revamping the system and communicating better against stunts. Offensive line coach Cole Popovich and offensive coordinator Nick Caley deserve some credit for that. That alone has not turned the Texans into a better offense for a few reasons, but it has made them more consistent. At least until they hit the red zone, anyway.
What I would say after 17 games is: Nick Caserio won the initial gambit. National media treated moving Tunsil like it was a death sentence to Houston's ability to be a contender in 2025. You moved on from the best player on your offensive line and the offensive line was already not good!, after all. As I said, I think there are still ways to lose in the sense that Ersery (or Blake Fisher if Ersery can't play) could be the reason the Texans lose a playoff game.
But on the macro, season-level view, it's hard to see losing Tunsil as something catastrophic for the same reason that trading for Tunsil in the first place was such a massive overpay: One tackle is not an entire offensive line or pass-protection scheme. I'd certainly rather have Tunsil than Ersery in the playoffs – even if Tunsil has false-started the bed several times in the playoffs – and would say that the Texans' story would probably be going even better if they had Tunsil. But the gamble here was that an aging Tunsil was not a clear building block in the way that Will Anderson, Stroud, Nico Collins, Derek Stingley Jr., Jalen Pitre, etc. were. And the Jenga tower, it turns out, did not come tumbling down without Tunsil. Caserio was right. Tunsil, in the grand scheme of the Houston Texans, was a luxury piece.
The fact that the Texans managed to entice the Commanders to make the mistake Texans did in 2024 (speed up the entire team-building process with a big win-now move) and are now coming away from the wreckage with what could be a top-40 pick in the second round doesn't hurt, either. None of that is Tunsil's fault. If you believe Pro Football Focus' numbers, he had the best season of his career. (And it goes without saying that he was much, much better than Ersery in these metrics.) Jayden Daniels got hurt anyway.
What I come away from this trade (and the past two years) thinking – outside of validation that offensive production is primarily a coaching staff issue – is that there are very few players in the NFL that are actually worth destroying the talent acquisition cycle for. No team is going to hit every draft pick they make, but that continual churn and the ability to fill the roster with cost-controlled talent in a league where attrition is the norm is usually more important than trading for a new seventh-best player. In-prime superstar at a position that impacts every offensive or defensive snap? Great. No issues with the Packers trading for Micah Parsons even after the ACL tear. Giving up a Day 3 pick? That's fine! Even if the Deebo Samuel trade didn't work out, it didn't cost the Commanders much.
But 31-year-old Stefon Diggs? 31-year-old Laremy Tunsil? For real and sustained draft capital? You're usually going to win the bet on developing better talent, and it might be ready quicker than you'd think.
