The Senior Bowl is the kickoff of draft season in the NFL, and the Houston Texans used it to their advantage in the evaluation of the 2019 cornerback class.
According to general manager Brian Gaine, the Senior Bowl gave the Texans an opportunity to spend individual time with Johnson and get familiar with his personality and how he practices.
“The Senior Bowl or all the All-Star games, they allow you a lot of time to spend individually with the players in terms of the interview process,” Gaine told reporters Friday at the conclusion of day two of the 2019 NFL draft. “You get to go out and watch their practice habits, you get to find out a little bit more about them from the intangible profile, spend time with them, a lot of discovering their personality.”
Johnson is a 6-3, 206-pound cornerback that should help the Texans defend bigger receivers. If nothing else, his youth allows him to grow into becoming an eventual successor to current starting cornerback Johnathan Joseph, who turned 35 years old on April 16.
“When you go to the bowl games, you get all those opportunities to spend almost unlimited time with these players, not just from the playing part on the field, but also from the time you spend with them from an interview setting,” Gaine said. “It’s an enjoyable part of the process because you’ve done all the fall work and once you arrive to that you finally can start to maybe get to know the player on a more personal level.”
Although the Texans enjoy the bowl game process, it is just one part of the whole mechanism in evaluating draft picks, which starts in June, according to Gaine.
Said Gaine: “Our process starts in June and it ends here during this draft weekend period.”
Now that the Texans have addressed cornerback, they can use this upcoming June to begin the evaluation of other needs that will come up at the end of the 2019 season.
