Houston Texans Draft Trade Rumors: What To Do With D.J. Swearinger?

It’s Draft Day!

Not only that but it’s a day that Houston Texans’ fans have been waiting for quite some time.

Since the end of the season, fans somehow need their football fix and the draft is certainly a way for fans to whet their appetite.

There will be lots of movers and shakers on this date as teams will do whatever takes to positions themselves to snag some of college football’s greatest talents.

Some of these guys will be able to make an immediate impact and some may not but provide to help with the teams ultimate philosophy — to win games.

The Texans certainly hope to be the ones amongst on getting best talent available based off of who they draft.

But there has been an interesting development as of late.

This past Tuesday, Ian Rapoport of NFL.com reported that safety D.J. Swearinger has officially been put on the trading block:

Rapoport’s tweet began spread around like a wildfire with fans alike asking questions about the validity of this report. It sparred a interesting sequence of reactions of reports.

The Houston Chronicle’s John McClain could not confirm if this was true or not:

Not too long after the report, Texans’ general manager Rick Smith addressed those particular rumors at a press conference but didn’t confirm or deny.

Here’s what he said:

"“I understand there’s a report out there. But here’s the deal,” Smith said Tuesday at NRG Stadium. “First of all, we make it a practice not to discuss negotiations publicly, whether that’s with an agent or a player or with another team, with respect to trade opportunities. Those conversations are happening this time of year and there’s a lot of information and misinformation out there.”"

That’s an extremely vague statement for someone that had every opportunity to say that there’s no way that the team is shopping him.

I personally feel that there’s validity to the rumor because Swearinger has been hit or miss over the past two seasons as a defensive back.

Why else would this news be leaked just two days before the draft?

I do like his in-your-face, giving-it-his-all style but one of his biggest weaknesses is that he tends to go for the “big” play rather than just getting job done on his end.

Having a mindset like that can really hurt a team especially if it does result in the ball being turned over.

But since being taken with the 57th pick in the 2013 NFL Draft, his development has progressed but to not the level that I thought he’d be at by now.

Smith even confirmed that he’s not an every down-type defensive back but more off a specialist in different packages that Romeo Crennel would run:

"“What I will tell you about D.J. is he’s a really good football player for us,” Smith said. “He did a nice job last year in that role, in our third-down packages, and was really productive for us. We expect that he will do that again. I think that D.J.’s abilities are even such that he can play even more in the back end on some of the first- and second-down stuff. He really found himself a niche last year in some of our sub packages.”"

He’s still being vague while giving praise to his performance thus far.  Although he said that “we expect that he will do it again,” he didn’t necessarily say that he’d be doing it in a Texans’ uniform.

So here’s the deal — if the Texans can find a good deal for him, especially one that can help them move up in the draft, they’ll pull the trigger.

But if they do decide to do that, it reflects quite poorly on the performance of Smith’s  job performance who just drafted Swearinger two seasons ago.

Next: Will Swearinger's Character Concerns Factor Into The Texans' Decision?