NFL Draft: Grading the Houston Texans five picks for 2020
Round 4: Pick #126: Charlie Heck (OT)
There has been a tremendous amount of investment on the offensive line because of the poor level of play that we’ve seen over the past few seasons. The team has signed Laremy Tunsil to a three-year, $66 million extension and were able to draft Tytus Howard and Max Scharping to which they’ve helped out a bunch. The often-reliable veteran Zach Fulton still remains an excellent cog while Nick Martin continues to improve at his craft.
We saw improvement in 2019 but they’re still not where they need to be as a unit. Deshaun Watson was still sacked 44 times last season and that number needs to be cut in half to at least gain some respectability from this group of five men.
So with that being said, the Houston Texans didn’t necessarily NEED to draft another lineman but they did and they’ve got a hell of a talent in North Carolina’s Charlie Heck. Not only that but they made a deal with the Los Angeles Rams to trade up to get him so obviously they were impressed with Heck early-in.
This guy is huge, he’s 6-foot-8 at 311 pounds and is a bit top-heavy but I’m sure they strength and conditioning coaches will do what they can to balance that out to make him an even better blocker. Heck has already said that he wants to get up to 320 pounds so it goes to show his commitment to having success on this team.
He can run the 40-yard dash in 5.16 seconds, which is overly-impressive for an offensive lineman, we now know that he can get to his assignments quickly and succinctly. He’s quite the agile football player and his run-block capabilities are one of his stronger suits, something this unit has lacked over the years.
This man even broke his hand against Appalachian State last season, missed minimal time, played through pain and still started 12 games while allowing just one-third of a sack through his entire 2019 campaign, which is absolutely remarkable.
He’s going to be the Houston Texans’ newest iron man and he’ll be a fixture on the line for quite some time. Whether they’re pegging him to be the starting right tackle or a rotational piece/spot-starter behind Howard, there’s no question that he will be playing tackle.
He did make the All-ACC second team and won the Offensive Lineman of the Week award for his performance against South Carolina back Aug. 31.
By the way, his father, Andy, is the offensive line coach for the defending champ Kansas City Chiefs and spent 12 seasons in the NFL as a lineman himself. So he’ll be getting coaching from O’Brien and Mike Devlin but from his Dad as well. That’s going to have him even more prepared than ever.
What’s there not to like about this guy? He’s going to be a fixture of this line for years to come.