The Cardinals couldn’t wait to tell the world how excited they were to acquire DeAndre Hopkins.
The Texans, not so much.
The Texans just sent out a four-paragraph, 90-word — and 26 of those words were proper names and another 13 were abbreviations for the positions those proper names played — press release that summed up their transactions of the recent days, with no quotes and no fanfare.
Summing up a trade that involved them taking on a bad contract in exchange for one of the best receivers in the game, the Texans put it like this.
“The Houston Texans agreed to acquire the following player via a trade with the Arizona Cardinals: David Johnson, RB.
“The Houston Texans agreed to trade the following player to the Arizona Cardinals: DeAndre Hopkins, WR.”
Yeah, that’s one way to put it. Another way to say it would have been “We got a much worse deal for a star receiver than the Vikings did, and we’d prefer if you looked the other way and forgot about it now.”
The contrast between their reaction and the Cardinals’ was stark, as Arizona sent out a story full of excited quotes from coach Kliff Kingsbury, wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald, and owner Michael Bidwill.
Then again, the Cardinals have reasons to be happy.
The Texans also announced the addition of four unrestricted free agents (wide receiver Randall Cobb, safety Eric Murray, tackle Brent Qvale, and safety Jaylen Watkins), and the seven players they re-signed (linebacker Tyrell Adams, cornerback Phillip Gaines, cornerback Vernon Hargreaves III, tackle Roderick Johnson, quarterback AJ McCarron, cornerback Bradley Roby, and long snapper Jon Weeks), giving those deals the same literary weight as the trade.