With Deshaun Watson facing lawsuits from 22 women, there’s a decent chance that Tyrod Taylor will begin the 2021 season as the Texans starting quarterback.
When Taylor signed with Houston in March, it was widely viewed as a contingency plan for if Houston ended up trading Watson. On Friday, General Manager Nick Caserio said the Texans brought in Taylor in part because there was a clear need for numbers at QB on the roster.
“In his particular case, he has experience with coaches on our staff, or has some experience in this type of offense or system,” Caserio said during his press conference. “So regardless, that was a position where quite frankly we didn’t have very many numbers. A.J. [McCarron] was a free agent. Josh [McCown] retired. So when you have one player at any one position on the team, you need more than one person. So I think that’s kind of how we approached it and just went through our process and evaluated it accordingly.
“I’d say generally speaking when you look at the whole roster construction in the offseason program, what we try to do just at all positions with the entire team is try to identify players we thought we liked that may have had some experience with our staff that were looking for the opportunity to compete, to be in a good situation, that wanted to be in Houston. So he certainly fell into that category, like a lot of other players.”
Taylor played under Texans passing game coordinator/quarterbacks coach Pep Hamilton in 2020, when Hamilton was the Chargers’ QBs coach. Taylor has started 47 games since entering the league as a sixth-round pick in 2011, and won the first game of the season for L.A. last year.