Duane Brown, TE. Somebody earlier in the thread had this one pegged.

What of Owen Daniels?

That's what's great about having both ESPN and NFLN. Chances are they won't both F'up at the same time, and sure enough, ESPN held par and NFLN came through.

LT. This is going to work out fine. Brown's an athletic guy who should excel in pass protection. And, there should be an assload of acceptable defensive backs in the third.

He's a LT.

Yeah, he's an OT. When NFL.com first posted it, it said TE - but they've since corrected it.

PFW has Brown ranked the 95th on their draft board. The Sporting News ranks him as a third-round pick with the summary:

Sounds like another Seth Wand. Well, whatever Texan scouts OL at Virginia Tech must be happy - Frye last year and Brown this year.

I should be happy we at least picked a LT but this does smell like a reach.

And Cason goes right after him.

His NFL.com page:

http://www.nfl.com/draft/profiles/duane-brown?id=808

He's a converted tight end. Allowed 8-1/2 sacks as LT last year after two years at RT.

The kid will need to be Gibbsed up.

I know very little about brown, but everything i have read has said this is the guy gibbs wanted. he has the quickness to play the zone, and at least played at a solid program so he has been up against top talent. I am glad they went LT, i had thought they would go jenkins if he were still there, but as fast as the texans made the pick it seems like they had brown targeted the whole time. with the run on LTs i dont know that trading down would have been an option if they really wanted this guy.

i do like getting a couple of extra picks. sure wish they would trade sage and get on or two more.

This feels like the year when we traded back and took TJ....not real thrilled to be honest.

I agree that this sounds like a Gibbs pick. He's got the athleticism and excels at walling off - which is what zone blocking asks you to do in the running game. On the other hand, he was eaten up by speed rushers and is a holding machine (8-1/2 sacks allowed, 7 holding penalties last year). The scouting report also says he's not a fast learner and won't take the time to do additional strength or film work. He also needs work bending his knees and sliding into space.

It sounds like he's two years away from helping Schaub's blind side. The scouting report said he'll need a line coach that will chew his ass all day but stay very patient as he will progress slowly. The first part sounds like Gibbs. I dunno about the second part.

So, he's going to be Gibbs' special project.

a special project when Mendenhall was sitting there....heck, take a Guard and move Chester to LT if we were gonna do this.

Why reach when a talent like Mendenhall is sitting there? Extra picks are good, but come on... Can we finally put the RB position to rest with some young top-rated talent? Hopefully Brown will turn out to be our LT for a long time. He better be or people will start wondering about Kubiak and Smith (enter Sly).

I liked the idea of trading down but I'm not sure about this particular pick. The question I'm sure the Texans were asking themselves was "will he be available by the time our picks come up in the third?" I think they believed he wouldn't although I suspect he would have still been there in the mid-to-late second and could have been had with a trade up of one of our thirds and a second-day pick.

Then you would have had a DB that could have been plugged in to a dicey secondary and still moved up to get Brown more in the range he probably deserved to be selected in.

I like the pick a lot. A zone blocker, and we finally took an LT in the first round.

According to McClain, Gibbs liked three tackles - Williams, Albert and Brown.

He said Brown has the quickness and the mean streak (something Wand lacked) that Gibbs is looking for and Brown said he had no problems cut-blocking, something you'll be seeing a lot more of from the Texans this year (so be prepared for those "dirty Texans" comments to soon follow).

This is the guy Gibbs wanted and that's good enough for me. That combined with Smith and Kubiak's draft record, and I have no problem with the pick. A perfect fit at a need position, what's not to like?

The more I've been reading it seems:

1) RB was never a first-round option. As I suspected, the Texans think they can find one in the middle rounds who can do just as well.

2) Brown was the *last* OT they wanted that fit the Gibbs system. All the others were gone before the 18th pick so trading down cost them nothing.

3) CB was their other position of need and they think they can still address that later as well as possibly find an edge rusher.

From that standpoint, choosing Brown makes more sense but obviously the Texans see more in Brown than the scouting reports I've been readin. Their track record the past two years has been pretty decent so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt but I just don't see Brown being a short-term answer at the LT position.

Salaam would still be the favorite to start the year at LT because he already has ZB training. I guess we'll have to see where the rest fill in after that but I think Brown's going to be spending a lot of weeks on the inactive list this year.

I'll take Gibb's opinion over the scouting reports posted online.

I believe Brown was the fastest of all the tackles so team speed just got a little better.....

Still, one (college) year as a tackle would suggest that he's going to need lots of coaching. Let's hope he's coachable and can handle Gibbs' whip cracking...

He was a two year starter at RT and then started his senior year at LT.

That is correct. I misread his bio thinking he was previously a tight end.

Still, just 1 year as a LT.... No doubt they valued his athleticism over his experience...