DT Development

[Roy P]

Originally Posted by dadmg

The mean age for a DT's first appearance in the Pro Bowl in the past 20 years was 25.73 years old, or 4.25 seasons of experience. The median and mode ages for first Pro Bowl also came out at 4 seasons and 26 years old. From this, we can say that the prime of the average Pro Bowl DT's career is probably between 26-30.



The young Okoye will be 22 by the start of training camp and entering his third season in the league. His age is obviously much younger than the projected prime age I mentioned earlier of 26-30 and if he really takes that long to develop, he likely won't last with the Texans.

So the big question with Okoye will be which factor will matter more: the development of his body or his experience in the league? By either factor he's considerably more likely to breakout in 2010 than 2009, but the likelihood of an '09 breakthrough is considerably more likely if the big factor is experience.

When the Texans drafted Okoye, I have to imagine that their best case scenario was that he'd develop quickly and have a longer span of "prime years" thus making him a bargain. However, realistically speaking it would only make sense to see this thing through to its natural conclusion. He has 4 more years before he becomes the magical age of 26 and he'll have 6 years of experience under his belt in order to build upon. Therefore, I wouldn't "give up" on this guy until he was 27 years old. Hopefully, he'll play at a pro-bowl level before that, but if not, it wouldn't make sense to cut bait before then.

As for Travis Johnson, you said it, his time is Now.