The Texans had their 10th and final practice of OTAs (organized team activities) on Thursday at the Methodist Training Center.
After getting a look at returning veterans, free agent additions and rookies over the last four weeks, coach Gary Kubiak was especially pleased with the progress of the Texans' top two draft picks, wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins and safety D.J. Swearinger.
"I think it was a good 10 days," Kubiak said Thursday. "Today, we were just teaching and doing some situational stuff. I think the biggest thing is we threw some young players in some very tough positions. You look at Swearinger and where he got thrown into right away because of Ed (Reed) not
being here. Then you look at us taking Hopkins, our number one (pick), so I think we've come a long way as a team. Instead of it taking us two weeks to go through that in camp, I think those guys are much more advanced."
The Texans will have a mandatory three-day mini-camp from June 11-13, then break for more than a month before the start of training camp on July 26. Kubiak will rest many of the team's veterans during the mini-camp, as he has in years past.
"We'll finish up next week with just the young guys," Kubiak said. "What I'm going to do is I'm going to go back and basically have the tempo we had in practice today and hit all these young guys with everything for about the fifth time. Really, I'm not concerned about the physical part next week as much as I am at just getting them all a bunch more reps. That's what we'll do, and work out the older guys (separately)."
Veteran defensive end Antonio Smith, a team captain, also was happy with what the team accomplished during OTAs.
"It looked pretty good to me, man," Smith said. "It was a pretty good set of OTAs. I like looking at some of the rookies we got. We've got some talent, man. We've really got some talent; some that in a few years are going to be giving some guys runs for their jobs. Whenever you've got that two, three strings deep, you're going to be alright… It was a pretty good OTAs overall."
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