*Texans director of college scouting Mike Maccagnan reviewed the 2013 NFL Draft with Texans insider Nick Scurfield. In this "Scout's Take" series, we'll share his thoughts on each of the Texans' nine draft picks, from tight end Ryan Griffin in the sixth round to wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins in the first.
WR DeAndre Hopkins – (1st round, 27th overall)
6-1, 214 – Clemson – Central (S.C.) HS
Texans director of college scouting Mike Maccagnan
"DeAndre was a kid that was an early-out junior. From a character standpoint, he really fit the type of personality that we like in our mix. He's a very good kid, hard worker, very tough kid; good mentally. As a player, he sort of fits what we do. He's a bigger, stronger, physical receiver. He is a real good athlete for the position, has very good hands and catching radius, a very efficient route runner with good quickness into and out of his break. He's a very good athlete for his size. He may not have necessarily rare speed but he has very, very good playing speed. The routes that he's really effective running, the slants and crossing routes, are a lot of the routes we run a lot in our system offensively, so he really fits from an ability skill-set to what we do. When he was sitting there in the draft at 27, we were very excited about the possibility of adding him to our mix. It was one of those unique situations where he was not only the best player available with how you have
him stacked with other players around him but also ended up being a position of interest or need for us. So it was kind of a happy marriage there. Some receivers have the ability to kind of expand, extend and catch the ball, and in contested situations, he did that consistently in college. He has a lot of very positive attributes; that's definitely one of his stronger ones. We really like that about him, and I think sometimes with receivers, it's hard to sort of teach that. With him, it was kind of a skill set that he sort of brought to the table from day one, and I would hope would continue at our level. When you talk to a lot of the staff that's been with him not only at Clemson but previous people that had been there and moved to other schools, it was really consistent how they talked about him from a character standpoint. They all really stressed what a really good person he was on and off the field. His work ethic was very well spoken of by the staff that we talked to, his toughness, how he prepares for the game. And then from his home life situation with his mother that raised him and obviously did a very good job with him, and when he came in to visit us after the draft, he brought her along – a very lovely lady. All of that kind of combined together, we really liked him, just from kind of the personality he has, his story, his background, and thought he'd be a very, very strong addition to the locker room."
Twitter.com/NickScurfield
