Listen to the full episode of Texans All-Access on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
The Mattress Firm Sleeper of the Game is usually an offensive pick. Someone who might catch a touchdown, break a long one, show up in a box score. John Harris went the other way this week, and he acknowledged the difficulty going in.
"It's hard when you talk about the defense to have a sleeper."
Then he made his case anyway.
"But I still feel like Tommy Togiai gets slept on. They just don't talk about Tommy Togiai, and he's a stud."
The player the box score misses
Togiai (DT) is in his second season in Houston and his fifth in the league. He is not going to lead the team in sacks and he is not going to be the name on the postgame graphic. Harris's argument is that the job he does is the reason other people's names end up there.
"He is everything this defense wants it to be."
That is a big sentence about an interior defensive lineman, and Harris backed it with the specifics.
"Because he's hustling with the football. He's always looking to make a play. He is a problem for interior offensive linemen. He's tough to move in the run game."
Why this week, specifically
The run-game piece is what makes him a Week 1 pick rather than a general appreciation post.
Buffalo brings the most productive rushing attack in football from a year ago, and Harris has been clear all week that the assignment starts up front — hold the point, keep interior linemen off the second level, make Houston's linebackers free to run and hit. A defensive tackle who is hard to move is the entire foundation of that plan.
"Tommy Togiai is my sleeper of the game."
