Texans Need Healthy Jadeveon Clowney to Key Non-Watt Pass Rush

It's easy to pick on the Houston Texans for not selecting a quarterback No. 1 overall now that we've seen the Ryan Fitzpatrick era in action. However, when they selected South Carolina defensive end Jadeveon Clowney, they thought they were filling another glaring hole in their roster: a complete and utter lack of pass-rushing talent behind all-galaxy defensive end J.J. Watt. 

Instead, Clowney left the season opener against Washington with an NRG Turf Special: a torn lateral meniscus. Houston has managed to play about the same as it did last year without Clowney. It finished 2013 18th in Football Outsiders' Adjusted Sack Rate stat. Through six games, the Texans are currently...18th in Football Outsiders' Adjusted Sack Rate stat.

Texans head coach Bill O'Brien has said that Clowney has "about a 50-50 shot" at playing on Monday Night Football against the Pittsburgh Steelers, per HoustonTexans.com.

Of course, the reason the Texans need Clowney on the field doing what Clowney does is because they wasted high-round picks in back-to-back drafts on outside linebackers Whitney Mercilus and Brooks Reed.

Houston thought it could transition away from now-Philadelphia Eagles linebacker Connor Barwin and now-Oakland Raiders defensive end Antonio Smith by drafting young pass-rushing talent. It hasn't worked out so well for Texans general manager Rick Smith so far. 

They doubled-down by again selecting two potential pass-rushers in the 2013 NFL draft: LSU's Sam Montgomery and Connecticut's Trevardo Williams. Neither of them is still on the team.

Of course, one metric could have told you Houston's pass-rushers would be adequate at best. Football Outsiders has a metric called SackSEER that measures college edge-rusher prospects by both their physical measurables and their college production. Here's a look at how the edge-rushers Houston drafted graded out by the system and how their performances have measured up in real life. 

Player	Pick/Year	5-Yr Sack Projection	Sacks so far	On pace for...
Brooks Reed	2-42/2011	15.1	12.5	19
Whitney Mercilus	1-26/2012	21.5	13	21.8
Sam Montgomery	3-95/2013	16.3	0	n/a
Trevardo Williams	4-124/2013	15.5	0	n/a
Jadeveon Clowney	1-1/2014	30.2	0	n/a

Clowney, by the same token, had a huge SackSEER projection: 30.5 sacks through five years. And he was in the 94th percentile of all college edge-rusher prospects. 

While Clowney doesn't have much in the way of NFL snaps to gander at—a first-week injury will do that to you—Reed and Mercilus have plenty. If you dig up the advanced stats, you find that they tell about the same tale that the raw sack numbers say: neither of them should be second bananas as part of a good pass rush.

Oh, and also that there was a reason Houston spent part of the offseason trying Reed out at inside linebacker.

Player/Year	Sacks	Hurries	Pass-Rushing Rating
Mercilus — 2013	7.0	33	-12.4
Mercilus — 2014	0	12	-2.2
Reed — 2013	3.0	35	-13.6
Reed — 2014	1.0	10	-1.3

Both Mercilus and Reed should be praised for being able to hold the edge on run plays. (Particularly Mercilus, because he struggled with that in his rookie season.) But it is utterly clear that they are keeping the pass rush down when Houston actually gets to pin its ears back on 3rd-and-long.

The Texans, more than any other team in the AFC, are a team of stars and scrubs. Spending a total of 456 pass-rushing snaps on Reed, Mercilus, and journeyman defensive end Tim Jamison is a cry toward the latter. 

Which isn't to say that Clowney coming back is going to skyrocket Houston's chances to make the playoffs: It's already in a deep hole there, chasing the AFC West and AFC North from behind. Unless Clowney can play quarterback well too, Houston may be too far behind to mount an actual charge.

But what Clowney can do? Fix what ails this weak pass rush by knocking a bunch of overmatched players into roles that are much better fits for them. That could swing a close game or two. And given how down the AFC is this year, who knows how much of a difference that will make?

Rivers McCown is the AFC South lead writer for Bleacher Report and the co-host of the Three-Cone Drill podcast. His work has also appeared on Football Outsiders and ESPN.com. Follow him on Twitter at @riversmccown.