D.J. Swearinger's Release Shows Houston Texans Value Intangibles

It's not exactly a surprise that the Houston Texans released second-year safety D.J. Swearinger.

Even during the run-up to the 2015 NFL draft, NFL Media's Ian Rapoport reported that the team was shopping the young swag-laden safety out of South Carolina. As noted by HustleTown's Jayson Braddock, the talk continued during the draft:

Finally, the Texans announced that they placed him on waivers on Monday. According to Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were the first team on the scene and claimed him:

This is a release that doesn't tick the boxes we're used to seeing. Swearinger had a down 2014 season, yes, but he's still very young: He doesn't turn 24 until September.

He still had two years left on a second-round rookie contract. The way those contracts are set up, it's nearly impossible for them to be bad deals. Even second-round picks with repeated failures, like Pittsburgh's Mike Adams, are allowed to languish on the roster when they perform poorly.

Moreover, the Texans have little in the way of backup for Swearinger. Stevie Brown was signed off the "damaged goods" section of free agency, but other than him, most of the players who had a chance to play opposite Rahim Moore are undrafted free agents without much NFL experience:

Player	Acquired?	Class of	Career Defensive Snaps
Stevie Brown	FA	2010	1,597
Eddie Pleasant	UDFA	2012	219
Lonnie Ballentine	2014 7th Round	2014	0
Terrance Parks	UDFA	2014	0
Kurtis Drummond	UDFA	2015	0
Corey Moore	UDFA	2015	0

That leads us to another point: Swearinger was bad, but he was fine in 2013.

Some of the difference may be attributed to moving from Wade Phillips' scheme to Romeo Crennel's, but most of it was just a matter of how poorly Swearinger played run defense in 2014. His number of missed tackles skyrocketed:

Year	Snaps	PFF Run Stop Rating	Missed Tackles	PFF Coverage Rating
2014	1,037	-10.5	16	-0.9
2013	827	+1.2	11	-2.9

If you compare Swearinger to other young safeties from a statistical perspective, you don't really see many players in the field being dangled in trade talks or talked about as busts. The goalposts have been moved for Swearinger:

Player	Team	Pick	Snaps	PFF Rating (Combined)
Kenny Vaccarro	NO	1-15	1,803	-15.9
Eric Reid	SF	1-18	2,087	-4.6
Matt Elam	BAL	1-32	1,473	-20.0
Johnathan Cyprien	JAX	2-33	2,069	-20.7
D.J. Swearinger	HOU	2-57	1,864	-17.5

So the question is, why were the goalposts moved?

The Texans are a notoriously tight-lipped organization. According to Battle Red Blog, Swearinger's purported lack of inclination to playing special teams outed him as a bad egg to head coach Bill O'Brien.

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O'Brien continues: "So I go out in the hallway, and I said; 'where the BLEEP are you going?'  [O'Brien then references an unknown player as responding with]: 'Well we don't do special teams, coach.'  [Then O'Brien counters]: 'You don't do special teams?!!  You better go back in there, because the way you're going to make the team is through special teams.'  One guy looks at me and he said: 'make the team?  I was a second round draft pick!'  [O'Brien]: 'I don't care what draft pick you were, that was just where you were picked.  Once the draft's over, now you gotta come in here and earn your keep every day; the more you can do.'  So communicating the strategy of team in Houston is a big deal, and we're still working on that."

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Unfortunately, the messy human side of the NFL is often not under the umbrella of publicly available information. The last paragraph is nothing but conjecture. O'Brien, like mentor Bill Belichick, wants the media involved in his football team as little as possible.

But there are still little cracks in the facade that we can see, like his passive-aggressive comments regarding Swearinger's Instagram post that announced his leave before the Texans did, per John McClain of the Houston Chronicle:

I don't know that we'll ever know the full extent of the reasons for Swearinger's release. I can tell you that, taken as a pure football move, this is a puzzling conclusion.

The Texans needed a good safety and had a player who struggled in 2014 but was still young enough to be molded. Perhaps Swearinger needed the wake-up call.

It's yet another sign that the Texans value things in players that statistics will never grasp. Work effort, team-first attitude and the like.

But this is a move that creates more questions than answers. If the Texans are going to emphasize these qualities, why are their special teams so consistently bad?

Which of the UDFA lot is going to get playing time this year? Or is a cornerback going to move to safety? What made the Texans sour on Swearinger over the offseason, and what was the change from the end of last season to now? Why did they—apparently—misjudge his personality two years ago?

We may never know the answers to all these questions. What we do know is that the question mark the Texans had at strong safety is now looking more questionable than ever.

Rivers McCown is an NFL Analyst 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.