playBill BarnwellOct 12, 2026, 08:25 AM ETCloseBill Barnwell is a senior NFL writer for ESPN.com. He analyzes football on and off the field like no one else on the planet, writing about in-season X’s and O’s, offseason transactions and so much more. He is the host of the Bill Barnwell Show podcast, with episodes released weekly. Barnwell joined ESPN in 2011 as a staff writer at Grantland.Multiple AuthorsOpen Extended ReactionsTwo very different decisions — one on the field and another off it — had me asking the same question by Sunday afternoon on Week 5: What are they thinking?There were the Commanders, who bizarrely decided to run the clock late in overtime against the Giants in field goal range and saw the game end without ever getting a chance to attempt the game-winning kick.<\/p>\n
And there were the Texans, who won their first game of the season and celebrated by making a surprisingly aggressive move on offense, trading second- and sixth-round picks to the Cardinals for a seventh-rounder and wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr., who has underwhelmed during his pro career so far.Subscribe: ‘The Bill Barnwell Show’I love trying to explain the inexplicable, so let’s give it a shot. Why did a 1-4 Texans team — whose playoff chances sit at 23.2% after Sunday’s victory, per ESPN’s Football Power Index — trade a significant future pick to acquire a player at a position where it already has Nico Collins? And what on earth were the Commanders attempting to do at the end of that game?I’ll try to answer both those questions today, starting with the decision to try to kick-start a frustrating season by trading for one of the league’s most frustrating players.Jump to: The 1-4 Texans traded for Harrison? The Commanders let the clock expire?The Texans’ trade for Marvin Harrison Jr.Of course, the simple explanation for why the Texans traded for Harrison starts with one simple argument.<\/p>\n
We’re about two and a half years removed from Harrison entering the 2024 NFL draft as arguably the most exciting and polished wide receiver prospect of his generation. Even amid a legendary run of Ohio State wide receivers that includes the likes of Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Chris Olave, Garrett Wilson, Emeka Egbuka and others, Harrison was seen alongside Jeremiah Smith as the two best pro prospects of the bunch.Our various draft analysts saw Harrison as no worse than the third-best player overall in the class of 2024. There just aren’t many players with Harrison’s sort of scouting reports and college pedigree to ever enter the league. They don’t come available via trade very often, and it’s even rarer to get a shot at acquiring them just after they turn 24 years old.The Texans have been through this under general manager Nick Caserio and don’t regret their decision in the past.<\/p>\n
After drafting C.J. Stroud with the second pick of the 2023 draft, the Texans surprised everyone by trading two first-round picks and a second-rounder to the Cardinals to move up for edge rusher Will Anderson Jr. with the third overall selection. It was a move that seemed overly aggressive for a team that projected to be among the worst in football the following year, but it turned out to be a masterstroke.The Texans were a playoff team with Stroud and Anderson, with the latter emerging as one of the most dominant defenders in all of football. Like Anderson, Harrison plays a premium position.<\/p>\n
And while we don’t have access to Houston’s scouting reports, this trade implies that it saw Harrison as a potential superstar entering the league after his run at Ohio State. Stroud, Harrison’s college teammate with the Buckeyes, gave a glowing report to the organization and said that the wideout was “probably the hardest worker I’ve ever been around in my life.”The difference, of course, is that in Anderson, the Texans were trading up for a player with a great college r\u00e9sum\u00e9 who hadn’t yet played at the pro level. With Harrison, the Texans are trading for a player who has been outright disappointing as a pro over a multiple-season sample. He isn’t a bad player, but he has hardly been great.<\/p>\n
Since 2024, he ranks 70th out of 130 wideouts in yards per route run (1.54) and 44th in receiving yards per game (47.8). He hasn’t had great quarterback play, but Harrison has been roundly outperformed by Trey McBride and Michael Wilson within the same offense.On one hand, Harrison’s contract is extremely affordable, which is important for a Texans team that just paid Anderson and has deals for Stroud, Calen Bullock and Kamari Lassiter to come over the next 12 months. Harrison will make just $776,000 over the remainder of 2026 and $5.6 million in 2027. Even if the Texans decide to pick up Harrison’s fifth-year option in 2028, that deal projects to come in at only $17.2 million.That’s a total of $23.6 million over the next three years, which is just a tiny bit more than what Jakobi Meyers is making per year on his existing contract.<\/p>\n
That number rises if you factor in the surplus value of the draft picks sent to the Cardinals, which throws another $33 million onto the pile — but even $56.6 million over the next three years would be reasonable WR2 money right now. It’ll look even cheaper as the cap rises over the next two seasons.The Texans are obviously counting on Harrison delivering something more than solid WR2 performance and living up to his lofty predraft expectations. Will he get there? To answer that question, there were two places to look.<\/p>\n
First, I wanted to get a sense of why Harrison was struggling in Arizona to see whether a change of scenery might be likely to unlock the second-generation pro. Second, I looked back through history to find examples of highly drafted players turning things around in a second act with a new team.What went wrong in Arizona?The simplest answer is the one that Texans fans would fear the most. While there are mitigating factors and potential excuses to be made, the reality is that Harrison just wasn’t able to get himself open often enough to get the sort of target share or rack up the sort of receiving production his draft status suggested was coming. While anyone with access to All-22 film and a lot of free time can undoubtedly find plays where he was open and didn’t get the football, that’s also true for any starting receiver in football.During his time with the Cardinals, Harrison ranked last in the NFL among all wide receivers (with 50 targets or more over the past three years) in separation, averaging just 2.1 yards of separation when targeted, per NFL Next Gen Stats.<\/p>\n
Great receivers — even ones that get plenty of attention from opposing defenses — are typically able to create more space for themselves. The likes of Ja’Marr Chase and Justin Jefferson average over 3 yards of separation on their routes. In Arizona, McBride averaged 3.3 yards of separation on his targets during that time, while Wilson was at 2.5 yards.In part because of those separation issues, Harrison didn’t have a lot of chances to bring in easy targets. His expected catch rate over the past three years, using the Next Gen Stats model, was only 53.7%.<\/p>\n
That’s fifth-lowest among wide receivers since the start of 2024. I’ll get to the four below him in a minute.By those expectations, the good news is that Harrison has roughly delivered about what the model would project given that low expected catch rate. He has caught 53.5% of his passes so far as a pro, almost exactly in line with the model’s prediction. He has generated a total of 34 receiving yards over expectation across his 202 targets, which is also essentially a match for what the model suggests.<\/p>\n
You could make a case that Harrison has done an average job with below-average opportunities and hope that his expected catch rate will rise in Houston.But my concern is that Harrison is not separating because he hasn’t been explosive enough. The four other wideouts with lower expected catch rates are Alec Pierce, Tyquan Thornton, Marquez Valdes-Scantling and Christian Watson<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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