Texans' Laremy Tunsil trade with Commanders the most baffling move of offseason

The Houston Texans have reportedly completed the most shocking trades of the NFL offseason on Monday, sending star offensive tackle Laremy Tunsil to the Washington Commanders for a package of draft picks, per NFL Network's Ian Rapoport.

According to Rapoport, Houston got a second and fourth-round pick in 2026, and a 2025 third-round pick back for the five-time Pro Bowl tackle.

The full terms:
-- A 2nd rounder and a fourth rounder to the #Texans, plus a third rounder this year.
-- Houston ends back a fourth rounder and Laremy Tunsil. https://t.co/fIpevnwjQe
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) March 10, 2025

The 30-year-old has been one of the NFL's most consistent offensive linemen throughout his career, and that continued last season. He ranked fourth in Pro Football Focus' pass protection rankings among tackles, and 23rd overall out of 141 eligible players.

Not only is the trade shocking, it's absolutely baffling for the Texans and their fans. Houston had one of the absolute worst offensive lines in the NFL last season, allowing 54 sacks, third-worst in the sport. Tunsil was the singular bright spot in that line; he allowed just two of those 54 sacks, and let quarterback C.J. Stroud be knocked down just three times all season.

Is Tunsil a perfect player? Hardly; he was called for more penalties than any other tackle in the NFL last season, with 19. The majority of those were false starts. He also was less effective in run protection, ranking 25th in the league in that regard.

However, when your team is trying to build a functional offensive line, you want to know what a bad plan is? Trading away the singular good player on that line, the anchor around which any competent general manager would decide to build a new, fully operational offensive line.

When you have a leaky dam, you don't fix it by cutting a bigger hole in a structurally sound part of it. You leave the solid parts alone, and fix everything around it. Houston had massive needs on the interior of the offensive line coming into the offseason, and now they're going to need to find at least one offensive tackle, and maybe two, depending on how you feel about Tytus Howard.

It's not like there are players of Tunsil's quality growing on trees out there; tackles of his quality are incredibly scarce, because teams have a tendency to hang onto them until well beyond their sell-by date.

Trading a guy like Tunsil is a move you make when you're in rebuild mode, not when you're trying to get all the pieces in place for a title push. Based on the other moves they've made this offseason, and the players in place everywhere else on the offense, they're not trying a full rebuild; they're trying to win now, and losing Tunsil on a line that could charitably be described as hot garbage doesn't help you win now.

The goal of collecting draft picks is that you hope one of those guys you land turns out to be a player of Tunsil's on-field quality, and they don't come around much, especially after the first round. Houston is setting themselves up to fail, and there aren't a lot of outcomes at this point that make you think things are going to improve next season along the offensive line, which means things won't improve at all offensively, no matter who is catching passes from Stroud.

It's a baffling move no matter how you look at it, and if you're a Houston fan, this can't have you feeling good about things as free agency progresses.

Home/NFL