What Is Texans Edge Rusher Will Anderson Jr. Improving This Year?
Seth Payne and Sean Pendergast dive into some of what Texans edge rusher Will Anderson Jr. said during his interview on The Rich Eisen Show: specifically, what he's working on, Texans expectations and when he knew C.J. Stroud was that dude.
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00:00Rich Eisen show on Friday. I didn't see this till last night. It's, I mean, it's awesome.
00:05It's classic Will Anderson. You saw the same thing I did, Seth. I'm like, okay, he's doing
00:11this via zoom with Rich Eisen and he's clearly in his vehicle or in a vehicle. And I'm looking
00:17at the interior of the vehicle that he's in. I'm like, okay, you can only really see like
00:22the windows and the side and what the, you know, kind of what the coloring is like in
00:25there. I'm like, oh, it doesn't, it doesn't look like the most stylish vehicle. It doesn't
00:28look like something that a young player, you know, would be, it just got, you know,
00:3335 million bucks guaranteed would be driving, but okay. Turns out I was right. It was his
00:40old, his family's old truck that he used to drive in high school. Cause he was his truck
00:46from high school. Yeah. Yeah. So he, so he, he was back in, in Georgia doing this interview
00:51because he had his, his camp, his kid's camp in Georgia over the weekend. So he's, he didn't
00:57feel the need to go out and rent an escalator or anything and show the kids, Hey, this is
01:01what happens when you make it. It was like, I liked it. It's a good lesson for the kids.
01:05Like, Hey, you can roll up in a, you don't have to roll a, you don't have to define yourself
01:09by your vehicle. Good job, Will Anderson. And it was good. And, and, and we found that
01:12out because Rich Heisen asked him like, what are you rolling in there? Will, you know,
01:16what do you do? And it turns out Will Anderson's getting ready to have either lunch or dinner
01:20with his family, but decided to walk outside for 10 minutes and talk to Rich Eisen. Right?
01:24No, I thought he was at his high school football camp. He was, he was in town for the high
01:28school football camp, but he left his family. His family was about to eat or something like
01:33that. And he walked outside to do the interview. Yeah. He, he walked outside to do the interview.
01:37So, so at any rate, Will Anderson talking to, talking to Rich Eisen, Rich Eisen did
01:45a really good job with this interview because there were a lot of questions where I'm like,
01:48all right, we've, we've already heard. We'll talk about, you know, getting, getting Daniel
01:52Hunter as a teammate, but Eisen's follow-ups were really good in this interview. Like,
01:56I feel like the follow-ups gave us some goodwill, some good Will Anderson. We haven't heard
02:00yet and it was a good paint me a picture guy. He was a great patient. Oh, you said this
02:04will paint me a picture of what that means. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe Rich Eisen is nine seven
02:07nine guy on a text page. Paint me a picture guy. Shout out to paint me a picture guy.
02:12Here's Will Anderson talking about improving during the off season. Rich Eisen asked him,
02:17give me a specific example of something that you saw on film that you need to work on.
02:21It's a lot of times just finishing on the quarterback and a lot of times just taking
02:24the edge instead of just like, I would just stop at the top of my rush and not get extension
02:29at the top of my rush. So those are like some of the things that I've been like heavily
02:32working on this off season and just working on my steps in my past. So those are some
02:37things that I was just watching last. I was like, bro, like all you had to do is turn
02:40the corner right here and just reach and you probably would've got a sack. So it's just
02:44those little things to fine tune my game. And you still wound up being defensive rookie
02:47of the year anyway. Thank God. Yeah. And we've heard that first part of him before,
02:54but the one thing he was talking about there was the frustration of going back and watching
02:59the film from last year. So he's describing what, you know, as he's this off season and
03:03watching his film from his rookie year, he sees just how many opportunities were out
03:09there on the table. And in the first half of the season, this is where I remember I
03:13was getting frustrated last year because a lot of people wanted to, to give him a lot
03:17of credit for all these QB pressures he was getting. But Will Anderson himself at that
03:21time said, no, that's not good enough. I just, I need to get sacks because sacks are over
03:27sacks are sometimes overrated as a gauge. But with the case of Will Anderson last year,
03:33there were a lot of things in the first half of the season where you could see, man, he's
03:35really, really close. He's just got to finish. It's that last 0.4 seconds at the end of his
03:41rush where he, yes, he would have all those sacks. He's doing a lot of really good things,
03:46but he would have more sacks if you would just do these few little things. And that's
03:50where like Daniel Hunter has been such a resource for him. I think as well as aside from all
03:54the coaching and everything, Daniel Hunter is just incredible at those finer aspects
04:00of finishing a pass rush. And he's been leaning on, Will's been leaning on Daniel Hunter heavily
04:06this off season for a lot of tutelage there.
04:08Yeah. Let's hear from, from Will Anderson on Daniel Hunter. And then we'll, I want to
04:12talk about that a little bit too. Just general feelings on how he and Hunter can help each
04:16other this season.
04:17Teams is just going to have to decide. I mean, that's the dominant exact guy every year.
04:21So he's just going to be like, Sue, we got to deal with this guy. So we all know about
04:25this guy. So it's going to be fun. I think we're going to cause a lot of havoc and, you
04:29know, disrupt a lot of stuff. So I'm excited to go to war with him.
04:32Yeah. That's one of those things. So they're paying, so they're paying Daniel Hunter two
04:35years, about 50 million bucks, pretty much every penny of it's guaranteed may as well
04:40be. It's, it's practically a fully guaranteed contract, but I do think Seth, like that'd
04:44be one of those things. Like if the Texans just didn't have another legitimate pass rusher,
04:49then you signed a Neil Hunter to two years, 50 million, you go, okay, well there's our
04:51double digit sack guy.
04:52And we hope that he can eat, you know, solo like he had to do maybe at times in, in Minnesota.
04:58This is one of those things that because you have Will Anderson on the roster, he's on
05:01a rookie deal still. He's very cheap. He's eager to learn. I think that's a big thing
05:06with will is that it's almost like you're, you're paying to Neil Hunter 24 million a
05:12year to go get, to go get the Texans double digit sacks from him. And Oh, by the way,
05:18you get like a private defensive end coach for Will Anderson in a way as well.
05:22You know what I mean? Right. Yeah. Who's also, you know, not that this is a huge factor necessarily,
05:27but I think it does help that Daniel Hunter is from here and like, you know, he's, he's
05:32around a lot and he's going to be working out at the facility during this downtime.
05:36And he'll have more even one-on-one time with Will Anderson over the next several weeks.
05:41The big thing about having two guys opposite each other. Yes, it does make a big difference
05:46in terms of like, how many one-on-ones do you get? They slide the protection towards
05:50the Neil. Will Anderson's got a one-on-one and vice versa. But I think the, the exciting
05:55part comes where D'Amico is so adamant about the swarm mentality and wants to get guys
06:03who are like that. So when you get a guy that let's say Daniel Hunter gets the one-on-one
06:08and Will Anderson ends up getting more attention on a particular play it, you really want to,
06:15you want to be sure you've got a guy who doesn't shut it down just because he's getting double
06:19teamed or because like, okay, this isn't going to be his play because what Daniel Hunter
06:24as many times as not as if he doesn't get the sack, he's going to flush the QB and having
06:28guys that are just, you know, running around like maniacs there end up getting a lot of
06:32the, the peripheral collections from all of that. And that's what I mean, that's what
06:38I really like about the dynamic of adding Danico Autry and some of the other guys on
06:43that defensive line. You just want, you want frenetic activity all the time so that when
06:47you're a plus numero uno pass rusher on that play might have a great rush and come clean,
06:52but the QB escapes the pocket. You got a lot of guys swarming after him.
06:57Yeah, it's, it's fun to hear. It's fun to see Will Anderson do an interview because
07:00you can see his face light up when you bring up certain things. And Daniel Hunter is definitely
07:04one of those things. High expectations for the Texans this year. We know that they're
07:09favored to win the division, a dark horse, super bowl pick. A lot of people are climbing
07:13on board saying they're going to get to where they've never been to before this season.
07:17They can make it to a conference title game. What does Will Anderson say to people with
07:21high expectations for the Houston Texans? We appreciate that, but I think nobody expectations
07:26are going to be higher than the expectation that we have for ourselves in the building
07:29and what coach D'Amico, you know, wants for us and the standard that he has for us. We're
07:33just going to keep going out there swarming, attacking and just building off what we did
07:37last year. And we can't worry about the past and we can't worry about what happened last
07:40year and this off season in training camp. We have to really grow together and really
07:44take that next step. Yeah. Will Anderson has that answer program down to a T. That is one
07:50we've heard before from Will Anderson. Yeah. When he was talking about that and I think
07:54like D'Amico, D'Amico shares so many traits, like various traits of my favorite coaches
07:59of all time. You can almost like grab, it's a grab bag of some of my favorite coaches
08:04and like all those traits, D'Amico has all of them. But one of the big things is that,
08:09yeah, you've got your long-term goals, but Frank Gantz senior used to say this, what's
08:14the most important play? The next play. Like it's just not even the next game or anything
08:18else like that. It's just the next play is the thing that matters and is, especially
08:22for a team like this, it's had so much off season hype and it's really hard to find anybody
08:28in the national media that's questioning the progress they've made that man, that's, that's
08:33rat poison is Nick Saban used to call it. That's rat poison. After a while you start
08:37to read too many positive press clippings and you forget how hard it is to win a single
08:41football game. And I don't, I think this team's going to be pretty well brainwashed by the
08:47time they get to week one that like we haven't done anything yet and we just got to, we got
08:51to win week one. That's our, that's our main objective. Yeah. And I like that week one
08:55is an opponent that they should be focused for, you know, I mean there's human, so the,
09:00you know, some of that stuff may seep in with some of the guys, all the, like you call it
09:03the rat poison set, but the fact that it's a road game, it's against Indianapolis and
09:09a lot of chatter between those two teams, this off season, a lot of chatter. Yeah. Should
09:13the focus of the, the, the potential for a lack of focus should be low. I would think.
09:18I think that's my, that's where I think CJ is playing five dimensional chess. I think
09:23CJ figures, okay, yeah, we gotta, we gotta be sure that we're, that these guys are really
09:28emotionally amped up and ready for the Colts. So I'm going to talk a lot of smack about
09:32their linebackers. Good job, CJ. Good job, CJ. Way to go. Speaking of CJ, Will Anderson,
09:38when did you know that CJ Stroud was that dude? I've known CJ a long time, but doing
09:42training camp and just OTAs and watching him throughout the building, man, I knew he
09:46had that it factor to him. He was showing up every day, locked in, uh, connecting with
09:51guys. I think that's the biggest thing when you know, a guy's going to be really good
09:54is how they connect with their teammates. And the team just latched onto him, man, because
09:58he was so personable. And then he was just so competitive on the field and he would get
10:02like angry at himself. Like he didn't do something right. Like he would come back and fix it.
10:06And coach would like show highlights of like when he did it wrong. And then he would come
10:10back and show another highlight where CJ did it right. And CJ just kept building and
10:14building off of that. And you know, that's who he is, man.
10:17Um, Sean, I'm taking this, uh, there's, there's this imprint app that I got. I'm on my free
10:23trial right now, but it's really cool. It's like, uh, I'm not advertising them yet or
10:28anything, but it's, you can take these courses. And as you go through the course, they ask
10:33little questions and everything. So in my constant quest to be less unbearable, I, um,
10:39I'm taking a class on interpersonal dynamics right now. And a lot of what they talk about,
10:43like in a few of the, uh, units that have come up is that it's building trust. Like
10:48if you're a leader, especially that you can be incredibly honest and blunt as a leader.
10:55If first you develop trust with somebody and it starts off with surface level, you know,
11:00getting to know you type of stuff. And then over time forming this relationship, as long
11:04as you have trust between yourself and who you're supposed to be leading, you can, you
11:08can be very honest with them. And that's something that CJ has really impressed me
11:12with as a young man, right from the get go. Like he talks about that, about forming relations
11:18with everybody. That's why he brings, he has everybody on the team at various times, come
11:22over to his house for dinner and just getting to know people in forming a relationship to
11:27where then you can have those kind of, you can have difficult conversations that aren't
11:31like storming out that don't end with storming out of the room. I like CJ understands that
11:37to such an extreme degree. I think a lot of young guys think leadership means making
11:42grandiose speeches and everything else like that. I think CJ really has a good feel for
11:47building that trust first and then getting to the point where you can, then you can be
11:51a leader, like establish a trust for us. That's a prerequisite. And then you can be a genuinely
11:55effective leader.
11:56And it's amazing. He was 21 when he was drafted, but he didn't turn 22 until like week six
12:01of this season, you know? Right, right. Yeah. Well, Ryan day, you know, Ryan day deserves
12:07a lot of credit for that. One of our, uh, Abigail on the YouTube who just basically
12:11has consumed every bit of Texans content ever, uh, just told me this weekend, she, that Ryan
12:17day had bonded with CJ partly over, uh, Ryan day's father. I can't remember the exact tragedy,
12:24but he lost his father, uh, for some reason, but like Ryan day and CJ were able to bond
12:29over that. A lot of the conversations that CJ has had at Ohio state with some of those
12:33coaches kind of set the table for, for what he is now. And he's had to, I think because
12:38CJ isn't CJ doesn't have that natural leader personality, or at least what you think of
12:45in your brain, like, uh, you know, a big outwardly, uh, you know, a gregarious guy or what have
12:52you. Um, I think the fact that he kind of had to overcome some of his own personal trappings
12:59and everything means that he's actually a lot more, he's a lot more methodical in it
13:03because he's put more thought into it and he had to do it on a huge stage at Ohio state
13:08with a lot of pressure on him. Yep, no doubt. All right, let's, uh, let's get