AFC Notes: DeAndre Hopkins, Robert Woods, Jaguars, Texans, Titans

Jaguars

Jaguars RB coach Bernie Parmalee spoke about what the team has in third-round RB Tank Bigsby, who jumped out at him on film during the scouting process.

“So when we got him also, you know, we got him it’s like, oh, you know, he does have pretty good hands,” Parmalee said, via John Shipley of SI.com. “And that’s with a lot of players. Sometimes you just don’t know until you get them and you got your hands on them and then you sit there say, Oh, he actually can do that. I was sitting there. I was watching. I was going over my list. We watch this guy. And we watch — I am on one back. You know, I write the notes down. to You get on a second back. You write the notes down. You get on the third back and it was Tank. And I’m sitting down with the clicker, and I’m going … let me run that back. I kept watching and watching and he was exactly what we were looking for.  This is the type of back we wanted to bring to the table, and he fit everything that we were looking for. And he popped off the screen. And that’s the thing when you sit down, you watch the tape, you say, Okay, that’s a good play. But for someone to say, Oh, woah, my goodness, I’m running this back. I said, Oh my God. I think we got one. I put a double star. Here’s one right here.”

“And then we interviewed him at the combine. He was one of the formal interviews. So they said he did really well and he’s smart. And then when I had him on the Zoom calls, he carried himself well. And he was really knowledgeable about what they were doing at Auburn. He can articulate what the schemes were,” Parmalee added. “And then he just told me that he can retain stuff. So when I quiz him at the end, he retains it. And then his mindset. I found out that everyone that’s been around him said that he’s a tough, tough kid. And I saw that on the tape. And then just knowing him personally and getting to know him personally, that’s his mindset.”

Texans

Veteran WR Robert Woods has been a part of winning teams and says he recognizes the same hunger on the Texans roster that he saw during his time with the Rams in 2017.

“Those guys over there had every reason to call it a day after we went up big on them, but they didn’t,” Woods said about facing the Texans in 2017, via TexansWire.com. “They kept competing, and when you see that as a player, you know what they are going through. You know that they are fighting for pride and dignity. If they keep that attitude during the rough times, they will be ok in the future.”

“I never knew I would come here to this offense or to this team,” Woods continued. “Being here, just coming here and hearing DeMeco talk for years, I guess, being in the Rams and seeing him kind of development with the 49ers and take over that defense and give energy to that linebacker group, that whole team, and be able to see him come here and kind of feed that same energy to our team. I see from our defensive side, a lot of energy, a lot of juice spreading over to the offense.”

“I think a lot of hungry players, hungry coaches,” Woods concluded. “I feel like this is a similar situation to when I came to L.A. with a young [Sean] McVay. Some say it was a rebuild. I feel like it was just a team buying into your coach, believing in the coach, believing in the system, and I think Coach Ryans has that here. Got a lot of young players buying into this defense, into this culture, and we can change this environment.”

Titans

• Jeff Darlington notes that when it came down to it, the Titans were the team with the best offer on the table for WR DeAndre Hopkins and they also had OC Tim Kelly who has experience and a relationship with Hopkins from their time together in Houston.
• Paul Kuharsky adds the Titans have around $8.9 million in cap room and will have to clear space in order to make a deal with Hopkins official. Kuharsky also mentions that restructuring the contract of LB Harold Landry could net the team around $10.4 million.