***Official 2023 NFL Draft Thread - Round 1***

TWO HOURS BEFORE the NFL draft started last week, no one outside of Houston knew what the Texans would do with the No. 2 overall pick. Neither, as it turns out, did the Texans.

It had been widely reported the Carolina Panthers would select Alabama quarterback Bryce Young at No. 1, clearing the runway for Houston to make its decision. But the Texans were still trying to reconcile their love for Alabama pass-rusher Will Anderson Jr. with the sober realization they needed a franchise quarterback, according to multiple sources. In those final hours, the best guess among sources inside the Texans' facility was Anderson would be the pick at No. 2, according to ESPN's Adam Schefter.

Ultimately, Texans general manager Nick Caserio settled on a way to avoid the either/or scenario: He would do both, no matter the cost. The Texans had 12 picks coming into Thursday, including five in the top 75. After Anderson was drafted Thursday night, Caserio said in a news conference he had worked on outlining a deal to send a massive collection of draft capital to the Arizona Cardinals for the No. 3 pick to select the pass-rusher. Caserio then pivoted to Ohio State quarterback C.J. Stroud at No. 2.

What appeared to some to be a brilliant smokescreen, and to others a tightly held secret plan, was instead a genuinely fluid situation until the moments before the Texans picked Stroud, based on ESPN reporting in the days since. The Texans didn't fool the world; they bid an exorbitant price for No. 3 -- sending the Cardinals the No. 12 pick, their second-round pick (No. 33) and first- and third-round picks in 2024 -- in the last available moments to circumvent what would have been an agonizing choice.

"The decisions that we make," Caserio said at the post-draft news conference, "[are] what we feel is in the best interest of the organization."

To get the deal done, Caserio committed the second-biggest overpayment of draft capital for a non-quarterback in the past 20 drafts, according to ESPN Analytics' approximate value-based draft-pick valuations tool.

The only deal for a non-quarterback during the past 20 drafts to exceed the Texans' deal was the Atlanta Falcons' move from No. 27 to No. 6 in 2011 to select receiver Julio Jones. The Falcons also gave up their first-round pick in 2012, two second-round picks and a fourth-round pick.

A closer comparison can be traced to 2013, when the Dolphins traded with the Raiders to also move up from No. 12 to No. 3. The Dolphins drafted pass-rusher Dion Jordan at No. 3. In exchange, they gave up only a second-round pick (No. 42 overall).

Writing on Twitter, former Philadelphia Eagles and Browns executive Joe Banner called the Texans' trade last week "one of the biggest overpayments of all time."

Caserio, however, brushed aside questions about the terms of the deal after the draft.

"From our perspective, it's not about what the points tell you on the chart," Caserio said in the news conference last Thursday. "If you have conviction about a player and you want a player and you think the trade is the right thing for you to do, then you go ahead and do it. ... The trade was really driven more by: This is a player we thought would bring a lot of value to our team."

Internally, the Texans settled Thursday on a more nuanced justification, according to sources. They considered the trade to be their cost for drafting a quarterback. Without it, they wouldn't have drafted Stroud and would have missed out on Richardson. Anderson would have been the pick. It wasn't a secret. It wasn't a smokescreen. It was a frenzied conclusion of their efforts to find a different answer to the either/or question.