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