Texans chairman and CEO Cal McNair reinforced a claim by the newly fired former head coach Bill O’Brien that the team could not afford to keep wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins this past offseason.
On Wednesday, McNair spoke for the first time since firing O’Brien as the head coach and general manager and defended the decision of Hopkins being shipped off to the Arizona Cardinals.
“We would’ve loved to have Hopkins on our team but when you have a franchise left tackle, which we re-did his contract, which by the way, he’s playing at a top five level right now,” McNair said on SportsRadio 610. “The franchise left tackle is a huge piece of the puzzle. We have a franchise quarterback which is what we’ve been looking for, for years, and what every team is looking for and trying to get. And we have them. And we have a very firm belief that Deshaun Watson is our guy. So we had those two major contracts. As you look across the league, we are paying more than anyone and it’s not really very close on our roster.
“So when Hopkins wanted to re-do his contract, it just wasn’t something we could do. We did trade him, we moved him. We moved him to a team that had the salary cap room to extend. We moved him to a team that I know the owners. It’s a great ownership. We moved him to a team that has an exciting and fun offense. I think we did a good job placing him in a good place. He’s a talented, talented guy. We would love to have him but it wasn’t goin to fit financially with all the constraints that we have in operating … under the salary cap. It just wasn’t possible to do at this time.”
Hopkins saw those comments and fired back in a since-deleted tweet:
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Hopkins had three years, $40 million left on his contract with the Texans, but none of the money was guaranteed.
He eventually got a deal that he wanted with the Cardinals.
