Our 2024 NFL Season Preview series continues with today’s profile of Houston Texans edge rusher Will Anderson Jr.
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HOUSTON — He’s one of the most savage defensive players in the sport. His nickname is apropos. Will Anderson Jr., the “Terminator,” is 6 foot 4 inches, 263 pounds of unconscious pain. He never tires, never stops. This cyborg-assassin possesses a motor that runs just as hot on Snap No. 50 as the first.
Scouts identified him early as a grown-ass man. Yet, this also happens to be a grown man who’s deathly afraid of the dark. Seriously.
If the room is pitch black, he feels trapped. Freaks.
To this day, Anderson sleeps with the TV on.
Five older sisters are to thank.
“They scarred me,” he admits. “I’m still traumatized.”
They’d shove Anderson into a closet and lean against the door so he cannot escape. From inside, Lil Will would ball up his fists, bang against the door and scream, “Let me out! Let me out!” Of course, the closet wasn’t nearly as haunting as the basem*nt. When they really wanted to scare the bejesus out of Will, the sisters would push him downstairs and lock the door. Dusty and dark and extremely “creepy,” the basem*nt became a personal dungeon.
He hated their bullying back then. (This is only a sampling.)
But lounging on a leather chair inside NRG Stadium, fresh off a banner rookie season, on the brink of a sack-filled NFL career that’ll now have opposing quarterbacks begging for mercy, Anderson is grateful. Only grateful. When friends first hear that he grew up with so many girls, they assume he was spoiled rotten or at least raised as an effeminate softie. Barbies, not barbells. And it was the exact opposite. Anderson says his five sisters devoured plates of food like adult men, adding all “were really thick and big and muscular,” and when it came to sports? Basketball, to softball, to track, to volleyball, all five did it all.
All five were hard on Anderson when he first laced up cleats.
“Even though they didn’t play football,” Anderson says, “they know how the mentality is supposed to be.”
When he returns to his locker after pro games today, Anderson’s first order of business is to tap open the family group chat. If he struggles, a flurry of messages awaits. The sisters roast him for coming off the ball too slow. Or failing to get the quarterback. “You were tripping today!” they’ll say.
He loves it. All of it. Anderson doesn’t want them to ever change.
“I don’t have a family that kisses my ass or sugarcoats with me,” Anderson says. “They tell it just how it is. That’s why I’ve gotten so far today.”
His sister’s pranks. One defining moment in youth football. Dad’s Saturday wake-up calls. Nick Saban. The back-to-back deaths of two loved ones. One final collegiate season that had him questioning everything in life. All of it is why Anderson Jr. is seated here as the handpicked emblem of the Houston Texans.
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One year ago, the Texans didn’t only strip their roster down to the studs. They stuck dynamite into the foundation. For good reason. Bad and boring — the worst combination in sports — the Texans were a broken organization. After going 11-38-1 over three seasons, Houston finally opted for a full system reboot in hiring DeMeco Ryans as head coach and making their move in the 2023 NFL Draft. Armed with the No. 2 and No. 12 overall picks, these Texans obviously needed a franchise quarterback. The Carolina Panthers chose Alabama’s Bryce Young, the Texans selected Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud and the latter was an instant success.
One wave of the quarterback wand is never enough, though. Ryans and GM Nick Caserio needed to build a new roster through a clear archetype.
Whoever they selected in their first draft class needed to reflect a true vision.
So, they shocked the football world.
They traded the No. 12 and No. 33 overall picks in ’23, in addition to 2024 first- and third-rounders to climb back up to No. 3 overall. An outrageous bounty to everyone else. You never see regimes at the front end of a rebuild gut their own draft capital for a non-QB. Inside the building, the Texans knew exactly what they were doing. His relentless play style would bring Ryans’ words to life. In Year 1, Anderson delivered with 45 tackles, seven sacks, 22 QB hits and a team picked universally to finish dead-last won the AFC South.
Stroud is the budding superstar.
Anderson is everything the power brokers want the team to be.
“One-hundred percent. Literally,” says Texans defensive coordinator Matt Burke. “The swarm mentality. The way we play. The style. The running to the ball — it’s nonstop. His mindset is unique. Shoot, I’ve been in the league 20 years now. It’s rare to find a guy that practices the way he plays with nonstop energy, nonstop effort. You’d be hard-pressed to find a lull. It’s full go, full bore 100 percent of the time.”
The modern athlete is changing. Finding this type of player isn’t easy. And no poll-tested presentation in a team meeting, no This is Sparta! pregame speech inside the locker room means a damn thing if Players 1 through 53 can’t see exactly what you’re talking about. Anderson brings the message to life. When your best players are also your hardest workers, Burke says, it becomes contagious. That’s why Ryans keeps repeating the same line in front of the room: “You want to do it right? Watch 51.”
He’s only 22 years old. He’s also the player everyone is following.
Because if Anderson’s going HAM every rep of every practice? “Everyone else on the team,” Burke says, “has to look at that and say, ‘If he can do it, why am I not?’”
Stroud’s instant ascent compelled these Texans to go all in. Whereas the owner of the other football team in the state of Texas uses those two words and signs the ancient remains of Ezekiel Elliott, these Texans loaded up with a very clear purpose and identity. There’s both talent and substance.
Super Bowl expectations are real.
Simply watch 51.
“I have that grit,” Anderson says. “I always tell people there are amazing pass rushers in this league. But what makes me different is my mentality and my mindset. I’m going to go out there and strike you in your shoulder pads and your helmet and your chest every time I line up across from you. And that’s what I think makes me different.
“I’m going to keep going — 24/7, all… game… long.”
He was five years old. Maybe six. Rec ball was different in the Greater Atlanta area. Anderson, a Hampton, Ga., native, vividly remembers daily 1-on-1 Oklahoma Drills with exactly zero 7-on-7 sessions. Tykes put on the pads and crashed into each other.
“Buckle up,” he says, “you finna go hit somebody today.”
Not that he enjoyed this callous world. He hated it. He was terrible at this whole football thing. One practice, Anderson was embarrassed by one of his best friends on the team. Honestly, it wasn’t a fair fight. Kevon Glenn was a goliath while Anderson, back then, was a beanpole. Nonetheless, reputations were on the line — the two lived in the same cul-de-sac. And during a full 11-on-11 session, Glenn fired off the line to pummel his friend into repeated submission. “Pounding me into the dirt,” says Anderson, punching his hand. “Tea-bagging me. Everything.”
Snot poured out of his nose. Tears poured from his eyes. When his coach yelled for him to get back into get game, he couldn’t.
One thought was on his mind: Where’s Mom? After practice, Anderson cowered into his mother’s arms and sobbed.
He didn’t have a deep conversation with anyone. Instead, that day, Anderson learned the power of shame. All Anderson remembers is overwhelming embarrassment spreading through his entire body like a disease. Right then, he decided he’d never feel this way again. “I’m going to be the hammer,” he told himself. “No more being the nail.” The next person who tested him would regret it. Anderson vowed to be the bully. He would make them cry.
The switch was immediate.
A new mentality was born.
“That moment changed my whole life,” Anderson says. “It changed my whole view of football. Without him, I don’t know where I would be at.”
Take the playground game we all played as a kid. A football’s thrown into the air, one brave soul picks it up and everyone else tries to smear the… uh, person with the ball. Down south, in his cul-de-sac, the game was called “Throw ‘Em Up, Bust ‘Em Up” and — post-Glenn? — Will Anderson Jr. became the single-most feared bruiser in the neighborhood.
Of course, this reputation didn’t spill into the household. A much different world awaited him. His five older sisters — Shawnta, Shanice, Chyna, Endya and Teria — took endless glee in torturing Will.
One sister accidentally dropped a dumbbell on his foot when he was 4. It broke his toe.
They dropped weights on his head.
They stuffed him into the dryer.
They made him east mayonnaise and jelly sandwiches.
They dressed Will up in a giraffe costume and pushed him outside to play with the family’s three pit bulls. Which wouldn’t have been much of an issue if those pit bulls — quite friendly to humans — weren’t so disturbed by the sudden appearance of a giraffe. “It triggered something in their mind,” Anderson says, “to make them go crazy.” Sometimes, he ran helter-skelter around the yard. Other times, the sisters cracked the screen door open and dangled their giraffe brother outside by the hoodie to let the dogs gnaw at his legs.
He’s appreciative of their pranks today — even those hours in the basem*nt. So much of his toughness was forged in their ultra-physical pickup basketball games, too. But back then? Anderson couldn’t stand the incessant hazing. That’s why he started going to his grandmother’s house so much. His father’s mother, Betty Taylor, became a motherly figure, best friend and personal “escape” wrapped up in one a short 10-minute away in Stockbridge, Ga.
Soon enough, Taylor referred to Will as her eighth child. Even Will’s actual mother, Tereon Anderson, has to catch herself from time to time. She’ll accidentally refer to her mother-in-law as Will’s Mom.
His fondest memories begin with waking up at 5 a.m. to play in her garden for hours. One day, he mowed the entire yard with a weed-eater. Another day, he pretended the large bush in front of Taylor’s house was a robot and promptly went to battle with a large chain.
Here, he wields an imaginary chain and re-enacts the scene.
After securing victory, the whole bush was… ruined. Leaves and branches scattered the area all around the mailbox and, no, Taylor was not happy. “Get this boy right now!” she called to his mother. “I’m gonna kill him!” Anger never lasted too long. Anderson calls his grandmother the “most loving” person he’s ever met. Mainly because her home was open to everyone in the neighborhood. The day you met Taylor, he says, she’d “love you like she’s been knowing you your whole life.” Many nights, even as he got older, Anderson slipped into his grandmother’s bed to sleep. Something about her comfort.
“She understood me better than anybody,” Anderson says. “I’m telling you, that was my Mom. For real, for real. That was my girl. That was my best friend.”
Meanwhile, Anderson’s football game rocketed one direction. It was never a matter of if he’d defeat the blocker in front of him, rather how much pain he’d inflict. As Anderson details everything he loves about the sport — and it’s unique attrition — he looks more like a love-drunk newlywed.
“Football is about that greedy, gritty, sticking your nose in the honey, man. It’s got to be physical. That’s what it’s all about.”
With a gentle nudge from Will Sr.
Back in those rec-ball days, other Dads complained about their kids’ playing time. Other Dads demanded the coach to put their son in the game. Not his. Will Sr., on the contrary, would demand the opposite. “Coach!” he’d yell. “Take his ass out of the game! He doesn’t want to play today! Send his ass over here with me!” Will Jr. didn’t go into a shell. It built character. On to the Dutchtown H.S. squad — where son totaled 22 sacks as a senior — Will Sr. would not let Will Jr. relax on Saturday morning. His Friday night game would end between 9:30-10 p.m., he’d grab some sleep and then it was off to Buford, Ga., for what he emphatically describes as the hardest training of his life with Dwight Johnson (a former NFL D-End) and Marcus Howard (a former Georgia Bulldog). His body still sore from the night before, Will Jr. was put through defensive-line specific drills. He’d beg the trainers to tell his parents to take it easy on him. Nobody let up.
“Don’t matter if I had an ankle. Don’t matter if I had a wrist. Nothing,” Anderson says. “But they were sacrificing that time to even drive an hour to take me.”
This led to many heated arguments between father and son.
Will Jr. would get so pissed at his Dad that he admits their relationship was “on the line.”
Will Sr. refused to give in. Told him, “I don’t care. You’re going.” He worked nonstop to feed these six kids, so Dad wasn’t around much. But this lesson stuck. So did the time Will Sr. brought his son right to his seafood warehouse to say this is not the life he wants for him.
Everything made him tailor-made for Alabama and Nick Saban.
When Anderson headed to Tuscaloosa, he immediately saw all of those Saturday training sessions pay off. Amid a sea of four- and five-star prospects, Anderson still managed to stand out to upperclassmen. Christian Harris, a linebacker who’s a teammate again here in Houston, took one look at Anderson and said: “Who is this dude?” The pads weren’t even on yet and Anderson went full speed. “From the jump,” Harris says, “we could feel his energy. This was a dog.” Energy that pissed off the older players — nobody goes balls to the wall this time of year. But Harris could tell Saban enjoyed it.
“You need those dogs,” Harris says. “You want to build a culture around guys like that. Guys feed off of that. Those are the best leaders.”
Gen X to Millennials to Gen Z, Saban never compromises his coaching. He was notoriously hard on players, right up to his 2024 retirement.
Especially freshmen.
All spring and all training camp, Saban never referred to Anderson by name. He was “Thirty-one.”
“And I’ll never forget,” Anderson recalls, “I was walking on the field. We had just transitioned to our first team period. I ran past Coach Saban and he was like, ‘How you doing, Will?’ And I stopped because I was shocked. My jaw dropped and I was like, ‘Did you just call me by my name? I made it. You know my name!’ The biggest thing with Coach Saban is just earning his respect. And once he sees that you’re a guy who’s going to go out there and work hard and do everything that he tells you to do, that’s when you know you’re on his good side.”
Saban never let up because Saban was hardest on those he believed could be great. Anderson remembers the head coach riding safety Brian Branch “every day.” He’d see something in you that you don’t see yourself… and refuse to let up. Like Dad. Suddenly, everything made sense. The first time Will Jr. saw Will Sr. after passing Saban’s initiation, he wrapped Dad in a massive bear hug. “Thank you,” he said.
Now, he understood why his father pushed him so hard.
Now, he could see his sisters’ tough love paying off.
“My parents always said, ‘We want to get you ready for the real world,’” Anderson says. “And now that I’m the real world? The real world don’t care about your feelings. They don’t care anything about how you feel. You need that to be ready to go into a world that’s going to love you one day and hate you the next day.
“They knew exactly what they were building.”
That’s a quarterback-killer who’d roll to 34.5 sacks in three years with the Crimson Tide and an 18-year-old off the field who had no clue what was coming next.
He never had a chance to say goodbye. That’s what stung then, and still stings today.
Will Anderson Jr. lost his beloved grandmother, Betty, to pneumonia at the start of his freshman year in 2020. The sickness took her fast. She was 84. His sisters went right to his coach’s office at Alabama to deliver the news in-person and the magnitude of this loss didn’t truly wallop Anderson until the funeral. One gaze into the casket and he shattered into pieces.
For years, Betty tried preparing her grandson for this moment. No words of wisdom can.
Says Anderson: “I just hate so much that I didn’t get a chance to see her.”
The person he loved most on this planet would never see him play one college game. Betty was his biggest fan. She’d post items on Facebook nonstop. She learned how to use YouTube because of her grandson, watching and re-watching and re-re-watching highlight clips. If it was down-pour raining on gameday, she didn’t stay home. No, she’d pull up close to the field and watch the game from her car. Betty made sure to strategically park her car in a spot that allowed her to see as much of the field as possible. That way, she could dissect specific plays.
“Everything that she instilled in me, her love,” he adds, “that’s what I try to give to other people.”
He dedicated that 2020 undefeated season to his grandmother.
The very next year, more tragedy.
On Nov. 1, 2021, one of his best friends was killed. High school teammate Adonis Butler, who was playing for D-II Albany State, was struck and killed by a transit bus on campus.
Anderson had just finished up meetings when he received this news.
Adonis, he says, was a teammate who showed him how to work in the weight room.
“I was so shocked,” he says. “That whole day, I was lost for words. I couldn’t even think.”
The bus driver, Sylvia Tellis, was charged with second-degree homicide by vehicle and failure to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk. The city of Albany settled with Butler’s family at the price of $500,000.
Thinking back, Anderson recalls getting mad at God. He’d ask “Why my Grandma?” then, “Why Adonis?” then fume, “Why? Why?! WHY!” Somehow, it didn’t slow him down at all on SEC Saturdays. This second death coincided with one of the best seasons for any defensive player in college football history. Anderson led the nation with 17.5 sacks and a ridiculous 35 tackles for loss in 2021… a full 13 TFLs more than anyone else. He credits Saban, his academic advisor Emily Roberts and grew to love his position coach, Sal Sunseri, like a second father. Granted, he had never even seen Arnold Schwarzenegger’s’ most iconic movie. But Anderson was creating so much chaos back that the team’s offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian dubbed him, “The Terminator” as a freshman.
Through a dominant 2021 season, it stuck.
Anderson made waves after Alabama knocked off Georgia as 6.5-point underdogs in the SEC title game by declaring then that ‘Bama was an underdog. He added: “People saying we was gonna get whipped, whooped, blew out — all the other stuff. We Alabama, man. We ain’t no D-III team.” Here, he stands by every word. Anderson says people should respect the “A on our chest” because Alabama is the “standard,” Alabama is “college football.”
Today, Anderson points out that he had an extra shot of motivation in his Gatorade that night. He grew up a Georgia fan and Georgia coach Kirby Smart never even recruited him.
“Kirby said I was too small,” Anderson says, “so I really had an edge.”
Now, Anderson was the latest mutant Saban was sending to the NFL. He was Derrick Henry rendering Mark Ingram an Oompa Loompa at the coin toss. He won the Bronko Nagurski Trophy as the nation’s top defender. Closest friends knew why.
Says Harris: “He’s very emotional before every game, but it’s from passion and I know he misses his grandmother as well. That just made me love him even more and love to play with him because you see why he has his passion and that tenacity and it’s so relentless day-in and day-out. It’s not just about him.”
Up to this point, nothing could rock his foundation. All of his sisters’ hijinks. All of Dad’s tough love. Even those two deaths. Everything that happened to Anderson only made him stronger. Then came 2022, the most difficult year of his life. The undisputed No. 1 defensive prospect in the country took a hard left turn his final year at Alabama. With a new outside linebackers coach, he was now playing the “4i” position. That is, he lined up on the offensive tackle’s inside shoulder. This meant less rampaging upfield, less sacks, more media pressure. Anderson worried his draft stock was falling.
“My faith was very low — questioning God. Depressed. All those things,” Anderson says. “Now that I look back on it now, I wish I could do so many things differently.
“My last year at Alabama, I was just lost. I was lost.”
His best friends on the team, including Harris, were off to the NFL. He doesn’t want to discuss his 1-on-1 clashing with new position coach, Coleman Hutzler, only assuring: “We didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of things.” Nor did his parents understand what was wrong. His relationship with Mom and Dad started to deteriorate. The weight of expectations — both short and long term — felt suffocating.
Anderson finished with 10 sacks, Alabama went 11-2 and the NFL remained (very) high on him. Yet, he still felt trapped inside his own mind.
Alone his bedroom, he cried every day.
“I wasn’t standing firm on who I was,” Anderson says. “I wasn’t standing firm on the foundation that my parents had already built for me. I was letting that stuff feed into me. All that negativity. And it was just wearing me down, wearing me down, wearing me down. I had to really suck it up and ‘Let’s just get through the season. Let’s just do what you need to do and get out of there.’”
He told God he was supposed to have 15 sacks, 16 sacks, 17 sacks. Minimum. “Why?” he bemoaned again. “Why am I going through this?” Never before did the sport seem so difficult. For the first time since his friend kicked his ass in youth football, Anderson faced true adversity on a football field.
Reflecting back, this hardened him. It was everything he needed.
The Texans sold the farm for Anderson on April 27, 2023 and — eventually — he rediscovered a sense of peace. Dylan Thompson, the club’s director of team development, has joined the Washington Commanders this offseason but Anderson never felt so connected to somebody in the sport before. Thompson became a close confidant who helped dig him out of his mental rut.
“I’ve never, ever been truthful, truthful,” he says. “He knew everything. All my thoughts that I was thinking.”
After suffering an ankle sprain in the Texans’ 30-6 loss to the New York Jets in Week 14, Anderson felt himself getting angry at God again. This time, he bought a Bible, started going to church and experienced a spiritual awakening. He began to feel free.
“That’s when everything changed for me,” Anderson says. “It’s OK to say, ‘God, I need your help. God, can you take this off of me?’ I think once I started realizing that part, my life became easier. I stopped trying to live for people and live for God because people are going to love you one day and hate you the next day. The only approval I need is from God. Once that mindset kicked in, my life has been so much easier.”
Anderson edged Philly’s Jalen Carter and the Los Angeles Rams’ Kobie Turner for defensive rookie of the year honors, and nobody should be surprised if more prestigious hardware follows. It’s hard to find pass rushers with this play-to-play muscle vs. the run and the pass. Turns out, the Texans were playing chess with that trade up to the No. 3 overall. Edge rusher is a premium position and, frankly, nobody in the ’24 class was nearly as polished as Anderson. Why gamble on two or three maybes?
To elevate into contention, the Texans must overcome a murderer’s row of elite quarterbacks.
Year 1 featured individual efforts the Texans haven’t seen on the defensive line since J.J. Watt.
Bulling past Morgan Moses with so much force that the 10-year vet has no choice but to wrap his bicep around his neck. Anderson still beats him. Sacks Lamar Jackson. Holds a No. 1 into the sky to signal the first sack of his pro career.
Karate-chopping the outside arm of the Arizona Cardinals’ top pick, Paris Johnson Jr., before then avoiding a double team by knifing inside to inhale Kyler Murray whole.
Bench-pressing Mike McGlinchey, the Denver Broncos’ $87.5 Million-Dollar Man, backward before then chopping Russell Wilson down at the ankles.
And poor Andre Dillard. He bushwhacked Tennessee’s hapless left tackle for back-to-back sacks. (Related: Dillard no longer plays for the Titans.)
Into the offseason, Caserio and Ryans went to work again. After hitting the jackpot with their handpicked cornerstones — Stroud and Anderson — it was time to pursue a championship with the same relentlessness as their young pass rusher.
All playoff-level teams operating on that rookie-quarterback timeline should be aggressive.
The Texans unequivocally announced themselves as legitimate contenders.
When the Texans bring in a draft prospect on a Top-30 visit, that prospect meets everyone they’ll interact with on a day-to-day basis. Trainers, coaches, player development staffers, the cafeteria crew. Everybody back at Alabama only supplied glowing reviews of Will Anderson Jr. but surely somebody in-house would pick up on a red flag. A suspicion. A slight concern.
They did not.
Everybody Matt Burke spoke to had the same response: “A-plus!” and “Love him!” and “Want him in our building!”
“It was unanimous,” the defensive coordinator says. “I was like, ‘Why the hell did we bring this kid in? We didn’t learn anything new.’ But it was across the board. Every person that he interacted with had the same vibe from him.”
Caserio played this trade extremely close to the vest. All of the coaches watching the draft live were shocked Houston managed to get this prospect they loved so much.
Nobody was shocked to see Anderson named a captain when he was barely old enough to drink.
Labeling any athlete in sports “high effort” is almost always a polite way of saying talent’s in short supply. Burke makes the distinction. To him, this much effort is an absolute talent because it’s not easy for anyone at the line of scrimmage to attack the opposition at 100 percent for the entire game. This marks Burke’s 20th season in the NFL. His rise began with the Titans where he witnessed Kyle Vanden Bosch’s effort firsthand. He’s not quite ready to anoint Anderson No. 1 yet. To him, Vanden Bosch is the “gold standard.” But from the Titans to the Lions and Bengals and Dolphins and Eagles and Jets and Cardinals to these Texans, Anderson is as close as he’s seen. And he’s barely scratching the surface.
Anderson is the “manifestation,” Burke says, of everything the Texans teach their defense.
“We tell our D-line to penetrate and create off-schedule plays and knock people back,” the DC adds. “That’s that nonstop thing.”
The number of TFLs (10) and 0-yard gains reflect such a mentality, but Burke also believes Anderson sets the edge as a run defender better than anyone.
Now, he’ll have an All-Pro rushing the passer on the other side. The team’s keynote signing was longtime Minnesota Vikings end Danielle Hunter, fresh off a career-high 16.5 sacks. Obviously, the Texans loaded up around Stroud on offense in re-signing Nico Collins, making Joe Mixon their new No. 1 back and trading for wideout Stefon Diggs. But Ryans believes the defense has its own arsenal of weapons. In addition to Hunter (two years, $49 million), the team added Denico Autry (two years, $20 million), linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair (three years, $34 million) and cornerback Kamari Lassiter (second round) to those two ascending talents out of Alabama: Anderson and Harris.
Last year, they weren’t quite ready to spar with the conference’s quarterback elites. MVP Lamar Jackson and the Ravens scored 24 unanswered points in the second half of a playoff defeat.
Quarterbacks now must account for Anderson on one side and Hunter on the other. Who to chip? When to chip? The Texans will dictate the rules of engagement with that terminator setting the tone. In high school, he was every bit the “rah-rah” leader. In college, he learned it’s best to connect with everyone on a 1-on-1 level. Very quickly in the pros, he asserted himself as the leader of this defense.
“Last year,” Anderson says, “it was a respect thing. I had to earn the respect of the guys with my play, showing them that I love football, showing ‘em that I care and showing them how much this means to me.”
He’s the one speaking up now… even if he doesn’t always make much sense. Always laughing, Anderson told Harris the day before this chat that he touched the top of Mount Everest recently. Huh? Harris had zero clue what Anderson was talking about. His friend doubled down. “I jumped off a mountain yesterday! And then I fell. I broke my leg and I got back up.”
A youthful exuberance fuels these Texans. Unlike so many other teams that’ve tried, and failed, to get past the Kansas City Chiefs, these players barely have any playoff scars. They’re having fun building from scratch. Anderson and Harris believe they’ve got a chance to build an “Alabama”-like culture where year-to-year contention is the expectation.
Harris, for one, is already spreading a Sabanism. All of this hype around the Texans? “Nothing but rat poison,” he told us.
One year ago, Houston became the first team in NFL history to win its division with a rookie coach and rookie quarterback. All of this with an NFL-high 19 players landing on injured reserve. The hype is real because there’s substance. Specifically, there’s Anderson establishing a code of conduct at the workplace.
“For me, I’m big off of energy,” Harris says. “If I see the way that you work, that could motivate me. Will showed up freshman year and was a guy, day-in and day-out, emptying the tank. That’s really how you end up leading others. They see how you go about your work every day.”
Inside this studio room, directly over Anderson’s shoulder, a pennant honoring Watt hangs on the wall. Come anywhere near the stratosphere of this sure first-ballot Hall of Famer and a championship is a lock. Watt, the greatest Texan ever, never had anything resembling Stroud at QB.
So even though Anderson feeds his brain with positivity off the field, his greatest weapon on the field is fear. Much like that sense of shame back in Pop Warner, he learned that fear is the ultimate stimulus. Anderson approaches every single practice as if coaches are going to replace him. All of it’s a personal mind game — but it works.
The real reason Anderson is humming at full speed, every drill, is his innate need to prove himself all over again.
“I don’t care how many accolades I have, how successful I am,” Anderson says. “I’m coming to work every day like: ‘Oh, you don’t respect me. So I’m going to do anything in my power to ruin what you got going on today.’ But also get myself better and get my teammates better. That’s been my mentality in approaching everything because every day I want to leave my mark in practice, meeting rooms, game day.”
Anderson is still young. On his path toward superstardom and Super Bowls, he’ll be challenged in ways he cannot foresee. He’ll battle injuries and hardship and offensive tackles who can handle his blunt force at the line.
Success won’t happen overnight, but that’s OK. He knows that.
He’ll keep the TV on, too.
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