Brock Osweiler stood in front of the team auditorium, pointing to his right near the front of the room.
"He sits right over here," Osweiler said of rookie Will Fuller. "He takes a ton of notes, he's always studying his playbook. Whenever we get a break, a lot of guys go in the locker room and we're socializing or we go grab a coffee over here in the cafeteria but Will's in his playbook, he's studying. He wants to be great and he's always, always striving to be great."
In his second preseason game, Fuller showed the crowd at NRG Stadium just how valuable he was with the Texans first-round draft pick in 2016. On a deep pass to the right side of the field, Fuller made a leaping catch for a 19-yard touchdown. It was the first of his NFL career.
"All the credit has to go to Will and the offensive line on that play," Osweiler said. "It was just one of those deals you know how to pre-snap read. If the Saints were in man-to-man coverage, pressed man-to-man coverage, which they were, I knew that Will's route was going to convert to a fade. He just did a tremendous job at the line of scrimmage. The line gave me time, and I just had to put it out there. He really made my job easy on that play."
In the 16-9 win over the Saints, Fuller led the Texans wide receivers with four receptions for 73 yards and the score
"That first one, it felt great," Fuller said. "Brock did great. Awesome feeling. There's definitely a lot of errors that I can get better at. I got to go back to work."
With back-to-back weeks of joint practices with the 49ers and Saints leading up to preseason games, the rookies have gotten plenty of work. However, even defensive matchups against Houston's defense in camp has been valuable.
"Those guys, the one thing, and I'm knocking on wood on this, is that they're out there every day," O'Brien said. "They've been healthy and that's the key. If you're out there every day and you're able to go up against Johnathan Joseph and Kareem Jackson and Kevin Johnson and (A.J.) Bouye every single day and you can stay healthy, then you've got a chance to improve. That's been a big key for those guys."
The Texans improve to 2-0 on the preseason and will host the Arizona Cardinals in a nationally-televised game. Kickoff is set for Sunday at 3 p.m. CT.
See photos as the Texans arrived for Saturday night's preseason game vs. the Saints.
