Houston Trades for Marvin Harrison Jr.

The Texans acquired wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr. in a trade, adding him to a depth chart that has been reshuffled repeatedly since July. He shows up third on the receiver chart behind Jared Wayne and Kayshon Boutte, which tells you something about how thin this room got before the move.

The reunion angle is real. Harrison and C.J. Stroud played together at Ohio State, where they built the kind of chemistry that tends to travel. Stroud threw for 3,503 yards and 21 touchdowns last season working largely without a true alpha receiver — Collins missed time, Higgins is gone for the year with a torn ACL, Dell is on injured reserve. The front office spent the summer patching the position with veterans. This is a different kind of answer.

Collins is back and active, so Houston now has two receivers worth game-planning around, which is something they haven't had healthy at the same time for most of this young season. The next few weeks will show whether the Stroud-Harrison connection picks up where it left off in college, or whether it needs time to rebuild in a pro system. My read: the familiarity helps more than it hurts, and it probably helps quickly.