If there was an H-Town-centric version of the Chinese calendar, 2021 would be The Year of The Linebacker.
Upon his arrival, new Houston Texans general manger Nick Caserio went out of his way to sign a lot of linebackers. Then, he doubled down to sign more.
Once he had them all, it was clear he couldn’t keep them all, so in a bit of general manager chicanery, Whitney Mercilus, Jonathan Greenard and Jacob Martin were all re-designated as defensive linemen. Normally, this is the sort of thing GMs do to slash the salary cap impact of EDGE rushers, in relation to how much money they would make as outside linebackers.