Kevin Pierre-Louis is 29. He is now on his sixth team as he begins his seventh NFL season.
But 2020 was what he calls a "blessing.'' And his new employers, the Houston Texans, anticipate more blessings to come.
“It was a blessing just to be able to get the snaps, see things I’ve been seeing for a while and get out there and help the team and just taking advantage of an opportunity,” Pierre-Louis said of his experience last year with the Washington Football Team, where he started 11 of his available 14 games to help the WFT become one of the league's best defenses and the NFC East champ.
Pierre-Louis is considered a "coverage linebacker,'' and that's not a bad thing. At the same time, playing for a pair of former NFL linebackers - WFT head coach Ron Rivera and defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio - he found multiple ways to be impactful in the Washington defensive scheme. He collected 56 combined tackles, had three tackles for loss, recorded two quarterback hits, had two pass breakups, a forced fumble, and a sack.
Previous to last season, the 2014 fourth-round pick out of Boston College was considered a role player at best, along with being a special-teams contributor. That was largely the case in his stints with the Seattle Seahawks, Kansas City Chiefs, New York Jets and Chicago Bears.
But his time in Washington brought out something different in him - something that yet another NFL defensive guru, new Houston coordinator Lovie Smith, hopes to exploit within the Texans' installation of his 4-3 defense.
Back in Chicago, Rivera was the coordinator when Pierre-Louis was on the roster ... and the Bears' head coach was Lovie Smith.
Pierre-Louis said Lovie is more than “a coach,” that he’s “a mentor, a person to look up to, a person to really think of and listen to. The fact that I get the opportunity to play under him is something I won’t take for granted.”
Is Pierre-Louis' free-agency signing with Houston (two years and $7 million) the result of the NFL being a "who-you-know'' business? Sure. But it is also the result of Pierre-Louis having an understanding of this new scheme ... as well as him having earned the right to get snaps in it.
“In this league, you don’t know when the opportunities are going to come, so you just have to do your best when they show up to take advantage of them,'' Pierre-Louis said. "I did the best to my ability to do that last year.”
The Houston Texans want Kevin Pierre-Louis to "do his best'' ... one more time in 2021.
More must-reads: