As Hopkins, 27, sat down at his locker after the game, surrounded by silence and his teammates, he had two thoughts: that the Texans had given their long-suffering fan base a future to look forward to and that they would need to end their string of playoff disappointments without him. The wideout had spoken to his family throughout the season about his desire to start over, with a new team, and, more specifically, with a new boss. He believed that Bill O’Brien, the lone NFL coach to also hold a general manager title, had been shopping him for more than a year.
That January afternoon at Arrowhead Stadium he tugged off his jersey, met with reporters and crisscrossed the corridors until he found his mother, Sabrina Greenlee. “We talked about this before the year,” she told him. “I know you guys had success as a team and you got further than in the past. But if you’re ready to go, I will be your No. 1 supporter.”
Anyone who knew Hopkins, his story and his relationship with O’Brien would understand, he thought. At that point, though, few did. His Houston tenure was over, despite the teammates he loved, the quarterback he bonded with and the city that had become his adopted home. What Hopkins knew was, “that asking for a little raise would lead to the outcome that I got,” he says, “which is the outcome that I wanted.”
Hopkins took the call from O’Brien while working out with Julio Jones in Los Angeles. Their initial reaction? “We both smiled,” Hopkins says. The coach adopted a businesslike approach for the brief exchange, his tone and message exactly what the receiver had expected, given the tenor of their interactions over the past six seasons. “There was no relationship,” Hopkins says. “Make sure you put that in there. There’s not a lot to speak about.”
Watson, meanwhile, had just finished his own workout with his private quarterbacks coach, Quincy Avery, who saw dozens of messages about the trade when he picked up his phone. Avery told Watson, who thought he was joking. The quarterback ran to grab his own device and sat down immediately, trying to make sense of the news; even he was shocked. “Wow,” Watson said, over and over, before posting a Drake lyric on Twitter, the one that resonated across the NFL: “iconic duos rip and split at the seams.”
As Irvin assessed the trade from afar, he continued to feel as if he wasn’t hearing the full story. This divorce, like most divorces but especially sports breakups, couldn’t have been just about money. Every player on every team wants more. So Irvin spoke to Hopkins, who said all the right things, about respecting O’Brien and wanting a new start. But Hopkins also phoned back two days later, and in that call they discussed an earlier meeting with O’Brien that helped explain why he had wanted out. It took place during last season, which was odd because O’Brien and Hopkins had rarely met privately before. Hopkins can’t recall his coach ever asking about his personal life, or expressing concerns about his off-field choices. But in that meeting Hopkins told Irvin that, in reference to Hopkins’s friends, O’Brien brought up another player he had coached, former Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, the convicted murderer who hanged himself in prison. O’Brien also used the term “baby mothers” to refer to the mothers of Hopkins’s three children, two boys and a girl. (He is not married.) O’Brien confidants say they doubt the coach used those exact words. But because the men lacked depth in their relationship, the sentiments that O’Brien expressed didn’t come across as genuine concerns for Hopkins and his well-being. They seemed like answers to why they had no relationship in the first place. They felt like judgments, from a coach who didn’t seem to care about him—plus the outdated contract.
Hopkins doesn’t deny the meeting but prefers to not delve deeper, saying only, “If I let the judgment of other people dictate the reality of my life, I wouldn’t be in the position I’m in now.” O’Brien, citing a similar desire to avoid a public back-and-forth, declined to comment beyond, “We wish him the very best in Arizona.”
Once Irvin shared the meeting’s contents on ESPN, anonymous sources began to paint a picture of Hopkins as a malcontent who had started to decline. Hopkins believes the sources hoped to tarnish his name and justify a trade that had been widely panned.
Hopkins did address some of the anonymous criticisms with SI. But first, he said, “Obviously, we know where all that’s coming from.”
He didn’t practice often enough. Hopkins says that stems mostly from 2018, when he tore ligaments in his left ankle, requiring tightrope surgery; suffered other maladies (like turf toe); and was iffy to play most of the season, missing practices but no games. Notably, the Texans won nine straight in his best pro campaign, making it hard to argue his absences hurt his team. “No evidence,” Hopkins says. “Go back and check the practice film.”
He hung with the wrong crowd. Hopkins laughs and says his best friend and housemate is his cousin, D.J. Greenlee, a marketer for a sports agency in California. He spends time with fashion and furniture designers, architects, developers, family and fellow athletes. Business leaders send him books to read. The latest: Extreme Ownership, How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win. The volume is fitting, given the events of this spring, because Hopkins says it details how the best teams come together. The relevant takeaway? The necessity of organizational alignment.
His play dipped in 2019, when his yards after the catch and yards per target went down. That ignores mitigating factors. Speedy wideouts Kenny Stills and Will Fuller both missed significant time, allowing defenses to consistently double Hopkins. He still caught 104 passes, still gained 1,165 receiving yards and still had a catch percentage (69.3) that nearly matched his high, from a year earlier (70.6). Most No. 1 receivers would consider that a career year. All for a playoff T-E-A-M, he says.
What goes unmentioned is that Hopkins loved Houston, was only 20 when the Texans drafted him, that he became a leader and a mentor, immersed himself in the community, stood up for those who could not stand for themselves, found a quarterback he believed in and led Houston to the postseason four times. It’s not the city he has an issue with—and he’s not the person the fan base now targets with its ire. A Change.org petition seeking the ouster of O’Brien has more than 23,000 signatures.
Hopkins can’t help but think what he might have accomplished with Watson had they played their entire careers together, two kids from Clemson with strong ties to single mothers who had battled the worst that life could heave at them, now scrapping with Mahomes for AFC supremacy as a new NFL era dawned. Hopkins will still root for Watson. “Deshaun is going to be amazing without me,” he says.
As for O’Brien? The anonymous sources? Teams have different philosophies, Hopkins says, and he must respect them. “The Patriots”—where O’Brien was an assistant—“win championships without a highly paid receiver,” Hopkins says. “Some of those philosophies do work.”
Hopkins called his mother as those anonymous sources drilled holes in his reputation. “I’m not perfect,” he told her. “I’ve made mistakes. But after what we’ve been through . . .” He trailed off. She knew.
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