Mike Celizic

If the Houston Texans wanted to make their fans do the happy dance on draft day, they would've picked USC's great running back, Reggie Bush. But they wanted to make their defense dominant.

So they they'll take the man who can anchor their defense for the next dozen or more years, Mario Williams.

We all know who Bush is and what he can do. Winning the Heisman Trophy and being number one on just about every Saturday's highlight reel does that for you. And nothing generates excitement in football like a great running back.

But when you build your team on great running back, you're building on quicksand. No runner taken at the top of the draft has ever taken his team to the Super Bowl, let alone won it. And, when you look back at the college season that was, you may remember that Bush couldn't take his team to a second consecutive BCS championship against Texas.

Defense isn't nearly as exciting as offense, and it's hard for fans on draft day to get cranked up about getting a defensive player with the first pick in the draft. But defense wins championships, and great defensive ends who are big, strong, fast, agile, athletic and genuine difference makers are one of the rarest commodities out there.

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Think about it. Think about having someone like Reggie White anchoring your D-line for the next football generation. Think about all the Super Bowl teams and all the great defenders who defined them, from Bob Lilly to Mean Joe Greene to Lawrence Taylor to Ray Lewis to Richard Seymour.

N.C. State’s Mario Williams, the scouts agree, could be that kind of player. He's huge — 6-7 and a Happy Meal short of 300 pounds. He's fast — turns the 40 in less than 4.7 seconds. He's strong — 35 reps at the combine with 225 pounds in the bench press. He's athletic — a 40 1/2-inch vertical jump.

You've probably only really started hearing about him in the past couple of weeks as the draftniks — blinking against the light as they emerge from caves in which they spend the year sorting through thousands of players, pondering Wonderlic scores and conducting mock drafts — start to take over the sports talk shows.

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He had 14 1/2 sacks last year for North Carolina State, after which he declared for the draft after three years of college ball. Just about every draft board has him rated at the top of the list of defensive players. More important, according to Dan Patrick on ESPN radio, at least half a dozen NFL teams have Williams at the top of their draft charts, ahead of Bush, ahead of Matt Leinart, ahead of Vince Young, ahead of everyone.

It was tough call for the Texans. On the one hand, there was Bush, the pick the fans want and a player who can do some electrifying things rushing, catching and returning the ball. Bush is so very, very good, that even I have been sorely tempted to break my first rule of drafting, which is to never throw away the top pick on a running back, and instead go with something more useful and harder to come by.

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But a running back’s shelf life is generally short. And if they do survive the pounding of the game, they don't win titles, especially for teams like the Texans who have neglected to assemble an offensive line good enough to be called mediocre. An awful lot of Super Bowl teams have done just fine with running backs picked up further down in the draft.

But few Super Bowl teams have arrived at the big game without a stout defense. (The St. Louis Rams come to mind, but darned few others.)

By taking Williams, the Texans' defense is set. Put him at end and fill in with complimentary pieces. They go from a so-so defense to one that makes offensive coordinators tear their their hair out, just like that.

After that, Houston should start collecting offensive linemen, the more the better. If there's a wide-out they think could develop into a top player, toss him in the shopping cart, too. But they have their quarterback, David Carr, and they have Dominick Davis at running back, a perfectly serviceable ball carrier who averages better than four yards a carry and 1,000 a season. He's not Bush, but he doesn't have to be.

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