One of the things that old time journalists used to do was something they called a special comment. It was something out of the ordinary that they would do when something was sticking in their craw. As you might imagine, there is always a ton of chatter amongst the masthead in between games and behind the scenes. This week was no different. A topic came up that was so important that I thought I should mention it here.
The Texans came into the offseason with the fifth highest total expenditure on their
offensive line. Their 50.3 million ranked behind only the Panthers, Chiefs, Rams, and Falcons. Obviously, we know the results. So, Nick Caserio decided to cut back. According to Spotrac, the Texans have cut that amount to 31.74 million. That amount currently ranks 26th in offensive line expenditures.
It would be simplistic to suggest that the Texans are cheap. It would be simplistic and wrong. According to Spotrac, they are currently 11th in total salary and stand 22nd in available cap room. They rank 12th in dead cap space. All of those figures would indicate that they are not miserly. They aren’t spending money like drunken sailors, but they aren’t pinching pennies either. When you consider the looming contracts for Will Anderson and C.J. Stroud, the spending levels make perfect sense overall.
So, where does this leave the offensive line? Obviously, coming into the offseason it was the biggest question mark and following the first game, it remains the biggest question mark. So, it is fair to take a look back at the general decisions that were made. I generally put these into two categories. There is second guessing. We see a move. We were on board, but suddenly it doesn’t work out and so we pile on. Then, there is first guessing. This is when we were actively scratching our heads at the time and it turns out we were right.
Shopping at the Bargain Bin
This isn’t to say that this team never spends big money. Danielle Hunter was a huge expenditure and the team paid handsomely for Stefon Diggs last season. Christian Kirk might not have broken the bank, but he is a bigger ticket guy as well. However, when we look at the tenure of Caserio we will see that he makes a number of small moves. Admittedly, sometimes this works out. If you acquire a six pack of bargain bin players then chances are that one of them will work out.
We could point to numerous examples over the years of guys that were brought in with little fanfare, but turned out to be pretty darn good players. However, that hasn’t worked on the offensive line. This is compounded when internal candidates are given deference for dubious reasons. The decision to hand the job to Kenyon Green last season without much competition and no one to be there if it didn’t work out is glaring.
That’s the part of this thing that doesn’t make sense. He tried this same thing last season at center and left guard. This year he is going with a combination of starters on the wrong side of 30 and backups that did not work in other places. Maybe one of those works out, but the odds of you finding three different starters on the interior of the line in the bargain bin seems far-fetched at best.
Taking the second half of the draft off
Airseontae Ersery could very well turn out to be a very good left tackle. He was moved to right tackle on Sunday because the team did not want to play Blake Fisher or Juice Scruggs in the game. Maybe that negatively impacted his performance. Maybe he would have been better on the left side. Maybe if Ed Ingram returns and Ersery moves back to left tackle things will be better. However, this gets back to the first guessing thing again,
Jarrett Patterson has turned out to be a useful player as a sixth round pick. Pick after pick on draft day came and everyone on the masthead was waiting for an interior lineman that never came. It was as if they decided they had addressed it in free agency. Clearly, that wasn’t the case. We were all saying it at the time. The fact that they keep moving Tytus Howard back inside is proof that they knew pretty early on that they didn’t have enough.
This brings us to the next point. It would seem logical that when an injury occurs, you want to have as much continuity as possible with a unit like the offensive line. Instead, you moved one tackle the opposite side, moved a tackle inside, and then another tackle off the bench when he hadn’t played in nearly two weeks. All you had to do was insert the backup guard and you could have kept the rest of the line intact. The fact that you didn’t speaks volumes.
The team played Blake Fisher sparingly and he got a 15 yard face mask in limited time. I’m not a draft expert and this falls under the second guessing category. It sure looks like the Texans blew two second round picks in Blake Fisher and Juice Scruggs. Again, I and others seem to be okay with the picks at the time. Others were not. That is usually how these things go. However, this begs the question: if these two are really unplayable then what are they doing on the roster?
Final Comments
Nick Caserio is a good general manager in the grand scheme of things. There are very few really awful contracts if any. Even the players that people think aren’t good can be moved on from without much fanfare. He has drafted gems in each of the past three drafts. I think any treatment of Caserio has to be fair and include these positive points in mind.
Maybe the offensive line is a work in progress that will take more than one year to fix. The Laremy Tunsil trade on balance was probably a good move. It needed to be done culturally and paying him probably precluded you from paying others. Yet, you didn’t pay any others. Teams like the Bears and Vikings spent big to fix their line. This is two offseasons in a row that the team has skimped and saved on the interior of the line. It is only one game, but it looks like it didn’t work again.
