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Seth and Sean dive into what DeMeco Ryans had to say about moving on from Jerrod Johnson, adding David Montgomery at RB, and the state of the team at the moment.
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00:00NFL owners meetings in Phoenix this week, and obviously all the heads, most of the head coaches
00:06and the GMs are there. By the way, Seth, before we get to D'Amico, did you happen to see
00:12the story
00:13about the head coach's picture, which you and I broke down in some somewhat excruciating detail
00:19yesterday on the show, was missing a couple coaches. I believe there were only 30 coaches
00:23in the picture. Yeah, I remember I was looking for Todd Monken because there were a couple guys
00:27in there like Joe Brady. I didn't realize Joe. Big dude. If I looked just at his face, I might
00:33have
00:34realized it was Joe Brady. I didn't realize Joe Brady was as big as he is. Yep. He's Joe Brady.
00:38Hulking brute. Joe Brady and Nick Sirianni were the two guys in that picture who surprised me as to
00:43how big they are. Yeah. One of the guys that didn't make the picture was Todd Monken, but he wanted
00:49to
00:49be in the picture. He was just getting a haircut for the head coach's picture, so he missed the
00:55picture because he was getting a haircut for the picture. He was late to the picture because he
01:00was getting a haircut for the picture. He is going to make a great Cleveland Browns head coach. That
01:04sounds exactly like what you're hoping for in a head football coach. Yeah. Somebody who can juggle
01:09multiple tasks and everything. Right. Right. Right. Sounds like a confused old man. Where you been
01:14getting a haircut for the picture? Oh, the one we just took 20 minutes ago? Yeah. Yeah. All right.
01:20Um, so owners meeting D'Amico Ryans, who was, I would imagine 10 minutes early for the picture.
01:26If I had to guess D'Amico Ryans, he definitely didn't have any haircut. He definitely did not
01:30need a haircut. No. Um, here was D'Amico Ryans. This was interesting. D'Amico Ryans. We know
01:35Gerard Johnson parted ways with the, uh, with the Texans quarterbacks coach for the first three
01:41seasons of CJ Stroud's career. Uh, Jerry Szaplinski, who was on the staff last year gets promoted
01:47to, uh, to quarterbacks coach. Here was D'Amico Ryans speaking on the departure of
01:52Gerard Johnson. Why was it time? Yeah. Yeah. Just looking at everything where we were, you
01:57know, uh, last three years and how we finished up the last season. For me, sometimes everybody
02:03says sometimes change the scenery is good. Sometimes it's a change of voice. It's good. So how can
02:08we, for me, how can we help CJ the best? Like maybe it's a changing of the voice, right? Who's
02:16leading that role? Who's really giving him the information? Who's coaching him up? Can
02:22that move the needle a little bit more? So everything that we do, from my perspective
02:26as a coach, is a lot of tough decisions that have to happen. A lot of people don't always
02:31agree with it and that's okay. But for me, it's my role to really make sure that Texas
02:36are in as best position as we can be in. And so change has to happen for that. Hopefully
02:43change. Okay. I mean, something had to change, you know, that's right. Well, and you know
02:48what on, um, on my YouTube channel, Abigail, who also watches on our YouTube stream for sports
02:54radio, she made a great point. And it was one of those points where I'm like, you know
02:59what? Thank you, Abigail for seeing things clearly. I honestly felt stupid after I'd done
03:05a long video on this, this very comment by D'Amico Abigail said in practices and sidelines,
03:11it was Szaplinski already talking to CJ last year. Gerard was talking more to Mills and
03:15Mertz. Um, and she's a hundred percent correct at least just by, you know, the eyeball tests
03:21and everything kind of so watching during game days, Szaplinski was talking to CJ a lot.
03:25CJ was gushing about Szaplinski and how he's kind of like an older uncle and, uh, and all
03:30of that. So I think in terms of the way things operate on a day to day basis, a lot
03:35of this
03:36change had probably already been made. Um, and that it's a formality more so than anything
03:42else. Yeah. That's, it's funny. You say that now that I've come to think of it and yes,
03:46thank you, Abigail. Come to think of it. We get a lot throughout the season. We get a lot
03:50of the cutups of games, you know, on things like iron sharpens iron and whatnot, you know,
03:54the videos series they do. And now that you mentioned that the shots of the sideline
04:00where CJ is being handed the tablet and he's sitting down at the bench, it is Szaplinski.
04:05Now that you mentioned it, that's sitting next to him or coming over to him. And the thing I see
04:09too, from people who are nervous about, I think there's two things that people are nervous about
04:14with this sequence. I'll call it a sequence of moves sets with Seth, with Gerard Johnson leaving
04:18and Jerry Szaplinski getting promoted is one that it's Szaplinski's a Kaylee guy and Kaylee's a
04:24Casario guy. I'm talking about the perception here that they're all Patriot guys in some reason.
04:28And this is Gerard getting squeezed by the Patriot way in some way. That's one. That's the fan saying
04:33that. It's not me saying that. And number two, oh my God, CJ was close with Gerard. He's known him
04:38since high school. He's friends with Gerard. He's not going to like this. People can like more than
04:42one person. You know, that's true. Yes. Yeah. It's okay. I found that in life. It's okay for CJ
04:48to also be very fond of Jerry Szaplinski with, which by most of the, you know, by the footage that
04:54we
04:54see, it appears that, and by everything we've seen CJ say about Szaplinski is that, you know,
04:59this hopefully goes very, very smoothly. It'll be a nice transition.
05:02And, you know, and D'Amico was asked that question, I believe by a Philadelphia reporter,
05:07at least that's where the Twitter account I saw was from a Philadelphia reporter who,
05:11you know, he's interested because Gerard's up in Philadelphia. Yeah. Yeah. Abigail's awesome.
05:19She's, I think she lives in Australia. Okay. She watches our show. So I don't know what time
05:24it is in Australia right now. She, she feels like a bit of like, it sounds like a bit of
05:28an
05:28ombudsman for the show where she can kind of come in. Oh no, she's awesome. Because even when she
05:33disagrees with me, she's super polite. Yeah. I meant it in a good way. Like she's coming in going,
05:37hey guys, uh, you know, this should, like you just said, like she's pointing out things.
05:42That's true. Yeah. Like she'll snack check her for me or something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's
05:45kind of nice. She's a Bible study teacher. I don't know if that's her profession or just
05:48something she does in her spare time. No kidding. But she's also super cool about like whenever I
05:53either A, get blatantly sacrilegious or B, make a mistake when I'm trying to quote some Bible verse
05:59or something. Yeah. She's really cool about it. Yeah. She's a cool Bible study teacher. Those are the best.
06:04She's not one of these fake ones that, you know, you had when you were a kid where,
06:08yeah, she's meanwhile, she's the town whore also, but she shows up at Bible study with alcohol on her
06:14breath. See talking about, uh, uh, you know, trying to, trying to preach to you. Abigail's the
06:19opposite of that. Very meta thing we're doing right now. Like we're pointing out how cool Abigail is
06:23that she's not the Bible study town whore style one. And she is going to stick around and continue to
06:29watch the show despite us talking about town whores. And it's 12, 12 AM in Kingston, Australia,
06:36right? She's up all night listening to us, huh? It's only 11, 12 in Canberra. Okay. Okay. It's
06:42nighttime though, for sure. She's just 8, 12 in Perth chilling later. No, if she's on Christmas Island,
06:47it's 7, 12 PM. Okay. A lot of time zones in Australia. It's a big size of a continent.
06:53Go figure. Yeah. Um, here was D'Amico Ryan's, uh, yesterday at the owner's meetings,
07:00um, asked about David Montgomery, two things, losing Joe Mixon, but replacing him with David
07:04Montgomery. First and foremost, Joe, I think the world of Joe and what he was capable of doing for
07:10our team. Uh, he's an outstanding player, outstanding, you know, energy provider for our
07:16team, but you know, losing him was tough to be able to come back this year and add David Montgomery.
07:21She called knuckles. That's good. We like that physical brand of football that he brings,
07:27but the consistency, Dave is consistent runner. He knows how to get more than what he's blocked
07:33for. Uh, very consistent, efficient. So I'm, I'm excited to work with him. You know, first meeting
07:38him, he's all football, right? He's serious. He's locked in. He's all football and he's eager
07:44for that opportunity, right? To really be that guy, to really carry the load. The, uh, so that
07:51was from Aaron Wilson. And, uh, the reason D'Amico said, Oh, they call him knuckles. That's good.
07:56Uh, cause Aaron, Aaron's got like a gimmick now where he brings up a player's nickname. He does.
08:00He does. Who did you do it with last year where nobody knew who they were talking about? Oh,
08:04it's, um, Chris Jones, Chris Jones. They call him stone cold stone cold. Yeah. Cause he asked
08:09somebody a question about stone cold and he didn't mention, he didn't say Chris Jones. He just said
08:13stone cold. I think it was CJ. CJ was like, who, what are you talking about? I'm here for
08:19it. I like it. I like that gimmick. Um, so D'Amico didn't know that, uh, that Montgomery's
08:25called knuckles. He didn't. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. Cause that would mean that D'Amico
08:30might be online too much if he knew that. Right. But he is, I think this is why I'm trying
08:35to, I'm not trying to throw shade at Joe Mixon whatsoever because, but they're different
08:40styles of running backs. I think if there's something about Montgomery that might be better
08:44in terms of consistently turning out yardage, even if the blocking isn't perfect in front
08:50of them, Montgomery, I think is a little bit more prone to just hitting the hole and running
08:55the play. That's called, uh, Mixon would improvise a little bit. And there are times where he's
09:00trying to bounce it outside where he should just be taking the guaranteed four yards. I don't
09:04fault Mixon for that necessarily, partly because it was hard to trust the blocking.
09:10That was, that was a survival mechanism. Yeah. So, and he's very capable of hitting those
09:16home runs too. And the Texans needed some of those home runs when nothing else was going
09:19well offensively. But I think right now where we're still just hoping to get a, a, a viable
09:25rushing attack. Okay. You're not going to be top five in the league. I don't care. Just
09:29be consistently turning out yardage. Montgomery's wired a little bit more like that. Yeah, I think
09:33so too. And D'Amico put it really well there. I thought, which is, you know, he, he gets
09:38more yards than the play is blocked for, you know, that's that, that those are my kind
09:42of running backs, man. Well, short yardage, especially to those various instances, like
09:46in the Seattle game or the multiple other instances where the Texans ran the same play
09:51three times in a row and didn't get any yardage there, you know, at the time you don't want
09:55to say, well, gosh, maybe with Joe Mixon out there, they would have gotten that, but
09:58it's true. The blocking doesn't have to be pristine. If you're trying to get six inches
10:02and you've got a guy that's a hammer in the backfield, the Texans had enough failure inside
10:07the opposing team's five yard line in the deep in the red zone to where if David Montgomery
10:12is on the team last year, they might've gone from being a horrible red zone team to an above
10:16average red zone team. You score three or four more touchdowns there down there. It drastically
10:23shifts your percentage of success rate inside the red zone. So David Montgomery has got a chance
10:28to be a big difference maker for this team this year. Here's one more from D'Amico Ryans
10:32with Aaron Wilson. And at that point, there were a few other media members, I believe, peppering
10:37him with questions, but just sort of on the, on the state of the team right now.
10:41Feeling really good about where we are. Free agency. I always want a great job of just setting
10:46the team. We try to feel some of the needs and boys that we have on our team. And I
10:50feel
10:51like we've done that. The main thing for me, you know, in this offseason cycle, we're
10:55really trying to enhance and improve our offensive line. We've added, you know, a couple of guys
11:01there getting Ed Ingram back was, was really good for us. I thought Ed had a really great
11:05year. So he really improved. Coach Popovich did a great job of helping him with that.
11:10Added Evan Brown, Wyatt Teller, Brady Smith, three tough guys, experienced guys, been in the
11:16league for a while, who can come in. We can go play right now. We're also going to add more
11:21guys that enhances the competition, but really like where we're sitting right now.
11:25Okay. So he's the, he's saying flat out there, there's going to be more guys coming into that
11:28room. And we know that the draft's coming up in three weeks. I'd be stunned if they didn't
11:33take an offensive lineman with one of those four picks they've got on the first two days
11:37of the draft. Yeah. I think in a lot of ways you can see as they try to maybe replicate
11:43the
11:43success they've had on the defensive line, the defensive line, since D'Amico has gotten
11:48here, you know, going back to Jerry Hughes being in that room has had a bunch of veteran
11:53players, 30 plus year old guys. And then you bring in your younger guys and you get the
11:58money. Like Will Anderson obviously is the biggest one, but then guys like Tommy Togiai
12:02as well. They really benefit from having that veteran leadership in there. And I think the
12:06O-line is poised to be that way now where you've got veterans along the offensive line,
12:12but you've, but there are also guys that are on short-term contracts and in their thirties.
12:18And at some point you're going to have to have younger guys played this year, really. Because
12:24you know, Braden Smith, Wyatt Teller, Trent Brown, they've all got injury histories and they're
12:31all in their thirties. If you're somebody, somebody is going to play this year in relief of those
12:36guys. And you want it to be hopefully a guy that's got a lot of potential.
12:40Yeah. That's as we were listening to D'Amico talk about free agency there. And he, you know,
12:46you could tell he's, he's cautious. And Nick is the same way. Casario, they're both in the
12:51quotes they've had this week about free agency. Um, Ben, cause Nick was on with Texans all
12:57access. They, they both been very cautious about not trying to be over the top about this group
13:02of free agents that they brought in. You know, they're, they're, they're very measured
13:05and what they're saying. And as D'Amico's talking, Seth, in my mind, I'm going, okay,
13:09I'm excited about this class of free agents because of what they've addressed. I think
13:12by and large, I think the fans seem to skew more towards approval of what they've done
13:17in free agency than criticism of what they've done in free agency. So what could torpedo this
13:22thing to where this time a year from now, we're going, man, that boy, we, we way overhyped
13:28that. And I think you nailed it. I think it's health. I think if these guys stay healthy,
13:31I think we're going to look at these acquisitions as being what we expect them to be, which is
13:36a solidifying effect on the offensive line. You know, no more, no more rotating guards
13:41in week six anymore. You know, just the, if they're healthy, it's the, it's the closest
13:46thing we've had to that group of five that you just send out there every week and you
13:51go try to, you know, hammer in the run, protect CJ and do offensive line things. And I think
13:57when D'Amico says at the end there, that they're going to add more guys to that room.
14:00If you, if you just look at trends with the Texans in the draft, since Nick Casario got
14:05here, if you just look at trends and you buy into trends, the easiest thing to predict is
14:10they're going to take an offensive lineman in the first or second round. Cause in every
14:15draft where Nick Casario has had first and or second round picks, they've taken an offensive
14:21lineman in the first or second round. Now it hasn't always been great. 2022 is Kenyon green.
14:26I mean, there's people driving right now that are probably going to have to pull over cause
14:30they're going to get sick when I rattle off the names, but it, it, it, it, it's a fact
14:35that they've at least deployed the draft capital that way. Have they deployed it? Well, by and
14:39large, no, but Kenyon green, 2022 juice scrugs, second round pick 2023, Blake Fisher, second
14:47round pick 2024, Ariante Ursary, second round pick 2025. They've got three picks in the first 59
14:53picks. One of those will be an offensive lineman. I'm almost certain of that. The, uh, as far as
14:57Nick Casario and people skepticism over him, drafting offensive lineman, it's very, very fair.
15:03The thing I always try to tell myself is that if you got to look at how many guys has
15:11he actually
15:11selected in the top couple of rounds, it's been four and try to figure out realistically in a very
15:17small sample size. What should you hope to get out of those guys with a second round pick on
15:23average, you get about a 33% success rate of getting a guy who's going to be just a bona
15:29fide
15:30starter in the league and every play started like it's hard to find stats on this. Cause it all depends
15:34on, you know, how you qualify it. Um, in the first round, it's more around 50% with offensive linemen.
15:41That's for, that's for all those positions, those percentages with offensive linemen, people tend to be
15:46more successful and with the first and second round picks have a higher success rate, but it
15:51still is only four guys. And only one of those guys in the, uh, in the first round, that was
15:56a
15:56failure. The other second round picks out of three of those guys, if Ariante nursery works out,
16:01that's, that's about the success rate you should be hoping for the Kenyon green one is the one
16:06that's hard to get past for multiple reasons, obviously. But I just, I always tell myself that
16:11it's four players. Like it's, it's too small a sample size to take a guy who's drafted incredibly
16:17well in the secondary. And I think really well in all the other positions to say, well, based on
16:22these four picks, based on three of these four picks, not working out, you're awful at drafting
16:27these guys. I just, I have a hard time doing that. No, I get it. It's a small, relatively
16:31speaking, it's a small sample size. I would submit to that with nursery being the one that
16:36succeeded. He's arguably succeeding at the most important position out of the five along the
16:41offensive line, certainly the one that gets paid the most out there on the marketplace,
16:45which is left tackle. If you're going to succeed on one hit on a left tackle.
16:48The interesting thing is that this will be the second year since D'Amico started focusing more
16:54of his attention on the offense. And that's what I'm intrigued by D'Amico and Casario as a team have
17:00done an awesome job of identifying guys that are going to work in this defense. Now that D'Amico
17:05is devoting more of his time to the offense and he wants it to look more like the defense,
17:11not, you know, in terms of style of play and types of guys and everything. I'm hopeful that man,
17:17yeah, D'Amico just devoting that mental bandwidth to this task more so than the defense is going to
17:23pay dividends. Yeah. It's almost like it's, it feels almost like D'Amico, the way you lay it out
17:29there, like the, the offense has hired D'Amico Ryans as a consultant, right? Yeah. He's in the
17:34building. He's a consultant for the offense now. He's their, uh, he's their zip recruiter for the
17:39offense. Yeah, exactly right. I've been hearing good things about this kid D'Amico Ryans over on
17:43the defensive side of the ball. Maybe we should pull him into our meetings. Get his opinion and
17:47see what he thinks about this. I'm going to ask D'Amico about it. Yeah, let's put him on the
17:49spot.
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