00:00Kevin Clark is part of ESPN's NFL crew. He was on one of the shows. One of the more well
00:05-dressed
00:07internet personalities. Well-dressed, good head of hair. But he does for, he's not a TV guy,
00:11he's more of an internet guy, and yet he dresses like he's on a broadcast desk, which usually ends
00:16up, usually that looks dorky, but he pulls it off. Pulls it off. I think this was on actual
00:21television yesterday. Yeah, he was, he was on ESPN. Yeah, yeah, so he was, so he was talking
00:27about the Texans, and this is what he had to say about the Texans. If C.J. Stroud improves,
00:33he's got good news for you guys. I don't think it's an overstatement, guys, to say that he's the
00:38biggest X factor in the league, because we just saw the Seattle Seahawks ride above average
00:44quarterback play, okay, and an elite defense to a Super Bowl, okay? The Texans defense is just as
00:51good, and C.J. Stroud has the capability to be a lot better than Sam Darnold. So if C.J.
00:57Stroud
00:58regains that form, we're talking about a Super Bowl. He was the first player in history last year
01:04to have five interceptions and five fumbles in one single postseason. He did it in two games.
01:09That's like Babe Ruth, 154 games, you know, hitting home runs and all that stuff,
01:13but with turnovers, okay? And the reason, usually, the guys don't get more than that,
01:18is because they don't win a playoff game. He won playoff games because of that defense.
01:22Take a step forward. It's Super Bowl. Okay, so the very first thing he said there is
01:26kind of a version of something I've been saying, which is I think C.J. Stroud,
01:30league-wide, is the most intriguing player this offseason because of the direction the Texans
01:35could go if he gets better, the contract situation, all those things. He calls him
01:39the biggest X factor in the upcoming season. Yeah, I think that's fair. Sometimes we worry about,
01:45you know, whether or not we're reading too much into this or that or the other thing,
01:49but C.J. Stroud is a guy that when you look at the people who watch film and the people
01:56who really
01:56pay attention and everything, he's in a rare spot where I think a lot of other quarterbacks at this
02:03point in their career, people in the national media would have given up on. And there's just still
02:09the good and the potential there for C.J. is such that people are still really in a wait-and
02:16-see
02:16mode. And this year feels like there'll be the point of no return where, yeah, you got to stake
02:23your flag on just what C.J. Stroud is as a quarterback. And that's where it's 100% correct.
02:31Like, if C.J., if you end up getting the promise of C.J. Stroud this season and then you
02:37add it to
02:38that defense doing anything similar to what they did last year, yeah, that's the Seattle Seahawks.
02:45Yeah.
02:46And Darnold wasn't as impressive in the second half of the season last year, but obviously they're a
02:52very good football team. It's not an oversimplification. All you need, it's simple,
02:59is a really good quarterback. Or no, if you have an above-average quarterback,
03:04then yeah, that is a ready-to-win-the-Super Bowl type of football team.
03:08Let me ask you this. Are we oversimplifying the defensive part of the equation here?
03:13It's not an oversimplification. It's a tendency to just think that you can run it back and the
03:20defense is always going to be just as good.
03:21Anybody who's talking about what we're talking about right now just assumes the defense is going
03:26to be amazing next year.
03:27Which is, and that's the dicey part of it because really good defenses aren't as dependable as really
03:34good passing offenses. That's just been the general rule for the last 20 years or so. It's a lot harder
03:40to have an awesome defense year after year after year than it is to have a really good passing
03:44offense because so much of that is tied to the quarterback. The difference with the Texans this
03:48year is that they're returning everybody. Tim Settle is really the only notable departure on defense.
03:55And even as you lose him, you're bringing in Reed Blankenship at the back end of the defense,
04:01which was the one spot that you didn't have a stable starter all last year. So I don't think
04:06it's an oversimplification. It's just, it's that thing that was drilled into my head over and over
04:12and over again in the NFL every single year. It's that, man, no matter what you did last year,
04:17you're starting fresh this year. You can't just go into a season thinking, oh yeah, look at how good
04:21we were. And we're just going to pick right up where we left off. That's what D'Amico and Matt
04:27Burke and everybody is telling that defense. But looking at it from the outside in, yeah,
04:32unless those guys, unless a few of those guys all of a sudden lose interest in football,
04:37or obviously if a bunch of them get injured, it's really hard to envision them not still being an
04:42elite defense. The injuries are the big thing. They were so lucky with health on the defensive side
04:47of the ball last year that it's almost impossible to be able to expect that again. Like literally
04:52the top seven guys that you would think of when you think of the foundation of that defense
04:58missed a combined total of like six games. You know, Petrie missed, Petrie missed a few games
05:03with a concussion. They rested Kamari Lassiter in the last game of the season. There's one he played
05:09through his oblique injuries a couple of times. Yep. Yep. He played in all those games, but he was a
05:14little bit banged up during the season. That's interesting the way you frame it though, in terms
05:17of the continuity on the defense that yeah, like really the only guy they're losing from that
05:21defense last year that mattered was Tim settle and they're bringing in Reed Blankenship. And I saw
05:28when you frame it that way, I'm like, okay, we know the safety play at that other safety spot
05:33was shoddy last year. If they had made a trade when settle was healthy, what if it, what if their
05:38trade
05:39deadline trade last year, Seth was a traded Tim settle to the Eagles for Reed Blankenship?
05:44How would we have felt at that point? You know, I look at that. I'm like, I probably would have
05:48thought, you know, you're dealing from a position of, you know, like settle is a journeyman in a
05:54contract year and Reed Blankenship was also in a contract year, but boy, he really like that.
05:59That secondary is tied down now. You know, I, I might've felt okay about that trade because
06:04essentially that's what it that's, that's what's gotten swapped out and swapped in are those two guys.
06:08That's an interesting way to, to look at it. Yeah. And I guess along the defensive line,
06:13I think that's the part that's okay. That's where we're kind of sleeping a little bit on
06:18is that if you start adding up snap counts. So if you think on average, like starters might get
06:251000 to 1200, like, or the total snaps in the NFL season, 1100 or so, give or take, I think
06:31like
06:33Tim sell took 383 snaps. Mario Edwards took 282 snaps. Um, you get down to Danico Autry and guys
06:43like that Danico Autry and Derek Barnett, I think added up to about 600 snaps. So you're, you're
06:50working on almost a thousand snaps of guys on the defensive line that aren't there anymore.
06:54You got to go find. Yeah. That that's so Logan Hall, they sign, but the edge, the depth at the
07:00edge rushers, that's where I'm a little bit concerned at this point, because if you draft
07:04a guy, it's not guaranteed that he's going to be a viable guy. So there, they got to do something
07:09there. If you really want to be able to say, okay, we're rolling it back and we're going to be
07:12just
07:13as good. Yeah. And one of our listeners the other day said, how come I keep bringing up backup
07:17defensive end? It's because the Texans play their backup defensive ends a lot. Yeah. It's not like
07:22they just only come in every now and then those guys are going to get 20 to 30 snaps
07:26per game. Well, and I would point out that Will Anderson Jr. played 17 games for the first
07:32time in his career last year. Yeah. You know, and Daniel Hunter played in every game. If I'm
07:36not mistaken, those two played all 17 games last season. Again, the, the, the football gods
07:42have a way of making those types of things even out over time. So you need some depth at
07:45that position. Yeah. The guys just by way of last year, cause the defense wasn't necessarily
07:50out there for a whole bunch of snaps because they were so good at getting three and out
07:53the most snaps on the defense with 992. Okay. So they didn't even get anybody to a thousand
07:59last year because they were, cause they were so good at getting, they played so few snaps
08:03as a team. I told you that the best defense I was ever on, uh, it was, there'd be games
08:09where it felt like you had to go get a workout in after the game. You've mentioned, we'd be
08:13out there for, especially I was a first and second down guy. I'd come out of games where I had
08:19like 20 snaps in a game. I was going to ask you, what's the least number of snaps you
08:23played as a regular, as a starter, like I was a starter and I had 20 or 25 snaps.
08:28I felt so healthy. That's like a day off. So when you got your game check that following
08:33week, I'm sure you were like, I didn't really earn this. You know, I, Oh yeah, that's exactly
08:37how I was. Yeah. Yeah. Like it's all the charity. That's right. That's right. That's what I
08:41did. Um, so, uh, so yeah, so CJ, uh, CJ improving Superbowl, uh, according to Kevin Clark of ESPN.
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