00:00Now we're just talking about things like how excited people are for their top two picks
00:04in this draft. Keelan Rutledge and Cade McDonald. This is Emory Hunt, who is a regular guest on
00:11Ross Tucker's football podcast, the appropriately named Ross Tucker football podcast. This is
00:17Emory Hunt, one of the football analysts he has on pretty frequently, saying he loves what the
00:21Texans did in the draft. Can you also say the Emory Hunt agenda is in full effect? How many
00:26times we said on this show, Ross, guard center guard play is more critical than tackle play,
00:31but also how many times have I spoken about the battery of a football team? Center, nose
00:36tackle, Mike Backer, free safety, quarterback, running back, right? So the Houston Texans
00:40subscribe to the Emory Hunt agenda because they got my number five guard. Now that we know
00:45all these guards went round one, and they got my number one nose tackle in Cade McDonald,
00:50who I was a superior fan of, and I thought he would have a chance to go in round one
00:57to the Minnesota Vikings, but they went with another defensive tackle, another good one at
01:00that, and Caleb Banks, but love these two picks. Point of attack play is where you win football
01:06games. They got two studs right out of the gate. Look, the more cynical side of me here is really
01:11a lot of the draft analysts talk about Keelan Rutledge, and they're kind of patting themselves
01:17on the back retroactively and saying, yeah, look, a lot of people didn't think he was worth
01:22a first round pick, but I love this pick for the Texans. So my first instinct is, okay, that's easy
01:27to say. Look, I've gone back and I've found multiple different drafts, either film watchers
01:34or draft gurus or whatever, that really did, I think they were nervous to be the one to say,
01:40I think this guy's a first round pick, but they kind of spoke gushingly about Keelan Rutledge
01:45when they would talk about him as, all right, the guy from this class that I really like,
01:49and maybe he makes it in the first round or whatever, but you know, there's so much group
01:52think that everybody's just kind of waiting to see if somebody else says it.
01:56Yeah. Is anybody else mocking him 24th?
01:58Yeah. Where we heard, we heard from a couple of, well, at least we read about a couple of
02:03anonymous execs here and there after the draft saying, yeah, I actually had Rutledge ranked
02:08higher than a couple of the guys in the first round and all that. One of the receipts I did
02:12find
02:13was Greg Cassell, who was with our friend Ross Tucker, and this was before the draft when he was
02:18talking about interior offensive linemen with Ross Tucker. Was there someone as you were watching
02:23the tape that you were like, this, I love this guy? Yeah, there is, and he's from Georgia Tech,
02:29Keelan Rutledge, he's a guard, and a lot of these inside guys don't get a lot of love, and sometimes
02:34they don't look pretty doing their job, they're not like tackles where you see, you know, the fluid
02:38movement and they're one-on-one all the time. One of the things that I've learned is, you know,
02:43you want to be able to stay in what they call your cylinder, where your body continues to stay
02:47straight, you know, not leaning, not bending one way or other, not bending forward, you know,
02:52because that's where you lose your balance and your body control, and then you really have trouble
02:56blocking. And I thought Rutledge was a great example of a guy that just really stayed within his
03:01frame all the time, and he looked like a very comfortable player. And the other thing, just to mention,
03:07talk about online play, is you have to be able nowadays to climb to the second level and block
03:12really good athletes. I mean, these linebackers are getting more athletic each and every year.
03:18You know, in the run game, if you can't do that, it's really hard. You know, you can't just be
03:23a six
03:23foot by six foot box guard anymore. You know, those guys are kind of, you know, those are dinosaurs now.
03:29You know, these guys that everybody says, oh man, they're just fighters. Well, of course you want
03:33fighters. You want guys who are competitive. You want that at any position. But if you can't go
03:37beyond that six foot by six foot box and get up to the second level and block athletic linebackers,
03:43then it's hard. And I thought that Rutledge did that really, really well.
03:47And I think that's the thing with Rutledge, where I think there's a little bit of disconnect sometimes
03:52when people are watching him before the draft, and that you heard Greg Cassell use the term
03:58fluidity there. You know, he doesn't, he doesn't move real fluidly. If you think about Laramie
04:05Tunsell, he just, you know, he's just really fluid and smooth. He just looks athletic when he's
04:11playing. It's always nice to use the word athleticism with offensive linemen. So I like
04:16fluidity better. And Rutledge doesn't look all that fluid. And I think it, I think for some people,
04:22it kept them from seeing like that he is actually really explosive by offensive lineman standards.
04:29Good athlete. Yeah. And yeah. And covers like covers ground gets from point A to point B,
04:33especially when he's getting up to the second level a lot better than it might look at first
04:37glance. Cause the other thing I heard from a lot of people, um, you know, a lot of the film
04:41watchers
04:41was that it took three or four or five games of watching him to, to start realizing like, okay,
04:49I, you know what? I think I, I think I really like this guy. I'm not so sure. I don't
04:53know.
04:53Yep. Uh, but like you're asking your friends if you, you know, she's cute, right? She's cute. I
04:57think she's cute. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When the consensus is he's somewhere in the fifties on the
05:02board, like to, you know, to put him up in the, you know, with those first round guards,
05:06he's stepping out on a limb a little bit. He's that girl that you think she's hot,
05:10but nobody's talking about her as hot. So you got to check with your friend. Right,
05:13right, right. And, uh, in the pre-draft process, everybody's keeping everything close to the
05:16vest. Yeah. Yeah. No, she's ugly. And meanwhile, they're texting her. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
05:22No, is she conventionally good looking or do I just have a type? Is Kim, do I have a niche?
05:27Yeah.
05:28Yeah. Um, the other part of that thing, the other part of the, the Emory, um, the Emory hunt audio,
05:34he talked about, he thought the Vikings might take Caden McDonald and they took Caleb Banks
05:40instead. That's an interesting hypothetical to me that if Caden McDonald was gone when the Texans
05:44are picking in the second round, what direction would they have gone? Yeah. You know, what if
05:48Caleb Banks didn't get drafted by the Vikings and was still on the board in the beginning of the
05:54second, you know, what have you flipped those two and the Vikings? Cause for those who don't know,
05:58Caleb Banks comes with more red flags than Caden McDonald does. Cause of mostly cause of injury.
06:04Cause he's got two broken feet. He's got one year. And he was just one, I think one foot that
06:08broke
06:09twice. Yeah. And he only played like three games this year. Right. And so it's, so there's,
06:13so there's question marks on him. Like, would they've even gone defensive tackle or would they
06:17have, you know, they, they would say they're, they would have picked the best guy on their board,
06:21but would they have gone? Like they made an effort to go get Caden McDonald by moving up a couple
06:25spots. You know, the funny thing is that I, I felt like the, the whole Will Anderson versus Tyree
06:33Wilson experience where, you know, it turns out Tyree Wilson, who's the other highest ranked
06:38defensive end or edge rusher alongside Will Anderson that, that I liked as a prospect until
06:44thank God, a couple of, a couple of weeks before the draft, I realized that his foot was as bad
06:48as
06:49it was. Um, and, uh, and I, and I, and I flipped him and I said, no, Will Anderson's the
06:54guy.
06:54Everybody can see that. You don't, you don't trade up the draft, Tim, you're a moron has been the
06:59whole time. Never had any doubt in my mind. Um, but the, like, I think that whatever the,
07:06the same decision-making might've been gone into it with Caleb banks to talking about a big man
07:11with, uh, might have, it might have defective feet. Yeah. Not, not into it. Not into it.
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