- 7 weeks ago
ITL reacts to DeMeco Ryans’ comments on Texans Radio and discusses whether the offensive line coming together as one cohesive unit can be enough for Houston’s offense.
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00:00Shout out to D'Amico Ryans, who, again, I mentioned you'll hear him
00:02talking to the Assembled Media, but you'll also hear him on the Coaches Show
00:06on Texans Radio on these airwaves.
00:08And the first Coaches Show of, I guess, the football season
00:12as we head into week one.
00:13There's a few things that were interesting in it.
00:15One of them led to a question I wanted to throw out to you, listener, you, Figgy.
00:19John, do you think that the five fingers in a glove approach is enough
00:23for this offensive line this year?
00:25Because D'Amico Ryans was asked about what he's seen,
00:27and this is cut three here, Fig,
00:28what he has seen from the offensive line this year.
00:32And listen to not just what he says,
00:34but the tone and tenor that he takes in saying it.
00:36Yeah, I see it very well, man, for our offensive line.
00:39Last year at this time, I was thinking back,
00:41we were still kind of shuffling guys, trying to figure it out,
00:44like who was going out there, our first five guys.
00:47Well, our five guys now, they've been working together
00:50for the past couple weeks.
00:52So they have that continuity, they have that, hey, the guards and the tackles,
00:57those guys have been communicating with each other for the past couple weeks.
01:01So it's not fresh and new hitting week one.
01:04And I think that'll lend us some moments to really go through some little,
01:11I think go through a transition a little bit easier when we do see a look that we may not
01:16have scouted, right?
01:17Those guys have communicated.
01:18We can fall back on that, like, hey, let's just go with it.
01:22Guys can communicate better.
01:24Guys will be on the details.
01:26I think it'll help just having a consistent five guys out there.
01:29I'm excited to see how it looks.
01:32Like, the guy's done a really great job when it comes to protecting CJ all throughout training camp.
01:37When it comes to the run game, they've done a great job of working together.
01:40And that's what it's about, those five guys working well together.
01:43I'm excited to see what this group can do.
01:45And this game, it's always going to come down to how you play up front.
01:49Right.
01:49Right?
01:50If we play well up front, we can run the ball well.
01:53It's going to start with how they block.
01:54So, I'm excited about this group, but they've done a good job of gelling well together.
02:00I do think there's a lot to that.
02:03And I know there's always going to be some questions, but if you just compare this year to last year,
02:07which we've been doing for a long time, hell, he said they were still trying to figure it out week
02:12one.
02:12They were still trying to figure it out week 11, you know, week 10.
02:17Last year you talked about it.
02:18Yeah, yeah.
02:18I do think it matters.
02:21Ultimately, though, as much as it matters and it does make them better, we still have to see the level
02:25of play.
02:26You know, we have to be able to see, is Ingram, you know, is that Ingram, you know, going to
02:31be reverting to some, you know, average play?
02:37As much as we love, and I don't expect this to happen, but as much as we love, you know,
02:43Keelan Rutledge, still a rookie,
02:44still seeing some things that he has never seen before.
02:47Obviously, there are some big-time questions in terms of durability at right tackle in both spots, Trent Brown and,
02:56you know, Braden Smith.
02:59But I think what's ultimately going to happen, if they can keep these guys healthy in the front and keep
03:03them together, I think it will matter.
03:05I think it will make them better.
03:06I tend to agree.
03:08I was just very intrigued with some of the ways that he was describing it.
03:11Like, he got into talking about the communication, and I think that matters a great deal.
03:14So, I mean, if for no other reason, the thing that comes to mind for me is there was an
03:20occurrence that had happened a number of times last season,
03:23and honestly, in previous years with this offensive line, that drove me up a wall, John Lopez.
03:27And do you know what that was?
03:28What?
03:28It was when a team decided to run a stunt where they had one guy loop around,
03:33and that dude almost had unfettered access to the backfield every time that that happened,
03:38because these dudes, whoever it was, would get ear-holed in one side of their helmet,
03:43and then the other guy was running that guy into, that defender into his teammate,
03:48and then completely missing the fact that he needed to pick up this guy who was stunting around.
03:52And that is a factor of communication and having that familiarity with the guys that you're blocking against.
03:59So I do think that those are the things, honestly, that I've been the most scared about.
04:03But they should be better.
04:04They should be better.
04:05And that was kind of the approach that D'Amico had when talking about this.
04:08He was like they had been communicating.
04:10There's going to be a level of consistency.
04:11And he said, we're going to reach some moments.
04:14And he kind of had that chuckle in there, which this one felt a lot more like a nervous chuckle
04:18to me.
04:18And now I am doing the thing where I am hyper-analyzing speech patterns, which can get you into trouble.
04:24Recognize that up front.
04:24D'Amico Ryan is a little bit of a chuckler just generally in the way that he talks.
04:28That one felt like a little bit more of a nervous chuckle to me,
04:30because he said, you know, where we could kind of just fall back on some things.
04:34And all of that felt like, it felt very much we'll see.
04:37I do, I'm with him that I definitely feel better about where it is than where it was.
04:41I am very curious to see if it is enough with the improvement or however much improvement they've actually made
04:48on the offensive line.
04:48Because what is it, three dudes on this offensive line are same as the offensive line that you had at
04:53the end of the season last year?
04:54Yeah.
04:54It is just Eben Brown, who is a little bit more of a journeyman, and then Keelan Rulich, who looks
04:59really good, don't get me wrong.
05:00Otherwise, this is a lot of a similar offensive line, and we are really depending on those upgrades there in
05:06the middle,
05:06and more importantly, a communication and a familiarity that hopefully will grow over time,
05:11and that hopefully you've established over, what, like four or five weeks leading into this.
05:16That will be enough to make this offensive line significantly better in the way that they operate.
05:20Well, look, make no mistake.
05:22As much as I just said, it should be better.
05:24It should make a difference.
05:26Who's not in we'll see mode?
05:28I mean, is anybody not in we'll see mode with this?
05:31I don't think anybody could say, oh boy, they're going to be so much better.
05:35No, I think it should help that they're together for the last couple of weeks,
05:39and hopefully into the season and the entirety of the season.
05:43But, no, I am not betting on this offensive line to be great.
05:48We'll see.
05:49We'll see.
05:50Yeah, and I appreciate that D'Amico Ryan's both, like, when we heard him talking about the offense yesterday and
05:55here,
05:56he's not giving this, he's not giving a false sense of belief.
05:59He's like, what I've seen, they've looked pretty good, and we'll see how they go and operate.
06:03But that does then bring me to a place where I go, is that enough?
06:06And I guess ultimately we will have to see to some degree.
06:09D'Amico Ryan, as I mentioned, was on Texas Radio,
06:11and one of the things he also talked about was the defensive front.
06:15And this also comes to the offensive line, because in week one versus the Bills,
06:18this is going to be a defensive front that's five down, right?
06:21It's a 3-4 defense, which means those outside linebackers are really your edge rushers,
06:24and they'll be up at the line, along with your two edge defensive ends and your nose tackle.
06:29That creates the five-man front, which is similar to what you saw with the Panthers in joint practice.
06:34So D'Amico was asked, how beneficial was seeing those different fronts in joint practice for you?
06:38Yeah, the joint practice was very beneficial from that standpoint.
06:41Carolina runs the five down under front that we'll see Buffalo run.
06:47If we put base out on the field, that'll be their base defense.
06:50They're going to try to make sure they stop the run.
06:53But it also, the five down front gives you a little variety.
06:56You can send five.
06:58You can drop an outside linebacker.
07:00You can really hide your pressures a little bit more with the five down spacing.
07:04I know that's what Jim wants to do.
07:06He wants to confuse the offense a little bit.
07:09So it definitely gives him that flexibility by using the five down front.
07:13But I thought our guys handled that really well in Carolina, being their first time going against it.
07:18And so we have some reps to go back and look at how we handle those pressures and the five
07:24down spacing.
07:25So I feel like our guys are comfortable with that from going against Carolina,
07:29and we needed that work against them heading into the week.
07:31Does this make you as nervous as it does me?
07:34Simply because, yes, you can, and I love joint practices, as I've talked about many times,
07:40and you can manipulate them and say, hey, can y'all run this?
07:43I want my offensive line to see this.
07:44You can do all that.
07:46It's still a different world once you get into the real games.
07:48And some of the things that they have noticed, the Texans' tendencies already,
07:53because the offense hasn't changed, the offensive scheme.
07:55So they might know, hey, let's try this.
07:58These are the things that are going to be really intriguing to me on Sunday.
08:01You know, when they start playing those games up front and some of the things that you just talked about.
08:06Yeah, I'm with you.
08:07I'm very intrigued.
08:08I'm hoping that this is where the benefit of an offensive lineman that's played more,
08:13a center, mind you, a dude who's playing center.
08:15Admittedly, he hasn't always played center.
08:17He's bounced around between center and guard.
08:18But a dude who has played more in the NFL compared to Jake Andrews,
08:22even when he was stepping in as the center for this team last year.
08:26It's night and day how much more football Evan Brown has played.
08:29So how much of that familiarity on top of, hey, you've been given a little bit of a crash course
08:33in what this five-man, five-down front is going to look like and what they're going to do.
08:38And then Trent Brown, who is, I imagine, an endless wealth of knowledge of football.
08:42That and then a smart guard in Keelan Rulich who seems to pick things up quickly.
08:47And I hope that all those things help this offensive line.
08:50Once you get to those points, with seeing the Panthers,
08:53and I imagine, as you mentioned, D'Amico Ryan's maybe going over to Dave Canales
08:57and be like, or not even, actually, you have to go to Giro Evero,
09:00the defensive coordinator of the Panthers, and go,
09:02hey, can you mess with this a little bit?
09:04Can you show us a little bit of this to give us an opportunity?
09:07Hopefully, this is the type of offensive line that is smart enough
09:10and has congealed enough with enough time together
09:13where they can at least use that as enough of a jumping-off point
09:16to get a firm enough foundation to where they don't look abysmal
09:19versus that defensive line, which has some really good guys on it.
09:22We talked about Deion Walker.
09:24That dude, I think his name is going to be very important
09:26in the middle of that defense.
09:28Nose tackles are going to be important this year,
09:31the early portion of this year, to test this offensive line,
09:33particularly the middle of it.
09:34Deion Walker is absolutely one of those.
09:36And Oliver, as well as a defensive man, you know him
09:39and you know what he's capable of doing.
09:40I think that, yeah, that intrigues me to no end.
09:44But you heard him say Jim in there,
09:45and the Jim he's talking about is Jim Leonard,
09:46new defensive coordinator for the Buffalo Bills,
09:49and he has been a fascination for me.
09:51I think you already can tell.
09:51I've been doing a lot of kind of researching and looking into him,
09:54and I imagine that the Texans have been doing exponentially more
09:56than I could to figure out what does Jim Leonard do,
09:59what does he not do, what might he do?
10:01Because last time he was actually a bona fide defensive coordinator
10:04was in college, then he was a part of the Denver Broncos defensive staff,
10:08but you wonder how much of that is his.
10:09And I thought John Harris asked a really good question,
10:11is how do you keep from chasing ghosts?
10:13The ghosts being what are the possibilities of what could be done?
10:16How do you keep yourself from doing that in week one, D'Amico?
10:19Yeah, that chasing ghosts thing, that's for everyone, right?
10:22It's when you're going out, you're seeking things,
10:25and you're searching deep for things that could happen,
10:28that may happen, but you have no idea.
10:31So that's why you call them ghosts.
10:33And it's easy to fall victim to that
10:35because you have so much time to prepare for this first game,
10:38and you have a new team.
10:41When I say new, you have new coordinators, new head coach, right?
10:44So he's going to implement things that he's probably doing other places.
10:48So you say don't chase ghosts, but I find myself chasing them, right?
10:52I go back to, okay, Pete Carmichael has been there.
10:55He's been a long time, Sean Payton assistant.
10:58So you go back, you're watching some Denver film and things,
11:01how they attacked us.
11:02You go back with Jim Leonard, he's also, he's been with Denver.
11:05So you go back and advance Joseph and that defensive philosophy.
11:09So you're watching that to see, okay, what could they possibly do?
11:14You go back to a lot of different things, right?
11:16But in that first game, like you really, I tell coaches this all the time,
11:21you really don't know what they're going to do, right?
11:23So you can try to prepare as best as you can,
11:27but also don't want a cloudy player's minds with a ton of information that we think could,
11:34this could happen, that could happen.
11:36Well, they can do whatever, right?
11:38And so for me, you start to chase them.
11:41You do, that's just, that's what coaches do.
11:43You have extra time, you chase them.
11:45And you just try to see, okay, where have we been hurt in the past?
11:49How can we prepare our guys in that way to show them a few things,
11:52a few defensive looks for our offense that, hey, we got to be prepared for this type of pressure,
11:58this type of five down front defensively.
12:01Hey, you need to be prepared for these particular type of passes that have hurt us in the past.
12:07Man, you prepare that way, and then you just got to see on Sunday, hey, what happens, right?
12:12You have to trust, and I, all of our coaches, all our players,
12:16we have to just trust our preparation and the things that we've done in training camp,
12:20and that's what we'll fall back on, that training.
12:23We prepared.
12:25I just, I love the candor.
12:27I love his honesty, because I think coaches at the NFL, college, you know, and the NFL,
12:32they can't help themselves.
12:34They're just always, and he said it, you know, they're just always digging in and piddling
12:38and trying to see, okay, well, they did this, you know, last year in week three,
12:43and, you know, maybe they can do it.
12:46I don't think they can help themselves.
12:47You just get rid of all the clutter and keep it simple.
12:50In a weird way, I think this is part of the growth of D'Amico Ryan's head coach,
12:53and, I mean, there's nothing to say that he did not already have some of this
12:57as an idea in his coaching philosophy, but I think that some of this,
13:02I'm excited to see him be able to transfer, because this sounds like the,
13:06it sounded like the long version of we want to play fast, we want to play physical, right?
13:10We want to play free.
13:11And yet still saying, I do chase ghosts.
13:13Right, I chase ghosts to some degree, because I want to be prepared,
13:16but when it comes to downloading that information to the players,
13:19we give them so much, the meat and potatoes of what they need,
13:22and we'll allow them to play fast.
13:23And this was him talking about it on the offensive side of the football for the Texans,
13:27the defensive side for your opponent.
13:28That, it gives me some encouragement that he's going to even be better
13:31at doing kind of the nuclear small things of helping establish what we talk about,
13:36that swarm mentality that the defense has.
13:38Because these are the types of things that help them.
13:40Hey, defensively, we'll give you an idea of the big picture items that the offense is going to get,
13:45but outside of that, read, react, go play.
13:47And on the offense, this is what it sounds like.
13:49I think this is the equivalent of that is,
13:51we'll give you some of the things that he's going to try and do,
13:53but beyond that, these are the principles that we have.
13:55This is how they might hurt us.
13:56Go out there, play football, and play really well.
13:59And that's the thing that I think gives me encouragement.
14:01One on the offensive line, but two more generally with the offense.
14:04I think that some of that philosophy that clearly works really well on defense
14:07is in being embedded more on the offense.