Can the third year guard turn things around?
One of the problems with credit and blame is that it often gets parceled out to too few or too many people. I want to take some time to compare two situations before we get into the meat of this thing. Some of you have figured out that I have a similar regular column over at Crawfish Boxes. This is one of those instances where we end up talking about the same things.
There is a concept in economics called sunken costs. Essentially, once you have committed money to someone or something that money is gone. Organizations often get themselves into trouble when they make decisions without accepting that simple fact. The Houston Texans drafted Kenyon Green. That rookie contract comes with certain guarantees over four seasons and a fifth year option. Those guarantees have to be met regardless of what happens. That’s sunken cost.
The Astros had a similar situation with Jose Abreu. He was drastically underperforming, but the organization made some key mistakes AFTER they signed him. They ignored clear signs that there was something wrong. They even sent him down, but only for a month. Ultimately, they decided to release him in lieu of giving him more at bats to prove he just doesn’t have it.
Enter DeMeco Ryans and Nick Caserio. I don’t know who made the final call on Kenyon Green last season. It could have been one, the other, or both. However, there is a ton of wisdom to what they did. Whether it was mental, physical, or some combination, Green was not ready to play football last year at a professional level. They could have said, “screw it, he’s a first round pick and he has to play.”
If they had done that I suspect that Green would have been broken. That would have been two consecutive disastrous seasons and 99 percent of players never recover from that. Despite all of the good vibes to the contrary, the odds are still stacked against him. Most first round interior linemen are good immediately or they are busts. It’s not like tackles who take time to develop.
What the Texans’ brass managed to do is give Green the best possible chance to succeed. They realized the sobering facts behind sunken costs. You have spent the money. It’s gone. You might as well do what you can to get the very most production out of the money you’ve spent. So, they let Green hit the reset button. He had all of the surgical procedures and the time to heal properly.
He also went up to train with Ndamukong Suh in Oregon. So, Green is coming back in the best shape of his life. We can assume he is also returning in the best mental frame of mind he has had since being a Texan. The only question now is whether it will matter at the end of the day.
Good conditioning, good mental health, and good preparation is no guarantee for success. However, the odds for success in that instance is much better than the alternative and those are the odds that Ryans and Caserio guaranteed for themselves when they made the decision to let Green take the year off. Green had to do the hard work and so he also deserves a tip of the cap here.
The harder question is figuring out what success looks like. For skill position players we can look at fairly easy numbers that point to production. Linemen are harder to pinpoint. For Green, simply being out there and on the field would be a start. However, this is where we have to look at some numbers from last year to get a look at what we are talking about. Shaq Mason was the right guard for virtually all of the season. He didn’t perform anywhere near the Pro Bowl level he was in New England, but it gives us a good baseline to compare to. Notice what happens when we sprinkle in all of the left guards
Shaq Mason: 1221 snaps, 65.8 run blocking, 64.7 pass blocking
Juice Scruggs: 534 snaps, 50.9 run blocking, 48.9 pass blocking
Tytus Howard: 409 snaps, 49.6 run blocking, 38.9 pass blocking
Kendrick Green: 208 snaps, 56.3 run blocking, 69.9 pass blocking
For most positions, solid starters should be producing a score of 70 or higher. 15 guards in the NFL produced scores of 70 or higher overall. A median starter produced a score of around 61. So, Mason was better than the median. Any starting guard that could be as good as Mason would mean that the offensive line would become much better just because of that one position.
However, that ignores the obvious. Each of these positions works in concert with the other. If Green could come in and simply be average (or the median) at guard then Scruggs could move to center. The median at that position was around 65 overall. Jarrett Patterson was the only player to qualify and he fell below that. It is reasonable to assume that Scruggs should be better since he was originally slated to be the starter before getting hurt.
Howard would then move out to right tackle where he belongs. The median score there on qualifying tackles ended up being around 67. George Fant played right tackle and score a 61.8. So, if Howard could become a median starting tackle (like he was in 2022) then you see improvement at that spot as well.
So, a healthy and decently productive Kenyon Green helps you improve three different spots on the offensive line. If you have five spots manned by players at the median or better at their spots then you go from having one of the worst lines in the NFL to a top 15 offensive line. It won’t make anyone forget those lines that opened holes for Arian Foster or protect Matt Schaub, but it will be good enough to give C.J. Stroud some time to throw and hopefully open a hole or two for Joe Mixon. All of that begins with Kenyon Green becoming an average starter. It might seem like a large ask given what he has done to this point, but he has put himself into the best possible position to do it.