Battle Red Blog
Putting the early camp performance in perspective.
Admittedly, we talked about this before particularly as it pertained to John Metchie. So, I cannot in good conscience come out and completely lambast two players that are trying and not succeeding. This is about your Houston Texans and what they end up doing moving forward. How do they respond when someone is selected high in the draft and doesn’t end up working out?
We can start with Juice Scruggs. The Texans traded up to the 62nd pick with the Philadelphia Eagles to select Scruggs in 2023 draft. Scruggs draft profile indicates that he had a scouting score of 6.21. That corresponds with an eventual solid NFL starter. So, the Texans thought he would be a solid starter and so did the rest of the scouts from the other 31 teams.
Would they have made him a second round pick? There is some conjecture at the time that teams around the NFL considered that to be a bit of an overpay. Of course, scouting is in the eye of the beholder, but Scruggs spent the first two seasons mostly on the sidelines with injuries and ineffective performance. He is not a part of the first team on the depth chart so far in camp.
Blake Fisher’s draft profile is actually pretty similar to Scruggs. He graded out with a 6.26 grade which is almost identical to Scruggs. That also puts him in the eventual average NFL starter category. Since he was picked in the 2024 draft, the word “eventual” is doing some heavy lifting there. When exactly is that supposed to happen?
I think most people would look at his rookie season and simply write it off as a player getting his feet wet and learning on the job. He noticeably struggled at right tackle and that was particularly true in the divisional playoff game against the Kansas City Chiefs, but most fans and analysts alike thought with an offseason workout program and a second training camp he could develop into an average starter. He was taken with the 59th pick in the draft which is also almost identical to Scruggs.
One of the greatest measures of most organizations in all of sports is what you do when you are wrong. Mistakes happen all the time. Sometimes you are torpedoed by bad luck like you were in the Metchie case. Sometimes you just flat out miss like you did with Kenyon Green. Dealing with mistakes at any level is often about the fallacy of sunken costs. The sunken costs fallacy can be defined as, **“**our tendency to follow through with something that we’ve already invested heavily in (be it time, money, effort, or emotional energy), even when giving up is clearly a better idea.”
Of course, the biggest question is when is it prudent to give up? The Kenyon Green scenario played out differently. For one, it was a three year investment. Scruggs still has one more season to go and Fisher has...
