Battle Red Blog
It’s time to roll the dice on Nick Caley
Chip Kelly going to the Las Vegas Raiders took the collective wind out of a lot of Houston Texans fans. However, there is a few things to understand about that move before we criticize the Texans for their selection. Number one, while Kelly has had a ton of success at the college level. he has had mixed results at the NFL level. Many of us were willing to overlook that, but maybe Nick Caserio and DeMeco Ryans were not.
More importantly, Kelly is now the highest paid offensive coordinator in the NFL. Good for him, but that would have caused any number of issues inside the building. If he had signed the same deal in Houston he would be earning more money than Ryans. There is just no universe where that could have happened, so you either give him less or Ryans more. That’s understandably complicated.
Before I introduce Nick Caley, I should mention our dilemma. When you wait to make moves you allow yourself to interview more candidates, but you also see more candidates go off the board. So, the list of successful NFL play-callers is short. It may in fact be non-existent at this point. That leaves you two groups of people. There are people that have never called plays before and people that have done it unsuccessfully.
Bobby Slowik was in the first group and we know how that worked out. I can forgive fans out there for wanting someone from the second group. That means either a college play caller or someone like Doug Pederson. You’ll forgive me if I didn’t leap for joy at that possibility either.
Before I introduce Caley I will simply outline what the Texans were looking for. If you look at the Texans from the past several seasons there are two things that punctuate the period on the offensive side of the ball. First, even with Joe Mixon the running game has been inconsistent at best. When you remove Mixon it becomes decidedly below average. Second, Texans quarterbacks have been under constant duress for the past half decade at least.
That points to one thing: the offensive line has underperformed. Yet, this team has spent more money on the offensive line than any unit on the field. So, either they have identified the wrong guys or they are not using the talent appropriately. We have crunched the numbers before and it isn’t pretty. Whether you are talking run blocking or pass blocking, both have one thing in common: an overabundance of look out blocking.
Obviously a good offensive coordinator with a background around shaping an offensive line could help here. What are the things these linemen are able to do well? How can we simplify what they are doing to avoid blown assignments? How does that filter through to the rest of the offense? What route tree can we use to get the ball out of C.J. Stroud’s hands within three or...
