Battle Red Blog
It started innocently enough. Landy Locker asked whether Nick Caley could grow as a play caller and whether he would get an opportunity to do that. DeMeco Ryans gave a seemingly innocuous response that is actually very telling. For much of the season, he gave full throated defenses of Caley as an offensive coordinator. In this go around he simply gave the boilerplate response that all of the coaches would be evaluated and they would come to decisions on them later.
No single person in the building has had more scrutiny than Nick Caley. Those of us here at BRB have certainly had our say and I might be chief among those. However, asking the Caley question is putting the cart before the horse. There is a much larger question that needs to be asked before they get there and they only have a matter of days and not weeks and months.
It’s a basic question, but it is probably the most difficult one this organization has faced in its history. What is more than certain that THIS version of Stroud is not it. Stroud is not a game manager. If you look at his career at Ohio State and in his rookie season, Stroud made waves as a gunslinger. The numbers pop off the charts and we could certainly roll tape of his performance against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers during his rookie season for more proof that.
Is that version of Stroud still in there and can it be unlocked? Those are hard questions to answer and no one outside the building can answer it. What we can say is that Nick Caley and his offense is not the offense that is going to do that. However, it is not as simple as firing Caley and bringing in someone else. There are layers of questions that need to be answered.
There are two very defensible positions here. Either Ryans wants to run a ball control offense and allow his defense to win football games or he can commit to getting the best version of Stroud and this offense. Both of those are viable options. The Texans won ten consecutive games playing ball control and conservative offense. It should be noted that Caley succeeded at the basic tenets of this system. The Texans turned it over fewer times during the regular season than any team in the NFL. They cut their sacks in half from the previous season. They ended up typing for the franchise record for wins in a season.
Yet, there is a reason why Stroud looked fantastic in some games and shaky in others. In some games, he seemed to play within the system and when he did it was a thing of beauty. In other games he held onto the ball too long because he was constantly looking for the big play....
