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25.85 million 2025 cap hit

2022 15th overall draft pick

2023 2nd rounder

3 year 36 million dollar signing in 2023

3 year 56 million dollar extension in 2023

 

We've sunken a ton of capital into the OL, and they are both the weakest and softness group on the team. 

 

I know Meco can't be happy, but he inherited this mess so you can't just throw them under the bus, at least publicly. 

 

Now, starting this offseason, how to we begin to fix this. There are plenty of avenues to do so,

 

Laremy Tunsil - can be cut in 2025 for a 3 million dollar cap savings, but we probably wont. He instead will be looked at in 2026 when his contract has an out and we can save more than 21 million dollars moving him in some instance.

Kenyon Green - Green will more than likely just play out his 4 year rookie deal and see if they can salvage him with another healthy offseason. He will almost 100% have his 5th year option NOT picked up by the team. He can be moved on from this offseason with a 5 mil cap figure and a 5 mil dead cap figure if cut or traded. 

Juice Scruggs - there's a lot of contention amongst fans with Juice. Some say he is to blame for not setting the protections right and the dude couldn't pick up a stunt if his life depended on it. 

Shaq Mason - he's been average, he will play out the 2025 season then more than likely be moved on from with a cap saving of 8 million in the 2025-2026 offseason. 

Tytus Howard - he's probably been the 2nd most consistent piece this year, but a cap savings of 13 million can be had in the 2025-2026 offseason.

 

I don't know what Nick will do, but it's clear he has to do something. The whole line's mentality is weak, and that's something that isn't easily changed overnight. 

 

The 2025 draft has some solid OL talent that will be available, so I look from Nick to spend yet anything big piece of capital to hopefully fix this OL group.

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Starting to think Chris Strausser should be let go if the OL keeps underperforming like this.  Too much talent for the OL to look this bad.   I would consider playing Jarrett Patterson at Center if Juice keeps struggling. Lord forbids how bad the OL would look if someone were to go down with an injury. 

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These are coaching issues. The scheme is too complicated. Guys are helping instead of sliding. They have no answers for picking up stunts or blitzes. this is not a case of our guys just getting beat in pass protection. its the scheme. its calling long developing routes when the defense sends a blitz. Its not accounting for a blitz at all. Its having a guy with interior help instead of exterior responsibility. These are all the way the offense is being coached. we will run a backside slide with a front side help concept and not have a back in pass protection. We will leave the QB to account for the blitzer, but not have a hot route open. The routes are too complicated to perform and too easy to scout. 

I could go on and on, and if I wanted to break down film, I could get even more in depth, but the offense is not in sync, the pass protections are not match the routes and what the defense is doing. This is 90% coaching and 10% ability. It could be that the protections are not getting called out properly, but then again, thats on the coaching staff. 

Defenses play way too fast against us because they know what is coming. I can nearly sit on my coach in my underwear and call out the texans offense before it happens. Its complicated in practice and vanilla in difficulty. Thats a bad combination. 

Last year when we were beat all up on the line, we had to go vanilla vanilla with our offense and it was much better. Slowick feels like guys should be able to "handle a little more of his system" and we are learning that his system sucks. Our best offense is when the play doesnt work and Stroud improvises. He needs to get over his pride and arrogance and stop trying to out scheme DCs because hes not capable of it. He needs to just let our guys be better than other teams. Think about it, when was the last time that a defense just had no answer for us on offense? Its been few and far between. 

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Just as I feared, it appears the blame is being placed on the players and not the coaches. 

"It has to get fixed," Ryans said. "I know how we're coaching it and what we're asking to be done, and it's just not showing up on the tape. It's not just one person, it's the entire thing. So it's just the entire offense from top to the bottom. We have to get it cleaned up."

Then hold someone accountable and not just the players. The players have to execute, but the coach has to put them in position to do that. Either move on from players or move on from coaches....but do something! 

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Whats interesting is our PFF scores on the line arent terrible outside 1 guy:

Tunsil - 66.9 (36/76)
Green - 43.6 (78/79)
Juice - 68.6 (12/38)
Shaq - 66.0 (34/79)
Howard - 69.2 (31/76)

They are all middle of the road except for Green. He has been one of the worst guards in the league. We need to replace him and our line would look a lot better. Tunsil hasnt been bad, its the penalties that are holding his grade down so much. 

Our 2 main back ups have not looked great

Patterson - 58.9
Fisher - 45.8
Kendrick Green is at a 65.1 but with very limited reps. 

one option is move Juice to guard and Patterson to center. That would put our 5 best according to pff out there. We could bump Howard to guard and start fisher, but hes been a disaster too and Howard has been our highest graded lineman at RT. 

I want to root for Green because hes an Aggie, but hes just not it, he was never a good pass blocker, he was always a road grating run blocker, but he's not doing that now either. 

I suspect, we come out with the same starting 5 once again. 

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On 10/22/2024 at 5:02 PM, Pastor Dillon said:

These are coaching issues. The scheme is too complicated. Guys are helping instead of sliding. They have no answers for picking up stunts or blitzes. this is not a case of our guys just getting beat in pass protection. its the scheme. its calling long developing routes when the defense sends a blitz. Its not accounting for a blitz at all. Its having a guy with interior help instead of exterior responsibility. These are all the way the offense is being coached. we will run a backside slide with a front side help concept and not have a back in pass protection. We will leave the QB to account for the blitzer, but not have a hot route open. The routes are too complicated to perform and too easy to scout. 

I could go on and on, and if I wanted to break down film, I could get even more in depth, but the offense is not in sync, the pass protections are not match the routes and what the defense is doing. This is 90% coaching and 10% ability. It could be that the protections are not getting called out properly, but then again, thats on the coaching staff. 

Defenses play way too fast against us because they know what is coming. I can nearly sit on my coach in my underwear and call out the texans offense before it happens. Its complicated in practice and vanilla in difficulty. Thats a bad combination. 

Last year when we were beat all up on the line, we had to go vanilla vanilla with our offense and it was much better. Slowick feels like guys should be able to "handle a little more of his system" and we are learning that his system sucks. Our best offense is when the play doesnt work and Stroud improvises. He needs to get over his pride and arrogance and stop trying to out scheme DCs because hes not capable of it. He needs to just let our guys be better than other teams. Think about it, when was the last time that a defense just had no answer for us on offense? Its been few and far between. 

Or it could be that the OL is just too dumb to pickup blitzes and stunts.

 

Also I watched Green just flat out get his butt kicked by Buckner last game. It's not a surprise that the OL looked better after Patterson entered the game.

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On 10/23/2024 at 8:46 AM, Pastor Dillon said:

Just as I feared, it appears the blame is being placed on the players and not the coaches. 

"It has to get fixed," Ryans said. "I know how we're coaching it and what we're asking to be done, and it's just not showing up on the tape. It's not just one person, it's the entire thing. So it's just the entire offense from top to the bottom. We have to get it cleaned up."

Then hold someone accountable and not just the players. The players have to execute, but the coach has to put them in position to do that. Either move on from players or move on from coaches....but do something! 

They will be moving on at the end of the season. They really cant do much more than they did last game when they benched Green for Patterson. Then of course Patterson gets hurt again. Truth is it's a talent/intelligence issue and that's on the players, not the coaches.

 

As the great Ron White said, you cant fix stupid.

 

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On 10/24/2024 at 9:35 AM, Pastor Dillon said:

Whats interesting is our PFF scores on the line arent terrible outside 1 guy:

Tunsil - 66.9 (36/76)
Green - 43.6 (78/79)
Juice - 68.6 (12/38)
Shaq - 66.0 (34/79)
Howard - 69.2 (31/76)

They are all middle of the road except for Green. He has been one of the worst guards in the league. We need to replace him and our line would look a lot better. Tunsil hasnt been bad, its the penalties that are holding his grade down so much. 

Our 2 main back ups have not looked great

Patterson - 58.9
Fisher - 45.8
Kendrick Green is at a 65.1 but with very limited reps. 

one option is move Juice to guard and Patterson to center. That would put our 5 best according to pff out there. We could bump Howard to guard and start fisher, but hes been a disaster too and Howard has been our highest graded lineman at RT. 

I want to root for Green because hes an Aggie, but hes just not it, he was never a good pass blocker, he was always a road grating run blocker, but he's not doing that now either. 

I suspect, we come out with the same starting 5 once again. 

Juice not making the right line calls is an issue so I would lower his grade.

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Green has be terrible, but he’s really the only different guy from last years team that did much better. The system has gotten more involved. In year one we did much more vanilla blocking. This year we’ve tried to info block in pass protection and it’s created a mess. We aren’t prepared for blitzes because we don’t know our assignments. 
 

sometimes the QB is responsible for a blitzer, that’s just football but when we don’t even attempt to block multiple people, it’s a system wide issue. 

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