Xavier S'ua Filo Targeted As Cure For Giants' O-Line

[bzane]

Sexy news- an informed article has put the hat on Xavier Su'a Filo as The Remedy for the New York Giants' chaotic offensive line!

https://www.bigblueview.com/2018/2/1/16745720/fixing-the-giants-invictus-offers-offseason-plan

 

Xavier S’ua Filo, OG Houston Texans

The Giants will add an offensive lineman from free agency this year. My vote would go to Xavier S’ua Filo, a second-round lineman drafted by the Houston Texans a few years ago. He didn’t really fit in with the Texans but would certainly be a good fit here. He could slot in and compete for the LG position. At the very least, he’d be solid depth for the Giants. Two year deal worth $9 million with a $1 million signing bonus and $2 million guaranteed.

Year Salary Cap Number 

2018 $3,500,000 $4,000,000
2019 $4,500,000 $5,000,000

 

- IMHO, there is a lot of logic to this move: the Giants' new GM, Dave Gettleman, has said 4,000 times that he wants "Hog Mollies" for his offensive line; the hyphenated name "Su'a" is very, very, close to "Sooooo-eeeeeeeee!", the traditional hog call (and creepy sound effect in one infamous scene in Deliverance).

- Xavier is reportedly disgruntled (when first drafted, by contrast, he was supposedly extremely gruntled) over the Texans' repeated failure to use an apostrophe in his name in press releases, and- even worse!- on his uniform (!)

- Neither Gettleman nor his predecessor Jerry "Third Round?" Reese watched any game tapes of the Texans and Su'a-Filo this past year, thus remaining blissfully unaware of the adventures that went on in Houston's O-line.

Caveat: My one objection to this otherwise-sound Save-The-Giants Plan is the suggested salary. Me, I'd ante up a S'alary for Xavier to match that of Kirk Cousins- or, at least, Joe Thomas. He's worth it!

"Say whuut?"

 

 

 

[ET80]

Have fun. Buahahaha!

[bzane]

1 hour ago, EliteTexan80 said:

Have fun. Buahahaha!

Well, yes- from what I've read on here- from you guys that actually watch, and know, the Texans, especially Xavier- the Giants would be making a catastrophic mistake by signing the guy. I'm embarrassed to admit that I fainted when I first read the article; later, I realized, this is the opinion of an Internet writer and no-one in any way affiliated with the Giants (I'm a fan of the team, although I try to keep it secret- threw away my Ben McAdoo Bobblehead this past November).

On the other hand, Xavier would probably fit right in with the Giants' existing O-Line, or Holiday On Ice: Fat Men Skating Backwards, as it's better known.

 

[OzzyTexan]

8 hours ago, bzane said:

- Xavier is reportedly disgruntled (when first drafted, by contrast, he was supposedly extremely gruntled) over the Texans' repeated failure to use an apostrophe in his name in press releases, and- even worse!- on his uniform (!)

hahaha fake news. This is ridiculous. Why do people make up stuff like this? 

...

 I can see Houston trying to resign him before free agency begins. Im ok with resigning him to a 2-3 year deal. 

[ET80]

2 hours ago, OzzyTexan said:

hahaha fake news. This is ridiculous. Why do people make up stuff like this? 

It's tongue in cheek. Check out the rest of @bzane posts on the site, it's all the same.

2 hours ago, OzzyTexan said:

I can see Houston trying to resign him before free agency begins. Im ok with resigning him to a 2-3 year deal. 

If this happens, we should start up the #FireBrianGaine hashtag immediately. I mean, did you see Susan play this season? Quite literally, he was one of the worst G in the NFL this season. PFF had him as #80 of 82 Gs graded in the NFL - that's basically saying what we all knew, because it isn't like he ever looked like a 2nd round pick. Sua Filo is trash, he was drafted WAY too high and never developed into even a backup-level player.

Here, we even talked about how bad he looked and his below average PFF score:

Take the L on the pick and move on. He's not worth re-signing.

[Texansfan713]

I'll take a pack of gum for him at this rate.

[Texansfan713]

Also to be fair,  the pick wasn't that bad when it was made.  He was supposed to go round 1 and a plug and play guard.  I just don't see how he became this bad for us.

[ET80]

31 minutes ago, Texansfan713 said:

Also to be fair,  the pick wasn't that bad when it was made.  He was supposed to go round 1 and a plug and play guard.  I just don't see how he became this bad for us.

I think it had to do with him simply not being good. He played at UCLA, where he was in these whacky spread offenses that created artificial holes due to line splits, and never really required great pass blocking skills with these two second "fire and forget" passing schemes. Any film review of him would lead to believe he's good, but he was very much the beneficiary of the system he played in.

Furthermore, the knock on him - lack of functional strength - really showed when he was asked to block professional players vs college players. He got blown up off the line consistently, and he never really developed strength to counter the bull rushers. That's a very bad development for an interior OL. 

[OzzyTexan]

I think Sua Filo gets a bad wrap from fans and pff. He has been a solid run blocker on occasion but pass protection has always been his weakness. I think the worst game of his life was week 1 vs jacksonville. But according to pff he has had good games also ( week 16 vs steelers: G Xavier Su’a-Filo, 85.3 overall grade) Its hard for us to see past that jacksonville game but I think the texans may view him differently than us and want to keep him. 

 I'm truly on the fence about keeping him.. I think it might be ok to keep him as more of a depth guy but also see what your saying about cutting our losses and moving on. At the end of the day we need better performances from both guard positions in 2018. 

[ET80]

7 minutes ago, OzzyTexan said:

I think Sua Filo gets a bad wrap from fans and pff. He has been a solid run blocker on occasion but pass protection has always been his weakness. I think the worst game of his life was week 1 vs jacksonville. But according to pff he has had good games also ( week 16 vs steelers: G Xavier Su’a-Filo, 85.3 overall grade) Its hard for us to see past that jacksonville game but I think the texans may view him differently than us and want to keep him. 

 I'm truly on the fence about keeping him.. I think it might be ok to keep him as more of a depth guy but also see what your saying about cutting our losses and moving on. At the end of the day we need better performances from both guard positions in 2018. 

I'd be OK if there was some kind of progression from him - he barely played his rookie season due to injuries that point to bad conditioning (hamstring pulls, muscle bruises, etc) and in the last two seasons he's been in a platoon with guys like Oday Aboushy (again, probably due to his conditioning). This year, he completely fell off the map and it showed on a snap by snap basis. If you attack one side of him and quickly power rush the other side, he was beat, he missed pass blocking assignments, he'd get bullied into a hole on run plays - he's simply underconditioned and overpowered at the point of attack.

It seems as if he didn't take his strength and conditioning coaching seriously, because he got progressively worse as his career went on. 

[Pastor Dillon]

IF HE leaves and becomes great then every coach we have should be fired. 

[Apollo Stallion]

The single worst interior pass protector I have ever seen at the NFL level.  He came into the league as an athletic pulling guard with the ability to get to the second level, but short-arms, abysmal technique, and below average strength had him getting destroyed in pass protection from the second he touched the field as a rookie.  In year two, a full off-season in the weight room improved his strength and he showed flashes as a run blocker, but we lacked any real RB talent and he still looked lost in pass protection and pretty much got Hoyer killed in our playoff game without Duane Brown next to him.   In 2016, the run game was improved and XSF continued to progress as a run blocker but still only in flashes, but he was again lost with DB out the first 4 games.  He actually finished reasonably well leading to some optimism that he had finally figured some things out despite giving up 7 sacks and 49 pressures and you'd expect the guy to be in top form heading into a contract year instead of following the Jeff Allen post-contract meal plan.  The 2017 disaster was completely predictable as XSF was again exposed as utterly clueless in pass protection without DB there to cover for him and instead of getting stronger, he showed up fat and slow and our country club camp did nothing to help matters and the die was cast on his season in week 1.

It is hard for me to imagine how a player can spend 4 offseasons in camp and play in 56 NFL games and still not understand the most fundamental aspects of pass protection and still have such awful run blocking technique that make him horribly inconsistent despite some athletic gifts he came into the league with.  Let's not forget that he bounced between tackle and guard at UCLA and missed two years of football due to a mormon mission, so he clearly missed some steps along the way, but clearly Texans O-line coach Mike Devlin could do little to fill in those gaps the past 3 years.  Honestly, I have no idea how Devlin is still employed after 2017, especially considering even Nick Martin seemed lost out there and that we have a developmental "project" in Davenport who clearly is being counted on to become a starter in 2018.  Allen has been a round peg in a square hole since he got here, Mancz backslid last year, and as far as I'm concerned, anyone who thought Kendall Lamm should start Week 1 does not not what the hell they are doing or is a GM trying to sabotage a coach.  

As far as XSF's future goes, I would sooner welcome back Brock Osweiler or Jacoby Jones as that bridge should be forever burned.  I suspect that with the proper motivation and improved coaching he could get back into actual football shape and alongside a top notch left tackle and center his pass protection learning disability could be hidden enough to not completely sabotage an entire offense.  However, I don't see the value in taking on a 27 year old reclamation project when there are plenty of 22 year olds who haven't made themselves obvious weak link targets as the worst player at their position for multiple seasons and added fat and slow onto their resume that has always lacked NFL strength.   I have no doubts he'll get a job next year because there are still GM's like Rick Smith out there who ignore performance over scouting projections and fill spots in spreadsheets without understanding how the dynamics of units like o-line and secondary can work together where the whole can be greater than the sum of the parts.