Texans offensive lineman have praised new o-line coach Cole Popovich. Should it matter?

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Does it matter to you that Texans offensive linemen have good things to say about their new offensive line coach Cole Popovich? Payne and Pendergast discuss it here.

Transcript

00:00Jonathan Alexander has a mailbag in the Houston Chronicle, Seth, where he talks

00:04about some of the aspects of the Texans coaching search. He said this in the

00:09mailbag. He said he talked to a couple of offensive linemen on the Texans after

00:13the season and they like newly promoted offensive line coach Cole Popovich.

00:19Yeah. Cole Copovich. Boy, that was almost really bad. He talked to a couple of

00:26offensive linemen who like him and thought he did a good job. Here's my

00:30thing with this. If he's talking to a couple of offensive linemen, then

00:36almost by sheer math, he talked to at least one that was not. Laramie Tunsil

00:40was the only one who I could say was good at his job last year.

00:44Yeah. So by definition, he talked to a couple. He talked to at least one who was

00:48below par. Well, I'd say Titus was okay. Like as far as,

00:55Titus didn't live up to his contract, but he was okay. I'd say two guys

00:59that were acceptable offensive linemen. I'm on record as saying

01:04I'm tired of Titus's opinions on almost anything right now. So my whole

01:09thing with this is there's a chance you talk to a couple of people who weren't

01:11very good at their job. I don't care what bad offensive linemen think,

01:17how good they think he is. Only Jonathan would know this is okay.

01:22Is this a guy who consistently dimes people out? Or is he a guy that's polite

01:28and says nice things about people? What kind of guy is he? And yeah, is he just

01:32declining an opportunity to talk smack about somebody? It also says in this

01:36mailbag he's responsible for the run block. That's what I... Really? Well,

01:40okay. So this is how I process that. Okay. Help me out here. Well, because

01:44I saw a couple people turn that into run game coordinator, which he was

01:49not. They didn't have one. If he focused more on the run blocking side

01:53of things and the... What's his name? The offensive line coach. Strauster.

02:00Strauster. Thank you. If Strauster was more on the pass blocking side of

02:04things, a lot of the issues with the run blocking, it was more systemic.

02:08And in trying to figure out exactly how they were even coached to handle

02:12some of the D-line movement and some of the things that linebackers were

02:15doing, because I would talk to offensive linemen about it, and they

02:20would say, that's not really the way guys that had played in Kubiak's

02:24system, when it comes to outside zone, that's not really the way I've seen

02:29it handled. So I don't know how much of that falls back on Bobby Slowick.

02:34And the way that they were trying to run things systemically, and that's why

02:38even with Strauster, I always try to give the O-line coach a break because

02:42a lot of times, offensive line coaches are trying to follow the wishes of an

02:46offensive coordinator who genuinely doesn't understand the challenges of the

02:50offensive line coach. So, watching Demiko Dimitrovic demoralize the way things operated last year,

02:57they must have seen something in Popovich that they liked, or that they

03:01don't blame him for. So, that's my cautious optimism about that part of it.

03:07Yeah, I don't think Demiko and Nick are dumb, you know? I don't think they're just doing it to

03:12give an attaboy to a guy, and here's your new offensive line coach.

03:15Especially when it comes to scheming up the run game, and coaching the run game,

03:19and everything, I'd lean on Demiko's evaluation of it.

03:23It's interesting that they took a week to fire Bobby Slowick after the season,

03:27because I wondered, I just, it's interesting to think about Demiko

03:31breaking it down and trying to figure out, and maybe detach his loyalty to

03:36Bobby Slowick and all that, and figure out, okay, why, where did this all

03:40go wrong? Why were we not able to adjust more quickly? And am I sure that it was

03:46Bobby's fault? And at some point, yeah, it was, he blames Bobby, or at least

03:50whoever, unless he was getting direction from on high.

03:52The other nugget that was interesting to me is that the team did have informal

03:56conversations with Chip Kelly, and it sounds like the Texans were not

04:00interested in paying six million dollars. They had at least a couple phone calls

04:03with Chip Kelly. There was a mutual interest, but yeah, I think

04:08they just went out the door at six million dollars. Yeah, I can't even, I can't get

04:11angry about that. Well, and Nick Caley had interviewed for the offensive

04:14coordinator job in 2023, and you wonder, man, Casario probably really,

04:19he already knew Caley, he liked him, was intrigued by him, and I don't know

04:24if Casario would have deferred to Demiko, or with the conversations they had about

04:28it. If you want to know what Nick Caley is as an offensive coordinator,

04:34they just hired him in the first year. Right, right, right, yeah, back in 2023.

04:39Now, at the same time, in that two years, Caley has had time with Sean McVay, where

04:44Sean McVay was overhauling his system. For people who are worried about, oh,

04:48you're just bringing in another Shanahan acolyte, no. McVay, for one, when

04:52he first got to the Rams, he changed his system up a lot based on their

04:56personnel, and then they've moved way away from all the outside zone run stuff

05:00over the last few years, and Caley was a part of that process. It's like you sent

05:04him to like study abroad at this offensive mecca called Sean McVay, and

05:09then you brought him back. Now we feel like he's better equipped to be our

05:12OCS. Well, he's schooled in various philosophies and schemes and everything

05:16else, and he's been in coaching a long time. He was a college coach for ten

05:22years before that. He coached in air raid schemes. To think that a guy, I always

05:26just think it's a vast insult to a human being to think that, like, yep, this guy

05:30is a carbon, gonna try to be a carbon copy of the guy he spent the last two

05:34years with. We just don't know exactly how he's gonna operate.

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