Did Nick Caserio do enough to fix the interior offensive line?

A lot of the focus this offseason has been around the tackle position, and rightfully so. Laremy Tunsil getting traded was a huge story, and there’s plenty of excitement/worry about rolling with a rookie going into Week 1. But, what about the interior offensive line? At the end of the season, before the Tunsil trade, if you had asked Texans fans what the team’s biggest need was (besides getting a new OC), the majority answer would have been interior offensive line. The Kenyon Green/Shaq Mason/Juice Scruggs experience was disastrous, and completely de-railed the offense. The question is, did Nick Caserio do enough to fix the interior offensive line?

Caserio’s first move on the interior offensive line was to sign Laken Tomlinson to a 1-year deal. To his credit, Tomlinson is very durable, having started all 17 games with the Seahawks last year. However, the Seahawks’ line was one of the absolute worst in the NFL last year, nearly on par with the Texans’ line. While Tomlinson does have a Pro Bowl selection to his name, that occurred back in 2021, and it’s been all downhill since then. The 49ers let him walk in free agency after that 2021 season, and the Jets signed him to a 3-year deal. However, Tomlinson was very disappointing with the Jets, and was cut before he could make it to the 3rd year of his deal. Caserio’s second move was to trade for former 2nd-rounder Ed Ingram from the Vikings. Simply put, Ingram was a major liability for the Vikings in his first 3 years in the league. His biggest claim to fame was stepping on Kirk Cousin’s feet multiple times.

In the draft, there were reports that Nick Caserio was trying very hard to trade up for guard Tyler Booker, but this fell apart after the Cowboys drafted him at #13. Apparently Nick and the scouting team did not like any of the remaining guards or centers on the board to do one of their famous trade-ups, as the Texans did not end up drafting any interior players. Post-draft, the Texans scooped up center Jake Andrews, who had been cut from the Patriots, another team with a terrible interior offensive line last year. Andrews is a former 4th rounder who was often injured, leading to very little playing time.

Here’s a stat that was floating around at the time of the Tomlinson signing/Ingram trade: Ingram allowed the highest 1-on-1 pressure rate amongst guards in the NFL last year, while Tomlinson allowed the 4th-highest. For reference, Kenyon Green allowed the 3rd-highest. Interior O-line play is of course different from tackle play in that guards are not matched up 1-on-1 as often, but this is still a concerning stat. Ingram, to me, is basically the Vikings’ version of Kenyon Green. The celebration on the Vikings sub for the Ingram trade gave similar vibes to how the Colts celebrated the Texans signing Chris Strausser as their O-line coach. As for Tomlinson, I know some might argue that he had a decent PFF score of 62.5. However, Shaq Mason, who we can all agree was terrible, had an extremely similar grade of 62.3. If we’re going to trust our own eyes about Shaq Mason, then we should also trust the eyes of Seahawks fans who say that Tomlinson was terrible last year.

A big argument at the time of these acquisitions was that Tomlinson and Ingram were just depth pieces. Check out this thread about Tomlinson, for example. Now, with our Week 1 game only a few days away, Tomlinson and Ingram are slated to be the starting left and right guards. At the start of training camp, it was pretty obvious that Tomlinson would be the uncontested starter at left guard. They did a little bit of rotating at first, but Tomlinson consistently got 1st-team snaps the whole way through. Ingram, on the other hand, was slated with the 2nd-team at the beginning, behind Tytus Howard. I’m sure we could argue about Howard’s ability at guard vs. tackle forever, but ultimately I don’t think it’s crazy for me to say that Howard starting at guard is not the ideal, or what anyone was hoping for going into the season. But that became irrelevant when Howard was moved to tackle to allow Ersery to take over left tackle. As a result, Ingram has been lofted into the limelight as the new starting right guard. And remember, this isn’t because of injury- the lineup with Ingram at right guard is what the coaching staff decided was the best possible lineup. That’s scary.

Look, the interior offensive line could end up being fine. But my argument here is that, if that ends up being the case, it’ll be because of an awesome coaching job by Caley and Popovich. Nick Caserio handed these guys a box of broken scraps and said, “Make it work”. That’s a lot of faith to put a 1st-time offensive coordinator and a 1st-time head O-line coach at the NFL level. Caserio is putting his franchise quarterback’s development and health on the line by taking a huge gamble on these green coaches and these washed players. I wasn’t expecting Caserio to make a huge splash on the offensive line like the Bears, considering we had much more limited cap space, but the guys he provided just aren’t good enough on paper, and I wish he had sacrificed a bit of the depth on defense to go get O-linemen with higher upside. The ceiling on this offensive line is just depressingly low; if Caley and Popovich are good enough to get decent performances out of Ingram, Tomlinson, and Andrews, imagine what they could have done with even average players.

What do y’all think? I’m sure I’ll get labelled as a “doomer” or something similar, but I just don’t think Caserio did a good enough job on our biggest need.