In Defense of… Ross Blacklock

I've been thinking about it and I'm planning on making a series of posts similar to this one about under-preforming/subpar players and looking at potential factors that could contribute to their downfall outside of "they just suck" i'll be posting to other football Subreddits besides this one but i'm going to post here as well when it applies. alright that's all i have to explain about the concept.

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Ross Blacklock has been well, frankly extremely disappointing in his rookie season, for someone named the best pass rusher in the Big 12 he has not even come close to fulfilling expectations. some people even comped him to Gerald McCoy, so what went wrong?

Scheme: Blacklock was a Rush Defensive Tackle coming from TCU's 4-3 scheme, this obviously led to a struggle for this skill to translate to a Nose Tackle position in the Texans 3-4 defense. this would obviously hamper anyone's ability to produce but with the Texans changing to a Tampa 2 defense that would have him as an interior rusher, there's still a good chance for this to get better.

Development: Player development has been lack luster in Houston for a while now. it's certainly not a model place for a rookie to grow as a player when surrounded by such middling mediocrity, or sometimes outright garbage

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Conclusion: Ross Blacklock is a below average pass rusher put in a terrible situation. his lack of production is about 60% his fault and 40% the fault of the texans organization in general. I also anticipate that he has a bounce back year in 2021-2022 and i'll guess he will have around 4 or 5 sacks with 40 or so total tackles.