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Usually summer camps opening up is a sign for the start of summer, but in the NFL it means the end of it for the people employed by the National Football League. The Texans start their training camp this Thursday. With the onset of these camps, like the rising of the sun to start the new day, are team preview pieces, and training camp preview pieces.
Pro Football Focus has a training camp preview for each team. You can read the entire article here. This is what they had to say about the Houston Texans, which of course, just means talking about their offensive line:
Offensive line is the name of the game for the Texans, and they haven’t exactly been winning in that regard as of late. In 2018, Houston’s pass-blocking unit allowed the highest pressure rate in the NFL (44.7%). Quarterback Deshaun Watson has largely counteracted the poor play with his elusiveness, but it’s yet to be seen just how good he can be when he isn’t feeling the heat regularly. While the Texans retain most of their offensive line pieces from a year ago, including Nick Martin (59.3 overall grade), Zach Fulton (52.6) Senio Kelemete (56.0) and Julie’n Davenport (52.5), change is inevitable for the struggling unit.
Free agency was fairly quiet for the Texans. The team’s brass signed veteran depth along the offensive line in Matt Kalil, Rick Leonard and the re-signing of Seantrel Henderson. Both Henderson and Kalil spent nearly all of last season on the Injured Reserve. Kalil has had an up-and-down career, earning overall grades hovering around 70.0 in each of his five full seasons. He allowed the 10th-most pressures among tackles in 2017.
It seemed the Texans had ignored their most glaring issue during free agency. That wasn’t the case in the 2019 NFL Draft. Houston selected linemen Tytus Howard and Max Scharping with their first two picks, respectively, in an attempt to stanch the seemingly endless bleeding on the offensive line. Howard and Scharping ranked 56th and 50th, respectively, on PFF’s big board ahead of the draft. Howard allowed just 11 pressures on 276 pass-blocking snaps in 2018 while Scharping surrendered 12 on more than 500 pass-blocking snaps. Can they translate that success to the NFL level? The Texans are relying on it.