Kenyon Green And Other Young Players' Impact On Texans This Season
Texans GM Nick Caserio talked with Payne & Pendergast about Kenyon Green and more young players expected to contribute to the team. In The Loop's John P. Lopez, Reginald Adetula and Figgy Fig react here.
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00:00Speaking of talking to the boss earlier today, Payton Pendergast, 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. right
00:05here every weekday on Sports Radio 610. They had in the boss for the Houston Texans, the general
00:12manager, Nick Casario, and they had him for a good long minute. He was just in there having
00:16a good time talking about all sorts of things, training camp, preseason, leading into this team,
00:21and this game, and then also, obviously, going into the game. But one of the things that
00:27the main conversation for a majority of the training camp was, of course, Damian Pierce,
00:31the running back situation. And we got various kind of quotes and things from D'Amico Ryans
00:38over the course of things, maybe a little bit on Casario, but I think that Payton Pendergast,
00:43they really relished the opportunity to talk directly to the source, hear from the horse's
00:47mouth. What were they seeing from Damian Pierce, and what are their thoughts on maybe the third
00:52year running back in this third season? DP's had a good attitude. He's worked really hard.
00:56I think the weight, I mean, honestly, he's been overblown, and he's got good contact balance.
01:01He runs low to the ground. He can break tackles and practice. We're not tackling. We're not
01:06anybody on the ground. So you're just looking for, just do they execute the assignment? Do
01:11they have the right techniques? So at some point, we're going to need everybody that's on this
01:15football team to make a contribution. So whether it's DP, whether it's Cam Akers, whether it's
01:20J.J. Taylor on the practice squad, whomever it might be. So DP's had a great attitude. He's had
01:24a great approach. He's in condition. He was out there every day. We've talked about this. I've
01:28talked about this. I mean, I'd say there's a lot of things that DP dealt with last year on a personal
01:32level that not too many people were aware of, and I think that's where you see the intersection of
01:37we kind of lose sight of sometimes that they're football players, but we're all people, and we
01:42care about them as much as men and people as we do what they do on a football field. I would say
01:47overall, DP's in a good spot. I think he's going to help our football team this year. We'll take it
01:51one day at a time, and whenever the opportunities present themselves, you're looking for people to
01:56capitalize, and we're not going to jump to any conclusions. We're not going to make any decisions.
01:59We're ultimately going to do what we feel is best for the football team. So hopefully your fears can
02:04subside here, and you can get a good night's sleep now and not have to worry about that.
02:09I think Seth had said that one of the things he was concerned about, which you've heard,
02:12you've talked about it quite a bit, the idea of Damian Pearce not having the same heft,
02:19and maybe that leading to him not breaking as many tackles, which was probably the thing that
02:23you could say was his primary, I guess, talent for lack of a better term. He had that finishing
02:29ability with the strength, and maybe he lost that. Obviously, Casario's saying, hey, put that to rest
02:35in your mind, but within that cut, I thought he gave us a little better insight into the
02:40organization's thought process on Damian Pearce. What did you hear from it? Well, I think you have
02:43to separate two thoughts there. The second one on, well, he had some things going on on a personal
02:49level, and so that's where you almost have to extract yourself from the football criticism,
02:57critiquing, et cetera, and say, okay, we don't need to know that. Certain things need to be
03:04private, but he had something. So you almost have to separate that and say, all right, well,
03:09that makes it a little more understandable. Once you do separate that and you kind of understand
03:14that it is a little more understandable, ultimately, it still comes down to what happens
03:19on the field, and he actually said that at the end. He goes, we'll see how it plays out,
03:23but if you can say, okay, I get it. If there was something else we don't know, we don't want to know,
03:28whatever, but at the same time, this is the football business, and it's one of those
03:35things where you, and I've said this a few times, you will have to watch what they do,
03:39not what they say. Sure. What he's saying is, we feel good. They don't tackle him all the way.
03:46You don't go all the way to the ground during preseason other than the games. We feel good
03:51about him, et cetera, et cetera. Okay, that's what you're saying, but what you're doing is,
03:55is he going to be on the field as one of the top two running backs when it's cutting time?
04:03That's what we have to see. Along those lines, I think that he spoke to a little bit of that
04:07in the middle of that cut where he brought up a man who you said that I'm kind of looking like
04:12today as I have taken down the twist and I have the hair kind of out. Fig, do you think I look a
04:17little bit like what Cam Akers has been working recently? That's the same hairstyle, yeah.
04:20Okay, very good. Cam Akers comes up in the course of that, as does British Brooks, as does JJ Taylor,
04:28because, and I thought this was something that we talked about, but hearing that explicitly,
04:32the idea of, hey man, everybody's going to factor in, which in some ways is a cliche.
04:36A football cliche is we need all of the guys, right? Everybody is going to factor in. But
04:40in this running back room, I think that what that translates to, and correct me if you think
04:44I'm wrong here, and I guess, Nick, if you're listening, let us know if I'm interpreting
04:48this too correctly. I want to talk to your boss.
04:53Let me know if I'm wilding here, is that, hey man, it's going to be a lot more situational on
04:59when running backs are utilized, as opposed to just RB1, and you go down the depth chart,
05:03who's RB2, now you're in, and who's RB3, and now you're in, is going to be more,
05:07who is better suited to be used in these certain situations, which may possibly put Damian Pierce
05:13as big back, as I know some people have talked about, big back situations,
05:17where you need to, you know, have that thumping, you need that finishing. Okay, Damian Pierce gets
05:22out here, although I still want to see if he's capable of doing that, because in order to thump,
05:26you got to make sure you hit the right place in the, you know, in the blocking scheme,
05:30hit that gap hard, but other than that, right, like, I do think that, hey, if you're in certain
05:33situations where you need some of that speed and the ability, I mean, speed isn't the right word,
05:38particularly, but some of that ability to cut back in those types of things, then it's Cam Akers in
05:42that situation, or in another situation, maybe it's British Brooks, and so I do think that speaking,
05:47it felt like he was speaking to that a little bit in that particular answer. No, I totally agree,
05:53but it come down to, you know, they're in Indianapolis, then they come back with the
05:56Bears, and then they come, you know, they play Minnesota, and if Damian Pierce is not an integral
06:02part of the ground game, or some, you know, some type of way on the offense, then what they're
06:08doing doesn't match what they're saying, you know, and so that's why if he comes in, and he starts
06:13playing, and he's the number two back, and he finishes runs, and we're seeing a little bit of
06:16hint of what he was in 2022, well, then I'm buying what Nick is selling there, but to say we
06:23feel good, it's not the same, you know, you can't really judge, okay, if that's the case, then we
06:29should see on the field, you know, some semblance of the Damian Pierce that we thought we saw.
06:33I think the good thing is they do have a backup plan in Cam Akers, if it don't work out right.
06:38Oh, no, absolutely.
06:39Because I felt like whatever situation Damian Pierce went through, I felt like if that wasn't
06:43the case, he probably would have been cut or traded, but for the simple fact that, you know,
06:48I was shocked they brung both of them. I thought Cam Akers was going to, unfortunately, be the one
06:53out because of their love for Damian Pierce, but it seemed like they got a backup plan in Cam Akers
07:00just in case, and why not keep Damian Pierce on the team?
07:04Yeah, speaking of foul money, as, you know, was talked about last segment with Robert Sala
07:08talking about Hasan Reddick.
07:10A change in the couch.
07:11Like this was real foul money when you talk about Cam Akers, a dude that you just asked to come on
07:15down because he was in town, and ultimately you found a dude who is going to be quite an insurance
07:20policy if Damian Pierce is not the Damian Pierce of a couple years ago, if he is somewhat diminished
07:25or not capable of playing at the same level. I did find this interesting because we got,
07:30we talked about one of the guys that you had predicted a little bit and that ultimately did
07:33show up was Stefan Diggs, and Painter Pendergast asked Dick Casario, general manager of the Texans,
07:40about the leadership of Stefan Diggs and if it surprised him at all.
07:43Well, I think one thing that you observe over the course of time and when you're around good
07:48players and you're around good teams, there's a lot of discourse and dialogue with the other
07:53side of the ball because ultimately we're competing against one another, but when we
07:58go out there on Sundays, we're one team. So what can we do to help each other? So
08:02if you're a receiver and you're running a route against a corner, whether it's Stang or Lasseter,
08:07and let's say the receiver has the advantage or he uses some technique to get open,
08:12or okay, then you go back and then they have some dialogue. Hey, what are you thinking on that? Well,
08:17if your technique is here, if you're playing inside levers, like here's what I'm looking to
08:20do. So what you want players to communicate amongst each other, and this goes back to,
08:26not to use D'Amico's quote or steal it, which I'm not stealing it, but it's just about what
08:30the program is about. Iron sharpens iron. So you're making each other better. So you want
08:36your players to work with one another to make them better. So it's no different than CJ having
08:41a conversation with Aziz. So if we're playing some kind of zone coverage and CJ goes somewhere
08:46with the ball, maybe he wasn't anticipating where the defender was going to be. He might ask him,
08:50hey, what were you looking at on that player? What did you see? And vice versa.
08:55Look, man, Stefan Diggs, since he's come in, has done nothing but act like a veteran who should be
09:01a captain. Right. And I guess that got into two because the second part of that is where he brought
09:05back around that Diggs is doing some of those things that you kind of typically understand and
09:09expect in those types of situations where, you know, the iron sharpens iron type effect to it.
09:14But yeah, he's been a consummate pro. And I feel like that's something that's going to take this
09:21offense to another level. I mean, it has to, right? Absolutely. Forget just what his talents
09:27are. Like they're realizing, there are players, probably the majority of the players on this team,
09:32they might've heard a couple of things about Stefan Diggs, but they didn't know. They might
09:36have believed some of the stuff in Minnesota and Buffalo that we're finding out is really maybe
09:41overblown. So now they got Stefan Diggs every day and now they know what he is. And yeah, it's not
09:47just what he's going to do on the field. It's what he just talked about there. Now, another big topic
09:53as I think we're going to have to circle back around to Nick Casario talking about the Colts
09:56itself, because that's a whole nother level of it itself. But he talked about another dude who was,
10:04I guess he wasn't talked about a lot because very quickly we found out, oh, this is different. And
10:08that's Kamari Lassiter, right? Came in kind of expecting him to be one thing. And he very quickly
10:12ascended to being the other corner opposite Stangley. They asked Nick Casario, Payne Pendergast
10:18did about rookie cornerback Kamari Lassiter. When we got started there in May or whenever
10:24we started working with the team, he started inside the formation there a little bit. Kamari
10:28was going to get some reps on their perimeter. So then we popped them outside and then that kind of
10:31coincided with JP moving down to nickel as well. And as we worked through it, the more time that
10:38we spent, the more comfortable that we felt with, I would say, those two particular players in their
10:42particular spots. Kamari, very mature, very competitive, very tough player. From the day
10:48he walked in the door, he's been the same player that we thought he was, or had not,
10:53you know, we potentially thought he would be, but he's worked really hard. He just shows up,
10:58another player doesn't say a lot, just shows up, just does his job. He wants to compete. He's not
11:02afraid, understanding that there's going to be challenges that those players on the perimeter
11:07of a formation face, because at times there's not a lot of help out there. So you're going to win
11:11some, you're going to lose some, your ability to bounce back from a bad player, negative play,
11:14to put it behind you quickly. Those are qualities that you're looking for in any player,
11:19specifically a corner. And I would say, you know, we're excited about the opportunities that Kamari
11:25potentially has in front of them. And we think it can help our football team, which is why we
11:29drafted him when we did. This was the most interesting one of all to me. Okay. And let
11:33me explain why. That's interesting because there's, there's more stuff. No, I know there's
11:36a lot of good stuff. Yeah, for sure. But let me explain why. When they drafted Kamari Lassiter,
11:41Figgy, we were talking about it right here on this show. We thought maybe,
11:44okay, he's going to be a nickel, you know, he's going to be an inside guy. Yeah. He just kind of
11:48said, we started him out there. Yeah. We started him inside. And then they realized, Whoa, this
11:54dude, this dude is an outside corner and moved him out. So this is interesting to me. Would Jalen
12:00Petrie have been the nickel if, you know, you know what I'm saying? Like, I always think about
12:06if they thought if Kamari Lassiter was what they thought he was, you know, but we're going to start
12:11him out at the nickel. Well, where would Jalen Petrie be today? And the crazy thing is we would
12:17be talking about maybe, um, Kalen Bullock. I mean, will he be coming off the bench or second
12:24string? Yeah. It's just, it's just, it's a lot. It's interesting. Just that one player kind.
12:28Because Kamari Lassiter is so good and they realized that quickly and they put him at the
12:33outside corner. Maybe that opened the door for Petrie. Yeah. Cause I was, I was going to say
12:37that maybe that would have just pushed Kamari into a more of a backup role, but that's the
12:42first round pick typically. And I understand it doesn't, I'm sorry. Second, my apologies,
12:47but typically, um, with the way that these things go, uh, your high value draft picks,
12:52first, second round picks, you're expecting to be starters or big contributors in year one.
12:57Just made me think a little bit, but yeah. Cause they remember they brought in Akuta
13:03you can easily argue. They were thinking, okay, Akuta and, or, you know, Henderson's going to
13:07battle for the outside. We got Lassiter on the inside. Yeah. Something like that. So it's
13:14interesting how Petrie kind of landed there. Man, Nick Cereo spent a whole hour with Payne
13:20and Pendergast. There's a lot of stuff, including some things about how this Colts offense, uh,
13:25kind of factors in. Um, so we'll talk about that. There's also some just kind of larger
13:30topic things that we can also revisit. So we'll circle back around probably 1 PM.
13:34Uh, we'll talk more about what Nick Cereo talked about with Payne and Pendergast this morning,
13:40right here on sports radio.