Offensive Line

Can Blake Fisher play well at any OL position? It sucks that Nick used a 2nd round pick on him. I'd like to move him but considering they haven't moved him indicates to me that he can only be used as a 6th lineman. So it seems that we need to re-sign Trent Brown (who played well!) and probably draft another OT. RT Blake Miller out of Clemson might be ideal and available in the 2nd or even 3rd round.

 

Nice non-hysterical take on the OL from someone who studies OL play and doesn’t bring any agenda to the table. LZ is one of the only people I pay attention to for Texans takes. Thanks for sharing.

 

FWIW, PFF had Texans OL ranked #31 after the 24' season. A year later PFF ranks our OL at #27.

27. Houston Texans
Best lineup:
LT Aireontae Ersery
LG Tytus Howard
C Jake Andrews
RG Ed Ingram
RT Trent Brown

The Texans surprised many, after gutting their offensive line this offseason, by fielding one of the most efficient pass-blocking units in the league. Houston’s offensive line gave up 156 pressures, including 17 sacks, on 644 pass plays. As a result, the group posted an 86.6 PFF pass-blocking efficiency rating, which ranked fifth in the NFL this season.

Tytus Howard played probably the best football of his career in 2025. The former first-round pick started games at left guard, right guard and right tackle while posting a career-high 77.1 PFF pass-blocking grade.

Best player: Ed Ingram
Ingram had a career year in Houston, earning a 75.6 PFF run-blocking grade that ranked eighth among all guards.

 

Is this from an article? If so, do you have the link?

 

No. I have a PFF subscription and I pasted the information from their site to this thread.

 

Oh I gotcha

 

Texans need to decide if Tutus is a better G or RT in their system. He seems like a better RG tbh.

 

On paper Jake's numbers are ok. PFF graded him #27 among centers.

 

There's data... and there is actually watching him play. I think he is a great backup C... backup

 

I don't know how good he is because he played hurt most of the year. They do have to get better play out of the position.

 

Here’s an article that explains PFF’s grading process, and it highlights some real issues.

How PFF grades an NFL game: A look behind the curtain at the step-by-step process - The Athletic

Initial grades are often finished 15–20 minutes after the game, sometimes by a single evaluator using only the broadcast angle. The numbers are released, and then they wait for the All-22 later to reevaluate.

PFF admits the grades are based on interpreting player assignments, not just outcomes. That means a grade is only as good as:

The evaluator’s interpretation

The assumed play design

The accuracy of guessing who was responsible when something breaks down

That isn’t film truth — it’s speculation, especially for offensive linemen, where responsibilities are shared and adjusted post-snap.
They’ll point to “multiple sets of eyes,” but that doesn’t eliminate the problem. If the assignment itself is a guess, consensus becomes agreement on a guess. Meanwhile, those early grades are already public.

 

I know PFF is imperfect but they still provide some insight. Let me ask you this. Do you watch an all-22, vertical, replay of a Texan game and watch every play for every player? I don't. I will certainly remember some plays for being good or bad, but not all of them. There's a lot that we don't see. I think that PFF analysts do watch every play for every player and issue a grade. Are they perfect? No. Are their player-grades fairly accurate? I believe so.

With that said, I wish there was a knowledgeable football personality that watched and shared with us an "all-22" analysis of every play and what every player did. That's the only REAL way there is for any of us to know to really know what's happening.

 

Just another example of the "rush to be first" in the social media age, accuracy be damned.

 

Whether I watch All-22 of every play or not is irrelevant, since they don’t either and that is the point. PFF’s own people say those grades are often published 15–20 minutes after the game, before All-22 is available, using only the broadcast angle and relying on commercial breaks to keep up.
Those grades are based on interpreting assignments, not just outcomes. That means they’re guessing responsibility and then converting that guess into a number.

Watching every snap doesn’t fix that. You can watch more film and a guess is still a guess — and it can still be wrong.

They don’t know the actual play call, the play design, pre-snap reads and checks, protection adjustments, route options, hot reads, coverage rules, or how responsibilities shift post-snap. If the wrong read is made or a bad check is called, someone gets blown up and the grade still pins it on whoever the evaluator thinks was responsible.

 

PFF says "
When are PFF grades and stats updated?


This is a simple question with a really complicated answer. But we'll try to keep it simple.

Our data collectors are watching games as they happen and collecting data with each play. This means that some game data is available within our systems within minutes of the play happening. However, other data is only available after the game, once we've seen the All-22 tape. On top of that, we have data quality and data validation steps to ensure what we collected is, indeed, accurate.

This takes a lot of work to get right.

In practice, this means:

• All NFL game data (including PFF grades) is available by Monday, noon EST (with the Monday Night game available by noon on Tuesday).
• Most data for College teams (the FBS schools), as well as CFL and XFL data is available by 8am EST the day after game day. PFF Grading and our All-22 film review often happens after that, though.
• For FCS programs, game data may not be available until later in the week, but should always available before the start of the next week's slate of games.

We do data quality checks both in-season and over each offseason, so data may change past these dates if we ever find a mistake. (This is rare, but it does happen.)"

 

That’s the thing. He’s been gimpy his whole career. Dude is not a horse. He’s a pony you bring in when the horse needs a rest.

 

Exactly, and that is another major flaw in their process. A rush instead of a thorough job.

Just to clarify — the quote you pulled only shows you cherry-picking a sentence and misrepresents my point. I never said PFF “never watches All-22.” My point is that the grades released immediately after the game, the ones fans and media see, are often published 15–20 minutes after the final whistle, based only on broadcast footage and assignment interpretation. That’s exactly what the PFF evaluators themselves described in the article, and it was the basis of my very first post with the link . A guess, even by an experienced evaluator, is still a guess when converted into a number, and that’s the issue with single-game grades.

The link is in the my first post