In a Lazar podcast from last week or so he stated that before Karras was inserted at left guard he thought Onwenhu played poorly regarding his interaction with Wynn. Which dovetails with Big Mike's transition to back up.
First time I heard someone make that statement that correlated with the coaching assessment.
It's hard for me to fathom why Onwenu had problems with Wynn given what he has shown thus far. I feel like it's a waste of time to try to make a guard out of him given his superb rookie season
at RT. Why not just play him outside and let him become a dominant force? He's not slow, but the pulling and nimble footwork required at Guard would not seem to be his strong suit, which is caving in the man opposite him. His pass-blocking at RT was much better than you'd expect for a rookie late round selection and I can't see any reason why he couldn't improve. The guys blows people off the line as well as anybody in the league, is assignment sound and yet he we are dicking around with him. I don't get it.
Between Wynn and two young players, Desjarlais and Hines, who would appear to have genuine potential to me, I don't think Right Guard is nearly the trouble spot that RT will be if
we try to stick Justin Herron (square peg) in the round hole of RT. Herron has simply been awful at RT. Inadequate. He's better on the left side, but might never be beefy enough to
anchor. The first rule of blocking club is don't get rolled backwards like you're on skates. I saw only marginal improvement in Herron's strength in his 2nd year. If he doesn't make a significant
jump this year then I think he's probably a lost cause and we should move on. Just my amateur opinion.
I think we have quite a ways to go to settle things up front and there will likely be some significant churn to find who fits where, but I don't pretend to understand why the organization would
not have been thrilled to hand Onwenu the RT job for the next few years and watch him develop into one of the top guys in the league. We might as well, because in two years somebody else is going to pay him big money to play RT for them.
I expect the OL to be problematic into the early weeks of the schedule, but feel that the overall talent level is better than it's been in a while. I sincerely hope that Billy Yates is a better coach
than he was a player here. Since Dante Scar retired it's been a bit chaotic and the players will need a strong hand on the tiller moving forward.