The Value of Things journey began almost five years ago to the day. It began with two guiding principles. The first (and the genesis of the title) is that every player has value. The key to success is for a team to accurately figure out which players have the most value and which players don’t. This becomes a huge deal when you have a good team. A good team has good players. The key is to figure out who the good players are and who the great players are.
The second principle is that we wanted to use dispassionate analysis as much as possible. That means a reliance on facts, statistics, and reason as much as humanly possible. That means waiting a day to digest huge news stories like we had yesterday. The Texans swung two significant deals when they traded Tytus Howard for a fifth round pick and then traded a fourth round pick, future seventh rounder, and offensive lineman Juice Scruggs to the Detroit Lions for running back David Montgomery.
We should start with the initial reaction. Like most Texans fans, you felt a gut punch when your best lineman was dealt two off-seasons in a row. The Cleveland Browns immediately gave Howard a three year, 63 million dollar extension. It seems counterintuitive to take your weakest unit and deal the best player on that unit. With guard Ed Ingram officially a free agent, the Texans have only one starting lineman under contract. Jake Matthews could nominally be considered a second, but the Texans almost certainly will want to upgrade the center position. So, they have one starting lineman.
The flip side is that the Texans were paying Howard top ten right tackle money and top five guard money. PFF scores are not the end all be all of human existence, but it does provide a guide for how he has done in the last three seasons under the current regime. In short, calling him the best offensive lineman on the team is both true and misleading. He technically is the best, but that doesn’t mean he was good.
* 2023: 46.8 overall
* 2024: 69.5 overall
* 2025: 62.3 overall, 76.7 pass block, 49.5 run block
The numbers above are pretty consistent in terms of how they are broken down between run blocking and pass blocking. He typically does not allow sacks. He allows some pressure, but he is better than most in that department. Even in his best seasons, he has been fairly ordinary or worse as a run blocker. For those uninitiated to the PFF universe, players with 80 or more are usually Pro Bowlers. Players with 70 or more are solid starters. Players with 60 or above are either below average starters or solid rotational players. When you are below 60 you should not be a starter.
Leave Howard at tackle and you probably will see him live in the high 60s and low 70s in terms of an overall PFF grade. You can do a lot worse at tackle (or any other position on the line), but it is a struggle to see a player like that get top ten overall money at his position. This is particularly true when so many other players on the roster are due to also get top ten overall money at their position. It’s all well and good if they actually are among the best at their position. It is another to be an average player getting a bunch of money.
The second part of the deal is the David Montgomery trade. Montgomery has played in the league for seven seasons, has had 715 or more yards rushing every season and has averaged over four yards a carry routinely. He may not be Joe Mixon, but he is approaching that level. Unlike Mixon, he has only two years left on his contract, so you can easily move on from him after the season if he loses a step or if Woody Marks or another young back supplants him.
In comments, I labeled this as a “take my wife….please” kind of trade. It looks bad at the outset to lose more offensive line depth, but how much did you actually lose? Scruggs has been in the league for three seasons and could not get on the field much last season. This was in spite of the fact that the Texans routinely rotated guards. He could not crack that rotation. Were they wrong?
* 2023: 47.5 overall
* 2024: 63.5 overall
* 2025: 45.5 overall, 57.7 pass blocking, 40.5 run blocking
79 guards had 100 or more snaps in the NFL last season. Scruggs was 76th. According to the grade, he was virtually unplayable in two out of the last three seasons. He is essentially going the way of Kenyon Green. Some people (including here) will kill the Texans because their trade of Green did not work last season be C.J. Gardner-Johnson did not work out. The same could very well happen with Montgomery. The key is you are losing nothing by trading Scruggs. Quite frankly, he was taking a roster spot of someone that could have actually contributed when guys went down.
As for Montgomery, he was the 21st rated back in the league according to PFF. He was even better in 2023 and 2024. Montgomery has shown decent receiving skills in his career in addition to his running ability. He also at least proficient as a blocker in pass protection. So, he can be a three down back if the Texans choose. In his best seasons, he has lived between 200 and 250 carries. That ends up being somewhere between 12 to 15 carries. We could easily foresee Woody Marks getting the same kind of workload.
What will be interesting is to see where they go from a third running back standpoint. We can imagine Dare Ogunbowale will be back as a special teams demon and British Brooks is likely to be back as a fullback. That leaves one spot for a third complementary back. Could it be Jahwar Jordan or do the Texans still add a running back in the draft? At the very least, it probably takes them out of the Kenneth Walker/Breece Hall/Travis Etienne business. Under the circumstances, they probably don’t need a 9-10 million per season back. Montgomery will do just fine for six.
The bottom line is that there is still a ton of work to do. When evaluating any move you have to ask two questions: does it make sense and does it make your football team better? Considering the money, the deals make perfect sense. You save some money and add a position of need at the same time. Does it make your team better? In the interim the answer is clearly no. Your offensive line is worse today than it was yesterday. The good news is that the Texans aren’t playing a game this week. They have time to add more lineman. Obviously, Nick Caserio’s track record there is shaky, so there is plenty of room for skepticism, but when you have an empty palate, you have infinite possibilities.