There's no question about the Texans' intention to improve their offensive line.
How they've gone about it and whether it will work is a matter of opinion and remains to be seen. But as far as what head coach DeMeco Ryans is seeing from them early on at voluntary organized practices, he says the mindset is "drastically changing" under new position coach Cole Popovich.
"His instant impact on those guys, you can see it" Ryans said Tuesday. "From the way they work in their individual drills, the way they come off the line with low pads it's the small technique things that you see; How they're dialed in, hand placement, speaking the same language. The coolest thing I've seen when we were working out in phase 2, we work out, we activate our guys here in the bubble and we travel outside to do our different drills. To see the o-Line come out and whoever was out first, they waited on the other guys. They waited and they joined together as a group, then they traveled down to the other end of the field to do their position work.
"So, that just shows me that togetherness, that connection that I truly believe in. If you want to be a great unit you have to be connected. So, Cole has kind of spurred that connection, that intensity, the mentality that I'm looking for and we have that. We have the intangibles of what it takes, now we just have to go out and get it done when we put pads on."
