'Houston Grabbed A Tremendous Player': Texas A&M's Jimbo Fisher High On Kenyon Green's Potential
Texas A&M offensive linemen and the first round of the NFL draft. There's something about it that just sounds right.
Luckily for the Aggies, Kenyon Green ended the five-year drought last month in the middle of the 2022 NFL Draft. He also will stay close to home as the newest member of the Houston Texans.
Green, A&M's top prospect drafted since Myles Garrett in 2017, is hopeful to become the next great name in Aggie history at the professional level. The Texans are hopeful that he'll compete for first-team reps from the start at either left guard or right tackle.
Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher knows first-hand what the do-it-all offensive lineman can do in the trenches. He watched for three seasons as a rising prospect from Atascocita into one of the finest players he's ever coached.
USA Today Sports
USA Today Sports
“He’s extremely talented, but he also has all those intangibles that a great player has and a great teammate has and a great person has,” Fisher said earlier this month at the Houston Touchdown Club event. “You combine that with great physical skills, and you have a great player, and that’s what the (Texans) got.”
When Fisher elected to leave Florida State to become the Aggies' next head coach, he was tasked with building a recruiting class from the ground up. One of the biggest expectations for A&M was to add local talent across the state in order to stop the surplus of prospects leaving for top-tier programs in conference such as LSU and Alabama.
Green became the second major name to pledge his name to A&M's 2019 recruiting class, trailing only Converse Judson's defensive lineman DeMarvin Leal. Leal was the second A&M player selected in the 2022 draft, hearing his name called by the Pittsburgh Steelers with the No. 84 pick.
Fisher has never shied away from starting freshman Week 1 if they are the best option. That was the case with Green, who joined A&M's practices in June and began working with the first-team offense a week later.
“He started from the day he got here,” Fisher said. “He’s very talented, but even as gifted as he is, that’s the least thing (about him). It’s his character, his intelligence, his work ethic, all the intangibles."
Fisher said that one of the top traits of Green was his hand size and placement. Behind the 39-inch hands is a 325-pound lineman that stabilized the Aggies' rushing attack for three seasons with a combination of Isaiah Spiller and Devon Achane.
Hand size isn't everything, but it is a physical trait that bodes well for Green in the pros. In large part, Fisher is certain it will give his former offensive lineman a "last-second push" to protect quarterback Davis Mills against the rush.
“You have a physical guy who’s 6-foot-4 and 325 pounds and he can play guard or tackle because he has an 83-inch wingspan,” Fisher said. “That (wingspan) is like most tackles — guys who are 6-foot-6 or 6-foot-7. A lot of guys can (just) block you, but he can move the big guys and he’s athletic enough to block the skill guys."
Time will tell if Green has a better track record than the previous four linemen selected in the last decade during the first round. Only Atlanta Falcons' Jake Matthews is still with the team that selected him. Luke Joeckel is out of the league while Cedric Ogbuehi and Germain Ifedi are backups.
The talent is there for Green. So is the chance. To Fisher, that's enough to bet on the upside and his future with the Texans.
Said Fisher: "He checks all the boxes. You combine that with great athletic ability and you have a great player. I’ll be shocked if he doesn’t have an unbelievable career in pro football.”
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