The Value of Things: Key Players of the Texans – John Metchie

We profiled Jalen Pitre and Kenyon Green first in this series. These two players may not be critical to the Houston Texans’ plans to win the AFC South, but they seem like the type of players that will need to do well if the Texans have higher aspirations. John Metchie doesn’t fit into any of those categories. He’s what people in Louisiana would affectionately call Lagniappe.

In my Green article, I talked about the sunk cost. That’s an absolute rule in economics and it applies pretty well here. They spent a second-round pick on Metchie and traded even higher to get that pick, so I’m sure there’s some pressure organizationally to make sure that pick is successful in some way.

But there’s a lot of background to the Metchie story. He tore his ACL in the SEC Championship game at the end of his college career. Then, before his career could even begin, he was diagnosed with cancer. The ACL injury is normal in terms of what we expect from athletes. However, there’s no guarantee that someone will recover the same way they did before.

A good but not great athlete could go from 4.5 or 4.6 mph to 4.6 or 4.7 mph. That may not seem like much, but that one step could be the difference between creating distance or not. That’s especially true when talking about the difference between corner distance in the SEC and corner distance in the NFL.

And then there’s the cancer diagnosis. I didn’t tear a cruciate ligament, nor did I have cancer. From my own experience, I don’t have the slightest idea what that does to the human body. What I do know isn’t pretty. People who undergo cancer treatment are ultimately changed by it. The lucky ones don’t really feel any worse, but their bodies have changed a little. The unlucky ones are overwhelmed and are lucky if they can get through one day to the next.

I don’t know where Metchie falls on that continuum. I can assume he falls more into the former because he can still play football. Still, we have no idea how much it took from him, and I imagine he may not even know for sure. Life is not a choose-your-own-adventure story where you can go back and see what would have happened without the cancer.

The other fact is that there are at least four wide receivers ahead of him in the rankings. That doesn’t even include Robert Woods, who most of us assumed would have been released by now due to salary concerns. That doesn’t include Xavier Hutchinson, who could also compete for a spot. That doesn’t even include Steven Sims, who could come in as a return specialist.

Given all of those parameters, I’m not even sure what a breakout season for John Metchie could look like. And if he doesn’t make it, someone else like Noah Brown or Hutchinson probably will. So as far as the Texans go, I’m not sure Metchie will lead the Texans to greater heights than anyone else in that receiver corps.

This brings us back to the concept of sunk costs. They spent a second-round pick on Metchie, so Nick Caserio would be much better off if Metchie did something to justify the pick. I specifically mention Caserio because DeMeco Ryans wasn’t here when he was selected. He has no responsibility and doesn’t care if Metchie or someone else gets him that performance.

I’m sure he cares about Metchie as a person and is interested in seeing Metchie succeed, as many of us want him to be. However, the blame for this loss is not on him or Caserio. It is on cancer. Cancer could rob another player of a potentially promising career. We can only hope that it doesn’t happen.

So what does success look like for Metchie? Woods and Brown were third and fourth on the team last year with 40 and 33 caught balls, respectively. So it seems like the fourth receiver on this team should be in that range again this season. Success for Metchie would be to basically become one of those two. If Metchie were to be the first wide receiver off the bench to get between 35 and 40 caught balls, he would give this team some much-needed depth and at least partially justify the second-round selection.

Again, most likely, someone is going to catch those balls. From a pure team perspective, it doesn’t particularly matter who does it. I just know that a lot of us would feel better about life in general if it was John Metchie. It might not be the kind of performance that gets the Texans to their first AFC Championship Game, but there are things in life that are more important than playoff games.