I promise I won’t spend too many words on now Houston Texans offensive lineman Kendrick Green. So much has been said and written about him, including from myself, and at the end of the day, he’s no longer a Pittsburgh Steeler. It was the right move by Omar Khan and this front office. Green didn’t have a role, which means he didn’t have a roster spot, and it’s good for him to start anew. Go somewhere where he’s not the butt of every joke and feeling the weight of every error from the fan base. It won’t transform his career. But it’ll help.
Yesterday’s trade of Green to Houston ends an era. Or really, an error. Green will go down as one of the biggest misses of the Kevin Colbert era, with his successor eventually getting him off the roster. I still contend Pittsburgh is to blame more than Green for his disastrous career. Not that Green is blameless — he has clear talent deficiencies and limitations — but the Steelers completely bungled the pick.
They wanted, and Mike Tomlin literally said this, an upperclassman with tons of center experience who was Day One ready. Green was literally none of those things. And yet he was thrust into action as a rookie in the middle of a bad and cobbled together offensive line and asked to replace Maurkice Pouncey while snapping to Ben Roethlisberger in the final year of his career. I’ll tell you I’m shocked that did not work out. Never has what the Steelers said they were drafting and what they were actually getting been so misaligned.
None of this absolves Green. He lacked the impeccable technique undersized players like him need. And it never got much better. But I truly believe teams are capable of screwing up draft picks just as much as players simply aren’t good enough to succeed in the league. To lesser degrees, it’s happened to Pittsburgh before. Defensive back Sean Davis struggled, in part, because of the team constantly moving him around. Slot corner, strong safety, free safety, he never got comfortable and always felt like he was playing catch up.
That didn’t exactly happen with Green, but he clearly wasn’t comfortable at center and unprepared to start there out of the gate. When a guy gets torched his rookie year as he did, it shakes his confidence and creates the external pressure from the fan base. As much as these guys may say they stay off social media or tune out the noise, they’re going to hear it. This isn’t 1980 anymore. Everyone is online. Green got stuck in the wrong scheme, more gap/power than zone, and an offense that didn’t run many running back screens. Fish out of water, that was Kendrick Green.
Some argue Green got so many chances to succeed and it’s his fault he failed. I’d argue Green got too many chances in that he was playing too early in his career. He was a developmental player, someone who needed to sit and learn. Even then, there was no guarantee of success. I compare Green to a Joey Harrington or David Carr. Guys who even under ideal circumstances probably wouldn’t have been stars or studs but would’ve been better players. Instead, they were thrown into the fire, set up to fail, and it crushed them the rest of the way. Green rowed the same boat.
The good news is Pittsburgh admitted its mistake and moved on. And got something for him. A 2025 sixth-round pick isn’t much, but it beats outright cutting him. Khan and company didn’t stubbornly keep him over worthier players like rookie Spencer Anderson and the fast-rising Dylan Cook. Maybe he finds more success in Houston. To hear it from Houston-based draft analyst Lance Zierlein, the Texans are still running a zone scheme, for which Green’s athleticism is better suited.
It’s doubtful Green ever becomes a starter, much less a star, but it’s possible he has a better time in Houston. At least he’ll just be Kendrick Green. Not Kendrick Green, third-round pick anointed starter who failed miserably. Maybe he can stick in the league for a few more years as an interior backup. Or maybe not.
In the end, all that matters are the outcome. Green was a bad pick. He wasn’t the player Pittsburgh thought he’d be. And he was one of the front office’s biggest misevaluations of the Colbert era. Now, he and the Steelers start new chapters. It’s always been the most logical ending.
