Why Your Team Sucks 2025: Houston Texans

Some people are fans of the Houston Texans. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Houston Texans. This 2025 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.

Your team: [George W. Bush voice] Houston Tixins.

Your 2024 record: 10-7, which only looks impressive when you strip away every last bit of context. If you recall, these Texans had the same 10-7 record in 2023. But that division title came in the wake of three straight 12-plus loss seasons before. At the beginning of this decade, the Texans were an Evangelical clown show with a procession of disposable head coaches and a piece of sexual malware at quarterback. Then suddenly—HEY PRESTO!—2023 brought them an instant franchise QB, an instant franchise edge rusher, and a head coach everyone both loved and respected. This was, at last, a credible football operation. For one year.

Gearing up for 2024, the organization stacked the roster—except in one vital spot, which we’ll get to shortly—to open their Super Bowl window fully. Respected football minds saw a team ready to contend for an AFC title, and well beyond. Here’s what happened instead:

More context: The 2024 Texans started off 5-1 before going 5-6 the rest of the way. They ended the season with a point differential of zero. They got annihilated in Minnesota, with their former edge rusher tallying three sacks against them. They lost to Green Bay at the gun, even with the Packers botching the hold on the game-winning field goal. They blew a game in the fourth quarter to the Jets, thanks to this touchdown pass from Aaron Rodgers. They picked off Detroit QB Jared Goff an astounding five times, took a 23-7 lead into the half, and lost the game anyway. They blew a game to Tennessee at home when Titans QB Will Levis did this. And then, in a final insult, they hosted Baltimore for a Christmas Day game and promptly had their heads fuckstarted by a truly appalling score of 31-2.

They still won the AFC South, of course, but you don’t need any further context to know how empty an accolade that is. I beat the Wordle today. Who cares.

Sometimes you can have a winning season that also happens to be a nightmare season. The 2024 Texans were the embodiment of such a phenomenon. Two of Houston’s best wideouts tore their respective ACLs. Another went on IR with a bum hammy in Week 5 and never came back. The Texans beat one winning team all regular season, and that’s only because the Bills pulled a Bills against them. Most important, only two teams allowed more sacks all season long. When GM Nick Caserio was assembling his little Dream Team for 2024, he forgot to do something about Houston’s offensive line. Turns out your QB needs one of those to live.

It’s neat that Houston managed to win itself a Wild Card game last postseason, but playoff wins against the Chargers only count as 0.3 playoff wins. The Divisional Round remains the Texans’ mortal enemy, and so it came to pass that they would lose in that round (again) to Kansas City (again) despite a spirited effort by the defense (again). Kicker Ka’imi Fairbairn missed for the cycle in that loss to the Chiefs: missed FG, missed PAT, blocked FG. Had Fairbairn been money in the bank that day, Houston could have won that game. Then again, this team’s whole existence has been one big could have. We got one year of the Houston Texans looking like a capable NFL franchise. We were fools to assume we’d get any more than that.

LB Azeez Al-Shaair is dirtier than a toddler’s iPad.

Your coach: DeMeco Ryans, who kicked his offensive coordinator to the curb this offseason, mere months after that same OC had been one of the hottest names on the head coaching interview circuit. Bobby Slowik has since been replaced with former Rams assistant Nick Caley (every NFL coaching staff is now composed of 85 percent former Rams assistants). Ryans also promoted in-house assistant Cole Popovich to be his new offensive line coach. Neither of the two aforementioned hires have ever operated in their current respective positions.

This is what always happens when you hire a defensive head coach. Ask the Bears. Ask the Seahawks. Ask the Jets. Your defense will always be respectable under this sort of coach, and your offense will always be as coherent as a snippet of Madame Web dialogue. It doesn’t matter how good your quarterback is, even if his name is…

Your quarterback: C.J. Stroud, who got the will to live sacked out of him last season. In Houston’s inaugural campaign, they allowed No. 1 overall pick David Carr to be sacked a horrifying 76 times. You would have thought that year would have convinced Texans ownership—now embodied in the form of world-class dipshit Cal McNair—to manage that part of the roster more carefully. But remember, this is a team that willingly branded itself the “Texans.” Did you REALLY expect brains to grow on trees here?

Six times in their brief history, the Texans have allowed more than 50 sacks in a single season. Stroud had to absorb 52 of them last year, and his confidence was body-snatched as a result. His yardage totals plummeted. His TD/INT ratio did likewise. There’s now a chance, unthinkable 12 months ago, that Carolina made the RIGHT choice in picking ventriloquist doll Bryce Young No. 1 overall instead of Stroud. That’s how badly things have gone for our friend in H-Town.

Davis Mills is your backup for the 27th consecutive season. But he’s no safer than Stroud will be, because…

What’s new that sucks: The O-line has been graded by PFF as the league’s worst heading into the season. “But Drew, Caserio made moves to ADDRESS this issue.” Well, there are certainly some NEW terrible linemen here. I can’t deny that. The Texans didn’t have a first-round draft pick, but they still had the means and the time to give Stroud the protection he so badly needed a year ago. Here’s what they did instead:

-Traded for Vikings G Ed Ingram. You’ll hate Ed Ingram. Right away. You won’t need a game, or even a half.

-Traded franchise penalty addict Laremy Tunsil to Washington for an assortment of draft picks and replaced him with LT Cam Robinson. Last season, Robinson was benched by the Jaguars. He was then traded before the deadline to Minnesota, where he filled in admirably for an injured Christian Darrisaw for about three games. After that, he was about as effective as a mailbox. So Cam Robinson is more of a slow-burn disappointment than Ingram, but not by much.

-Let Shaq Mason walk and replaced him with bargain-bin free agent G Laken Tomlinson, who was good three teams ago.

-Drafted RT Aireontae Ersery in the middle of the second round and immediately handed him the starting job.

-Signed former Pats fourth-rounder C Jake Andrews and immediately handed him the starting job.

-Traded Kenyon Green to Philadelphia for legendary dipshit S C.J. Gardner-Johnson, who was summarily carted off the field with a knee injury in camp.

-Signed T Trent Brown, who is very tall and almost died that one time.

This front office is even more neglectful than Texas’ school system.

Elsewhere, lateral moves abounded. The WR room is still ailing; Stefon Diggs was cut loose, Tank Dell is still recovering from a knee injury so tragic that it left Stroud in tears, and who knows if Nico Collins’s hamstring will cooperate this time around. So here are new arrivals in Christian Kirk, Justin Watson, Braxton Berrios (I remember that guy!), and last year’s Iowa State receiving corps to act as joint compound for that new hole in the drywall. And if you thought the running game could help alleviate the problem, RB Joe Mixon is already suffering from an undisclosed foot injury, which means that Houston will likely rely on free agent Nick Chubb as their primary yardage eater at the beginning of the season. Ah yes, that famously durable Nick Chubb. This man could tear a ligament while making a fucking Pop Tart.

Over on defense, letting Jonathan Greenard walk to Minnesota last offseason and replacing him with Danielle Hunter proved to be a wise move, so long as you don’t factor in things like age, cost, and potential future production. But lemme drop the snark for a microsecond to note that CB Derek Stingley has become one of few true shutdown corners left in this miserable sport. Also, Caserio fortified an already loaded front seven in March by signing DT Sheldon Rankins, plus depth LBs E.J. Speed and Nick Niemann. DeMeco Ryans is still learning that offensive coaching matters, but he sure as shit knows how to scheme up a defense. This one is more than good enough to keep Houston on top of its sorry-ass division for another year.

Safety Jimmie Ward was recently arrested for assaulting the mother of his child. I thought that was legal in Texas! Huh.

What has always sucked: Ask any Houston resident, regardless of age, if they’d prefer to have the Oilers back instead of the Texans. In fact, ask them if they’d rather swap the Texans’ entire franchise history with the Titans’ franchise history since 1997 if it meant keeping the Oilers in Houston. All of them would say yes. All of them. Because what is there about the Texans that’s worth holding onto? This organization’s best coach ever was Gary Kubiak. Its most accomplished quarterback was either Matt Schaub or a disgraced injury magnet. Its signature playoff win was [404 object not found]

Not only do the Titans have a better legacy than the Texans, but it’s not even close. I like J.J. Watt and Andre Johnson as much as any football fan, but it’s been 24 years, man. That’s all you’ve given us in that timespan? You know how long it took the Jaguars and Panthers to make their respective conference title games after entering the league? Two years. The Panthers have even managed to win the NFC a couple of times since their founding. Meanwhile, the Texans’ history is a fucking desert. The crime you see now, it's hard to even take its measure. So fuck the very idea of this franchise. Fuck its name, fuck its ownership, and fuck the entire Bush family with a 10-gallon hat.

ICE is about to forcibly deport all of the people who make the city of Houston barely interesting. When the whole of civilization collapses, I plan on eating you Texans first.

What might not suck: You’ve already met the rest of the AFC South. These guys are the one-eyed king in the land of the blind.

HEAR IT FROM TEXANS FANS!

Mike G:

DeMeco Ryans only owns one shirt.

Ryan:

Meanwhile a division rival gets to parade around in the uniforms of the city's once great (okay, pretty good) football team. It's like wearing the skin of your enemies in front of their children.

Derek:

Our ceiling this year is getting shellacked by the Ravens/Chiefs/Bills in the divisional round. Like clockwork, this team gets my hopes up merely to grind them into fine paste.

My own son does not cheer for the Texans. He's seven and decided the fucking Detroit Lions were a better bet. He's not wrong. In fact, he's a hell of a lot smarter than my dumb ass. I thought this team was going places after they beat Quincy goddamn Carter in their inaugural game.

Matthew:

I give you this passage from the team website:

"The five key words to describe Texans were determined to be pride, courage, strength, tradition and independence, each represented by a point on the Texas star. 'It was really important to (Founder) Bob McNair that the color scheme have tremendous meaning.' Rootes said. The Texas flag motif, the bull and the star all came together to form the logo."

They said stuff like this out loud about picking possibly the worst name in NFL history. We're never gonna win a Super Bowl.

Andrew:

Coming out of last season, the #1 priority for the FO was getting a line in place to protect our young franchise QB, so that he wouldn't spend a second straight year being driven into the ground every few plays. Here is how they addressed the problem:

1. Signed Trent Brown (coming off a patellar tendon tear)

2. Signed Cam Robinson (looked utterly forgettable for Minnesota last year)

3. Waited until their second pick of the second round (after drafting two WRs) to draft an LT from a middling Big 10 program

Sorry, CJ. Maybe Jesus will protect you, because this line sure fucking won't.

Donald:

In February of this year, our Tommy Boy owner had been on a bit of an image rehabilitation media blitz (AMAs on the Texans subreddit, etc.), and we actually started to believe that he and his wife were cool. Turns out it was a ploy to build goodwill before demanding public funding for replacing the barely two decades old NRG stadium. The backlash was so severe they abandoned that idea pretty quickly.

I secretly hope the ghost of Buddy Ryan is punching the ghost of Bud Adams in the face as we speak.

David:

Gifted a fun-as-hell young QB after years in the wilderness, you can forgive a Texans fan getting slightly hopeful. The offensive line evaporating like cotton candy in water quickly quashed that hope, just like defenders routinely quashed C.J. Stroud all season. 

What did the braintrust do to fix things? They traded an All-Pro left tackle, signed a bunch of jamokes, and traded down in the draft before drafting TWO wide receivers instead of beefing up the offensive line. Stroud is going to have his leg ripped off by mid-season and Houston will win the South with a 7-10 record. 

Chuck:

I’ve got damn near nothing. Their Christmas day loss on Netflix was only slightly less embarrassing than the Tyson fight. 

Still the dumbest name in sports.

Lalo:

Why couldn’t the flash floods wipe this team and my fandom from the earth? We finally have a quarterback who is not a known sex pest and we’ve decided to take advantage of his rookie contract by trading away or releasing the entire offensive line that is supposed to keep him upright. The line in its current iteration has more stiffs than a morgue and is about as athletic.

The AFC South is the trailer park of the NFL.

Jeremy:

We've had an NFL team in Houston for 23 years and have had a decent offensive line for maybe four of them.

Steven:

The Houston Texans are 18-28 in prime time, and have a history of losing in ways that are even stupider than their name. God help me, let’s remember some nationally televised embarrassments:

-Scoring two points against the Ravens on Christmas Day in 2024.
-Blowing a 24-0 lead against the Chiefs in the 2020 Divisional Round, in a game they would lose 51-31.
-Getting blanked by the Chiefs in the 2016 Wild Card Round.
-Getting blanked by a Jacoby Brissett led Patriots squad in 2016.
-The Butt Chin losing to the corpse of Matt Hasselbeck in 2015.
-A 42-14 drubbing by the Patriots in 2012 that Mike Tirico described thusly: “Any confidence that could have been built tonight has been shattered.”
-Allowing the Colts to take the lead late in the fourth and then blowing the game tying field goal at the buzzer in 2013.
-Scoring just three points against the 49ers, also in 2013.
-Losing by 30+/- to both the Seahawks and Chiefs in 2005.

These assholes now have four prime time games this coming season. This team is so bad they can’t even wrestle back the Oilers naming rights and colors from Bud Adams’s faildaughter. Fuck me with an oily bull horn for liking this team.

Kenneth:

You know your team is struggling for an identity when the official article on the Texans' hand gesture has to specifically indicate how it’s different (i.e. not stolen) from the University of Texas's hand gesture.

The team's name, stadium, and gameday experience is blander than a salad without dressing.

Want to be part of Defector’s NFL previews? It’s simple: just email us here and tell us why your team sucks. Next up: Los Angeles Rams.