Some people are fans of the Houston Texans. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Houston Texans. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.
Your team: Houston Texans.
Your 2025 record: The Texans won 12 games last year. Their defense stomped around like King Ghidorah ravaging Tokyo. Their offense puttered along like a dump truck with two flat tires and one square one.
Every 2025 Texans game was an avalanche of punts, penalties, field-goal attempts and flattened quarterbacks, with some defensive touchdowns sprinkled in to keep everyone awake. The Texans came out on top of most of these unga bunga battles. Then their quarterback turned into Mr. Bean in the playoffs.
Despite its embarrassing ending, the 2025 season was actually a massive success by Texans standards. At their best, the Texans have been feisty sparring partners for the NFL’s real contenders over their 25-year existence. At their worst, the Texans didn’t act like a football franchise, but a vacation bible camp that was really a money-laundering front.
The Texans are unofficially run by Hannah McNair on behalf of her husband Cal McNair, who has the coconut-custard brain of a lead-poisoned medieval nobleman. There’s an old rumor that former Texans quarterback David Carr once walked in on McNair in his deskless office, sitting on the floor and playing a video game on a wall-mounted television. Cal has long denied the rumor, and I believe him. One of Cal’s caretakers would at least have ordered some peasants to drag in a beanbag chair for him.
Soon after Texans founder Bob McNair passed away in 2018, his son Cal fell under the spell of a human VeggieTale named Jack Easterby. Imagine Rasputin as a failed Branson stand-up comic who became a cringe megachurch youth pastor and you get Easterby, who rose to NFL prominence as the Patriots’ “character coach.”
Yes, the Patriots’ “character coach.” Because the 2001–2018 Patriots got where they were because of their unshakable faith in their Lord and Savior, not by being miserable workaholics who treated the NFL rulebook like a roll of Charmin.
Having transformed Bill Belichick and Tom Brady into the paragons of Christian virtue that we know today (Read: Realizing that the jig was up and axes were about to fall), Easterby made a pilgrimage to Houston, where he became a kind of life coach and one-man shadow cabinet for Cal. Deshaun Watson’s dozens of sexual assault allegations became public on Easterby’s watch, so the Texans let Watson hide out on their reserve list while they maximized his trade value, just as Jesus would have done.
Just before Easterby arrived, bellicose Belichick cosplayer Bill O’Brien won a hard-fought battle for franchise control by throwing purple-faced tantrums at everyone in his path. But O’Brien wasn’t prepared for a sneak attack from a multiclass cleric/bard/rogue. The Texans fired O’Brien early in the 2020 season, replacing him with a parade of over-the-hill coaches (Romeo Crennel, David Culley, Lovie Smith) who were content to serve as glorified gym teachers while Easterby performed Noah’s Ark puppet shows for Cal, who was then serving as CEO on behalf of his mother.
Easterby must have sensed trouble brewing in the form of a complicated/litigious/boring McNair family power struggle, so he tied some bed sheets together and slipped out the back window of team headquarters in the dead of night in October of 2022. When the McNair family melodrama ended, Cal was the Texans’ principal owner, with his wife Hannah (officially the team’s Chief Community Officer, but her mouth can be seen moving when Cal speaks) wielding his ceremonial bib and binkie. A former Belichick pencil sharpener and Easterby factotum named Nick Caserio was promoted to for-realsies general manager, and the Texans were ready to conduct a proper head coaching search, or at least hire a 49ers coordinator and call it a day.
The Texans went 11-28-1 in their three seasons as Easterby’s Manger Babies. Fortunately for Caserio and new coach DeMeco Ryans, most NFL teams are run by people who like to eat endangered species. So Watson, the Texans’ sex-offender-in-a-mystery-box quarterback, sparked a bidding war. The Browns traded their souls, kidneys and dignity for Watson, and the Texans parlayed the duffel bag full of extra draft picks they got in return into C.J. Stroud, Will Anderson, Derek Stingley and other cornerstones of the current roster. That influx of talent made the Texans an instant powerhouse in the AFC’s Participation Trophy Division, and they’ve been coasting on afterburners ever since.
Your coach: DeMeco Ryans started his NFL career as a Texans linebacker. He later went on to become a linebackers coach, then a defensive coordinator. He’s now a head coach who thinks like a defensive coordinator who thinks like a linebackers coach who thinks like a linebacker.
Ryans’s coaching motto is S.W.A.R.M., which stands for Special Work ethic And Relentless Mindset. NFL coaches are geniuses at coining acronyms which somehow make concepts they stand for harder to remember. Every coaching acronym makes Calvin and Hobbs’s G.R.O.S.S. (Get Rid of Slimy girlS) sound like it was penned by Ezra Pound. C’mon, coach: at least replace “Special” with “Superior” and throw "Aggressive" in front of “Relentless” so the “and” does not become part of the acronym. Eh, never mind. Just watch Danielle Hunter gnaw on Daniel Jones’s leg for three hours, then collect your paycheck.
Ryans is the stereotypical defense-oriented head coach. He thinks defense rules, offense drools, and quarterbacks are tools. He prefers offensive coordinators who are obedient, nondescript, and unimaginative. If he could put a headset on a budgie and teach it to squawk “Two handoffs and a third-and-long screen,” he would.
Ryans’s first offensive coordinator was Bobby Slowik, the son of Bob Slowik, a former defensive coordinator. Slowik, a fourth cousin twice removed from the McVay-Shanahan coaching shrubbery, called plays for the Texans as if he still felt the sting of getting grounded for a month if the quarterback threw an interception. Slowik is now in Miami ripping the interpretive dances and pan flute solos out of Mike McDaniel’s old Dolphins playbook.
The current offensive coordinator is a potted ficus plant named Nick Caley. Caley was Rob Gronkowski’s tight end coach in the late 2010s, so he probably mixes a mean margarita. He then became a low-level McVay assistant, so he definitely mixes a mean margarita. His play-calling last year made Slowik look like a cross between Bill Walsh and Rembrandt.
Your quarterback: C.J. Stroud committed the young quarterback’s cardinal sin in 2025: Thou Shalt Not Break the Hearts of Early Adopters and Tastemakers. Driving a Lambo though a cat cafe would have done less damage to his image.
Stroud was last seen panic-puking a pick-6 into a phalanx of defenders while getting tenderized by K’Lavon Chaisson in a playoff loss to the Patriots. On that all-time NFL Folly, Stroud looked like a preschooler trying to hit a half-court buzzer beater on roller skates while being mauled by a bear.
The Patriots blooper came on the heels of a victory over the Steelers where Stroud played as though he was fresh from a combination of shoulder surgery and trepanning; the Texans only won because their defense treated Aaron Rodgers the way seagulls treat an unattended funnel cake. Per Aaron Schatz’s FTN Almanac 2026, Stroud endured the worst single-season playoff performance in history; most quarterbacks, after all, don’t get the chance to suck twice in the same postseason.
Stroud, once both the NFL’s Offensive Rookie of the Year and a certified-fresh Next Big Thing according to coaching-film cineasts and fantasy soothsayers, has become that most loathsome of all NFL characters: a game manager (ew) and system quarterback (gross). He is like the young Andy Dalton or Derek Carr, but with better hair. In a world where Sam Darnold wins Super Bowls, it would be silly to write off Stroud based on two bad games. But Stroud’s reputation was tarnished by last season’s playoff performances. It was totalled.
Gawky backup quarterback Davis Mills is often compared to a giraffe, though he’s more of an alpaca, or the Mekaneck from Masters of the Universe. Davis was the Texans’ starter during the Easterby years but has settled into a backup role. He led a few victories in 2025, which further diminished Stroud’s reputation. Let’s face it: The Texans defense is so overwhelming that the Texans could win games with one of those supermarket coupon robots at quarterback.
What's new that sucks: Caserio prefers running backs with about 100,000 miles on the odometer and dry-rotted timing belts.
Devin Singletary, the running back you end up with if your internet connection futzes out during an online fantasy draft, led the Texans in rushing in 2023. Former Bengal Joe Mixon, who ran up the middle for four yards a pop whenever Ja’Marr Chase needed a breather, replaced Singletary in 2024. Mixon suffered an offseason foot injury last year and was replaced by Nick Chubb, whose entire lower body is held together by popsicle sticks and fondant.
This year’s rusted-out beater of a running back is 29-year old David Montgomery, best known as the Knuckles to Jahmyr Gibbs’s Sonic for the Lions, though by 2025 he was more like Big the Cat. The Lions thought so little of Montgomery that they replaced him by just paying Gibbs more money.
Caserio also likes kitbashing Texans offensive lines together out of scavenged dishwasher components and recycled tuna cans. New arrivals on the Texans line include T Braden Smith, who is old enough to have blocked for Andrew Luck in Indianapolis; G Wyatt Teller, who is old enough to have blocked for Baker Mayfield in Cleveland; and G Evan Brown, who is old enough to have blocked for Ryan Fitzpatrick in Miami. Caserio also drafted Georgia Tech G Keylan Rutledge, who immediately moved to center. So the 2026 Texans offensive line consists of an out-of-position rookie, a bunch of old rain barrels the Browns and Cardinals didn’t want anymore, and holdovers from the line that turned Stroud into Bumbles McShartypants in last year’s playoffs. It’s the kind of line a team assembles when the general manager is an obsessive dumpster diver and the head coach not-so-secretly hates the very notion of offense. Which at least is on brand.
What has always sucked: When not towing running backs out of junkyards or searching for offensive linemen on a Thicc Singles Over 30 app, the Texans prefer to source their wide receivers from Iowa. That’s like preferring to source your sushi from gas stations. In Iowa.
The top Texans wide receivers at the start of training camp, other than Nico Collins, were Iowa State alums Jayden Higgins, Jaylin Noel, and Xavier Hutchinson. Did you know that Iowa State went 7-6 in 2021 with Brock Purdy, Hutchinson, Noel, and Breece Hall in the starting lineup? Reassembling the 2021 Cyclones like they’re the Missouri Valley Avengers or some shit is a fine way to build a team just good enough to lose the Cheez-It Bowl.
Higgins tore an ACL in mid-August, so the Texans traded for Kayshon Boutte, whom the Patriots considered expendable after they traded for A.J. Brown and signed Romeo Doubs. Boutte is pretty good, but nothing screams “Super Bowl contender” like picking through the recyclables of the team that whomped you in last year’s playoffs.
Also: Houston Texans? That’s the best team nickname they could come up with? “Texans” is an absolute surrender of a nickname. We know the Dallas Cowboys are synonymous with the Lone Star State and have hoarded all the best iconography, including the damn star, but we’re from Texas, too! The part that looks like Louisiana, anyway. See: there’s a bull’s head on our helmet! Bulls are Texan, right? At least we think it’s a bull. It might be a fruitbat or something.
What might not suck: The Texans defense consists of 11 pissed-off xenomorphs with wrecking balls for arms.
Nico Collins is a quality wide receiver. Hummingbird-like receiver WR Tank Dell showed signs of being an itsy-bitsy highlight factory before missing most of the last two years with a catastrophic knee injury. Dell returned to practice at the start of training camp. He will hopefully still be in one piece by the time you read this.
The Texans themselves probably won’t suck. Their vicious defense and putzy offense will make their games gnarly, but lots of fans love gnarly football, and the Texans should pummel many opponents into submission. Ryans and Stroud are likeable enough, and there are no longer any unrepentant sex offenders (that we know about) or Machiavellian dime-store preachers skulking about. The Texans have generic branding and an unimpressive history, but at least they have an identity. That identity may be “not as pathetic as the Cowboys,” but that’s a start.
HEART IT FROM TEXANS FANS!
Kenneth:
I can't believe CJ Stroud turned into James Harden in the playoffs. Houston has already endured that nightmare before.
All this talk about how great the defense is going to be again is all meaningless right unless Stroud can get his shit together? But what indication is there that he will? It just all feels so hopeless...
Daniel:
I can't. I'm broken.
I wrote in two years ago hopeful because we had what fans dream of: what appeared to be a budding elite QB on a rookie contract. Two years, two OCs, and two absolute sieves of offensive lines have turned CJ into David Carr hearing footsteps and immediately diving into the fetal position. Our only hope is that the NFL institutes some sort of "five Mississippi" rule for the other team before they rush. What few Texans fans that exist are clamoring for Davis Mills like we haven't been down that cul-de-sac before.
We have an elite defense that is going to absolute waste because our offense gives the other team the ball in their own side of the field and expects them to bail them out. Houston fans are just waiting for our DC to walk over to our OC and punch him in the middle of the game... again.
Steven:
This team is so anonymously awful that every year I wonder if this is the year that a team doesn't have any fan submissions on the WYTS. And then my dumbass writes in anyways. Every 5 years we are doomed to squandering generational WR1s and defenses in the most embarrassing of fashions: add L @ Patriots 28-16 4 INTS to my tally of primetime embarrassments from last year. The Sun will expand to a red giant and swallow the Earth before these morons advance past the divisional round.
Chuck:
I was recently in Wisconsin talking football with a local Packers fan. He asked me what my NFL team was when I said I was from Houston. I told him the Texans were my team. He then asked me what my NFL team was.
That’s pretty much how everyone outside of Houston sees the Texans. And they aren’t wrong.
David:
This is the only team I can think of that no matter who is coaching, who is on the o-line coaching staff, who ever is managing the team that seems to prefer to have a broken and battered QB by week 4. The inability to develop the o-line seems to be baked into the DNA of this team, and it is crazy that this team just cannot get it together on the o-line. I hate them and they piss me off every fucking year. Fuck these guys.
Also, it's hot as balls in Houston, and I recently took a week-long vacation from work and never left my home. It was too hot, humid and disgusting to do anything. This whole city is a swamp-ass cesspool. The Texans being mediocre year after year is the perfect metaphor as a city as a whole, just mediocre. This place has no unique flavor (with very very few exceptions) and anything older than 10 years old is torn down and replaced with a strip mall.
Fuck Houston.
John:
In 2013, I moved to Houston for a new job in an industry I had always wanted to join. The job went well and had some great perks, including executives with season tickets for every team in Houston. In late December that year I was offered the CEO's tickets for a Houston Texans game. Who'd they play? Probably the Jaguars or Titans. It wasn't a good game, but it was (allegedly) pro football; at 29 years old at that point in my life I had never been to a pro game. I decided to lean in and adopt the Texans as my team (I grew up in LA so had abandonment issues with the Rams and Raiders, and less said about the Cowboys during my time living in Dallas the better) if only to keep free tickets coming.
I bought a shirt. I bought a hat. I got tickets to probably 3-4 games a year over 10 years and never paid for one.
Thankfully, the team over that time period more or less delivered what I paid for. Every year it felt like they were 2-3 moves from having a cohesive product. Great new quarterback? Move forward. Everyone around him is now goo on the turf? Two steps back.
If the Texans start a game strong, they will come out lazy after halftime. If they start slow, they'll do just well enough after the half to make you think they have a chance. Then they'll blow an important play in the last 5 minutes of the 4th. Yes, I'm still mad about that playoff game against the Chiefs, why do you ask?
JJ Watt was only good for 5 minutes of his career. He's the favorite player of Houstonians who voted for John Whitmire for Mayor, and you know why.
Houston is 10 suburbs in a trench coat pretending to be a city. Great food scene though. It almost makes up for not being able to step outside during 4 months of the year.
Everyone who lived in Houston in the 80s needs to shut up about the Oilers. They're gone, they're not coming back. You have this stupid team with a stupid name, and its not going to change.
Last year I moved to the PNW and had a chance to just jump on the Seahawks bandwagon as my new "local" team before the season started. No, I decided to be loyal to the Texans- the pieces were there! Now I have to add the frustration of trying to find somewhere showing games to my fall Sundays, or pay for the full NFL package at home.
Can the Texans go out for cigarettes and not come home like the Rams did to me when I was a kid? Maybe then I can forget about this team and go enjoy the beautiful part of the country I live in now.
LaLo:
After two dismal seasons in a row, our QB cut his braids off in anticipation of a new season and a fresh start instead of actually, you know, GETTING BETTER. I’m sure it was the hair that caused him to collapse like the Houston infrastructure when a storm arrives.
Our tailgating crowd doubles as an ICE recruitment convention. Tons of lifted trucks on 10 year payment plans with Punisher logos and “these colors don’t bleed” stickers, fans with Oakleys worn on the backs of heads, and casual racism tossed about along with footballs while trad wives look on adoringly. The food out there is good though.
At least our name, logo, and team colors are unique and original…FML never mind.
I have as much for this team as they have given me. A whole lot of nothing.
Gwen:
To celebrate 25 years of the Texans winning absolutely fuck all the regional energy company that owns the naming rights to the stadium announced they would change the name back to Reliant Stadium. And the team is spending a boatload of taxpayer money to build a shiny entertainment district and practice facility an hour drive north of the stadium in some suburb that shouldn't exist. Those were the two most exciting things this team did in the offseason. What the fuck is SWARM?
Andrew:
I know in my heart of hearts that they will find a way to squander this all-world defense in the annual Divisional Round pants-shitting.
Jon:
Being a Texans fan who grew up cheering for the Oilers is like being in a 2nd marriage. You go from idealistically hopeful to…,”yeah, I guess”
25 years of “yeah, I guess”
James:
Last season was Houston's BEST shot at making the Super Bowl, and CJ Stroud ate shit in two playoff games. They will somehow waste an all-time defense and never get that opportunity again.
I still can't believe Bryce Young was the better playoff QB.
Fuck Bud Adams' ghost and his entire family.
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