The Houston Texans finished up mandatory minicamp on Wednesday afternoon, the final checklist item before a roughly six week break leading up to training camp. In a perfect world, the next six weeks should be free of any Texans-related content, as players are either vacationing or working out on their own. In other words, this should be a quiet period.
Well, it didn't even take one day for the quiet to get drowned out by noise, as just several hours into the team's hiatus, news broke that Texans safety Jimmie Ward was arrested for felony assault, categorized as a "family violence" incident. Courtesy of Jonathan Alexander and Catherine Dominguez of the Houston Chronicle:
Houston Texans safety Jimmie Ward is facing a felony assault family violence charge in Montgomery County following an incident at his home in Magnolia early Thursday.
According to information from the Montgomery County Jail, Ward was accused choking someone and arrested on the scene around 5:30 a.m. He is held without bond.
The Texans, through a statement said that they are aware of Ward's arrest, and are currently gathering information. They have no further comment. Okay, let's dig into this, understanding that there is still a lot of information that will likely come out over the next day or two.
**If the charges are valid, what does this mean for Ward?**The key words in the excerpt from the Chronicle above are "felony" and "choking." That the arrest rises to the level of a felony arrest likely means that someone needed medical attention. That the action involved is described as choking likely means that the medical attention was caused by choking. We have no idea who was on the receiving end of the alleged felonious assault, but if it's a woman, the already terrible optics for Ward are much, much worse. This would likely mean that the Texans next comment on this incident would be Ward's release. Ward's salary cap figure for 2025 is $5.6 million, so the salary cap ramifications would be material, but not unmanageable.
**What does it mean for the Texans, from a football standpoint?**Again, we are acknowledge that we are playing a game of "what if" here, as Ward is innocent until proven guilty, but if Ward is indeed let go by the Texans, the team is far better equipped to handle a spur of the moment cut of Ward than they would have been in 2023, when Ward arrived here. Back then, the safety room was Ward and Jalen Pitre and not much else (sorry, Eric Murray). The Texans now have rising star Calen Bullock and C.J. Gardner-Johnson, who they traded for back in March. The truth is that Ward was likely to be a backup safety, and given his injury history, he would have probably given the team 10 games, at most. This is, at worst, a glancing body blow for the Texans' stout defense.
This is unfamiliar territory for the Texans
If you're thinking to yourself, "Man, a Texans arrest, this feels unfamiliar!", it's for good reason — since 2000, the Houston Texans have had the fewest number of player arrests in the NFL, with just 17 arrests since the team came into the NFL. Their last arrest, according to database NFLArrest.net, was a theft arrest of someone named Darius Anderson three years ago. So this breaks a multiyear streak devoid of criminal activity that predates the hire of DeMeco Ryans.
This has to hurt DeMeco Ryans, in particular
There's obviously never a good time for one of your players to get arrested, nor a good time societally for crime, in general. However, this particular arrest has to hurt DeMeco Ryans personally. Ward was one of the first free agents signed by the Texans after Ryans became head coach, and Ryans' fingerprints were all over the signing, as Ward was a starting safety on the Ryans-coordinated defenses that he coached in San Francisco. Ward has been a team captain the last two seasons, so the news was definitely a shock on Thursday morning, perhaps nobody more shocked than Ryans.
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