For the last two summers, the biggest question surrounding the Houston Texans, the question most asked by fans around the city during training camp (aside from “How does C.J. Stroud look?”) has been about an injury. In 2025, it was Joe Mixon’s mysterious lower leg injury, a saga that stretched into the regular season, and eventually led to Mixon missing the entire season, and being persona non grata in the process. He was never around.
This summer, Texan fans are craving any bit of information they can get on Tank Dell’s recovery from his catastrophic knee injury suffered in December 2024, where his entire knee, multiple ligaments, were turned to mush on a collision with teammate Jared Wayne. Ironically, Wayne finally made the 53-man roster this season, while Dell began the season on the injured reserve list with the possibility of returning during the regular season.
Dell’s recovery has had fits and starts, to be sure, but there is even more emotion around Dell’s return than Mixon’s, for a few reasons. First, he’s a Houston Cougar. That’s where he played his college ball. Houston loves Tank Dell. Second, unlike Mixon, Dell has been around the team during his rehab. When the Texans won games last year, Dell was standing right next to DeMeco Ryans during his victory speech. Finally, Dell is an underdog. You don’t see many people on the planet Dell’s size that can do what he does when he’s healthy.
Will Dell play this season? That’s a huge question, and we may have gotten a hint on Friday, when the team restructured his contract to open up a couple million bucks in salary cap space:
So, since none of Dell’s money was guaranteed before the redo of his deal, Dell basically took a pay cut of a couple million dollars to guarantee himself some money and remain a Houston Texan. What does this mean? Let’s dig in:
**What is the latest public statement about Tank Dell from the team?**
Texans general manager Nick Caserio did his preseason press conference last Tuesday, and he said that Tank is ahead of where he was at the start of training camp. It was a fairly short answer in a press conference full of long answers on other topics. Then, the next day, on my radio show on 95.7 The Fan, Caserio indicated that Dell had experienced “a couple setbacks, nothing serious” and that regaining his top end, straight line speed was the final thing Dell needed to recapture, and that his quick twitch in tight spaces looked really good. Recapturing speed seems like kind of a big deal. That’s the level set of what Dell’s baseline is right now, before we get to the important part — determining his chances of playing in 2026.
**This feels like an injury settlement where Tank gets to stay with the team**
That Tank Dell took a pay cut of a couple million bucks from his $3.6 million salary to guarantee himself about $1.5 million ($1 million salary, $500,000 signing bonus) makes you wonder how the conversation went. Would they have cut Dell, if he didn’t agree in order to save the full $3.6 million? Would they have given him some sort of injury settlement. A lawyer friend of mine, who is pretty well versed in NFL injury legalities, said that this feels like a quasi-injury settlement, one that keeps Tank Dell on the Texans and in the building. If I were forced to bet on Dell’s chances of playing this season — and, to be clear, I wouldn’t TOUCH this if it were an available wager — I’d bet he won’t play a snap in 2026. Which brings us to….
**Is Tank a Houston Texan in 2027?**
What I could see happening with Dell, if it’s determined that he won’t see the field this season, is something along the lines of what the Texans have done with tight end Brevin Jordan, where they signed him to small, one-year deals the last two years after suffering season-ending injuries each of the previous seasons. If the team reaches a point this season where it’s deemed best to keep Dell on ice, I could see that announcement made in conjunction with a small one-year deal for 2027 to see if Dell can recapture any of the magic he had in 2023 and 2024. My big medical question is, given that it will have been roughly two years since his injury when they make this hypothetical decision, what exactly is going to happen with six more months of rehab? If the knee isn’t working by now, will it ever work again?