If I had to look at the sum total of the Houston Texans’ training camp, I would say that this feels like a better football team today than I envisioned at the start of camp, back in mid-July., My feeling on the Texans heading into camp is that they were right around the same 10-7 outfit that they’ve been the last two seasons, good enough to win the division, but in need of some luck to go further in the playoffs.
However, this offense is very clearly better coached now than they were a year ago, particularly on the offensive line. Whereas the 2024 offensive line was confused, poor at communicating, and undisciplined, the 2025 unit looks tough, physical, and cohesive. This group’s improvement alone gets me to an 11-6 or 12-5 feeling with this team.
There are still concerns, though. The offensive line doesn’t have a big enough sample yet to where we can chalk up this improvement as “continuing.” So that’s a valid concern. Here are three more:
3, Long snapper? Yes, long snapper.
When the Texans chose to allow franchise legend, and 15 year Houston Texans Jon Week leave in free agency this past offseason, they were choosing to allow the unknown into their special teams room, because Weeks is literally the only athlete I can think of who was perfect at his job. In 15 seasons, there was never a bad snap.
Now, the Texans’ choice to replace him, rookie Austin Brinkman, is injured. They replaced Brinkman with Blake Ferguson for the Lions game, and Ferguson was a mess. Now, the team must make a decision, which might involve bringing in a new long snapper before Week 1. This is far from ideal, and bordering on “Curse of Jon Weeks” territory.
2. Secondary depth
The first layer of the depth chart in the Texans’ secondary is enough to have them at the top of the league power rankings at those positions. Derek Stingley, Kamari Lassiter, Jalen Pitre, Calen Bullock, and C.J. Gardner-Johnson — every team in the league, except maybe one or two, would gladly swap out their secondary for those five players.
The issue is that the depth chart after those five guys is made up of rookies, rejects, and guys barely hanging on in the NFL. As of right now, the Texans need that room to stay healthy to ensure they are the elite level defense we anticipate this season.
1. Joe Mixon’s injury
Mixon, of course, has missed all of training camp with a lower leg injury that was suffered doing some sort of non football activity, as he’s spent camp on the Non Football Injury list. The team has been very vague when answering anything having to do with a timeframe for return for Mixon, which doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence that he will be back for Week 1.
This means the running back position on game day goes from the player ranked 58th in the NFL top 100 players, Mixon, touching the ball 20 to 25 times to some mashup of Nick Chubb (returning from injury in 2024), rookie Woody Marks, and whoever else is deemed worthy of carries. Until we get a better sample on Chubb and Marks, it’ll be hard to tell how much the Texans can count on running the football.
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