Sports

3 Biggest Offseason Questions for the Houston Texans

By Doug Farrar Athlon Sports

Professional football is now a year-round enterprise, and that continues to be the case even after free agency and the draft are done, and the news cycle begins to die down in a relative sense. It's time for NFL teams to begin their offseason workouts - to get the rookies in the building and see how everything starts to jell with veterans and free agent acquisitions.

For the most part, roster construction is what it is at this point, and every NFL team still has questions in that depart. In this series, Athlon Sports endeavors to answer those questions, with an eye toward how close each team is to true contention … or where some teams are in their rebuilding process.

We continue with theHouston Texans, who did not begin the 2025 season with the best version of themselves. They lost their first three games, and even after decisive wins over the Tennessee Titans and Baltimore Ravens, they landed at 3-5 after an 18-15 Week 9 loss to the Denver Broncos.

Then, it all turned around. From Week 10, the Texans didn't drop a game until their divisional round loss to the New England Patriots, knifing through some very good opponents (San Francisco 49ers, Jacksonville Jaguars, Buffalo Bills, Los Angeles Chargers), and establishing a defensive presence that was just about unstoppable at its best. Though the 12-5 Texans finished second in the AFC South to the Jags, they at times looked like the NFL's best team, and that's something they hope to build upon in 2026.

"For us to plant the flag at the end of the year, it's [to] fall back in love with the process again," head coach DeMeco Ryans said in April. "You don't get to the playoffs just by showing up to the offseason program. There's a process of you have to really dive in each and every day, attack the day with a renewed sense of energy, attack the day with a beginner's mindset that you're willing to humble yourself, to relearn things you've already heard, already know, relearn them, learn new things, and grow and build off of that. We collectively come together and we try to build our team.

"2026, it's going look different than the teams we've had in the past. We got different players, different coaches, another year. Let's see how we build it. That's what I love about the NFL. Each year is a new year, and you get to build and mold and see a team grow throughout the year. That's what I'm most excited about - how we grow, how we connect. We'll see what happens at the end of the year, but I fall in love with the process all over again."

What needs to happen for Ryans and his Texans to fall in love with the process more than ever in the new season? Answering these three questions will help a great deal.

Which version of C.J. Stroud will show up?

Denny Medley-Imagn Images
Denny Medley-Imagn Images Denny Medley-Imagn Images

Back in 2023, there was no question whatsoever that the Texans had their future franchise quarterback in second overall pick C.J. Stroud, the Offensive Rookie of the Year who decisively broke the Ohio State Quarterback Curse and also made the Pro Bowl and the App-Pro team. Stroud did that with a rookie season in which he completed 354 of 553 passes for 4,557 yards, 26 touchdowns, five interceptions, and a passer rating of 101.7.

Since then, however, things have not gone as well. In 2024, Stroud's efficiency dropped behind an offensive line that allowed 63 sacks and 273 total pressures, and though he took only 29 sacks and 209 pressures last season, Houston's season ended with a 28-16 divisional round loss to the New England Patriots in which Stroud completed just 20 of 47 passes for 212 yards, one touchdown, four interceptions, and a passer rating of 28.0. It was the worst game of Stroud's career at the worst possible time, and it left a lot of people wondering just what was up with Stroud's present and future. He had gone from absolute franchise savior to a guy who had questions about whether the team should pick up his fifth-year option.

"I talked with C.J. today, and my message is the same," Ryans said one day after that loss. "Right now, it's just about him flushing this one. It's going to be a lot of negative talk, a lot of attention on him. He can't listen to it all. He's just got to get back to work in the offseason of going back to the basics, the fundamentals of playing the quarterback position, playing it really well, understanding how we need to play the game to win the game. He understands that already."

Stroud will need to overcome the fact that defense have a bit of a book on him, and that's true of every young quarterback at some point in time.

Stroud has all the talent in the world to make a comeback to the efficiency and effectiveness of that rookie season, and with the right parts around him, maybe that will happen sooner than later. It could be that Houston's first Super Bowl appearance could be at the right side of the rainbow.

Will the offensive line rebuild finally pay dividends?

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Houston's offensive line was hot garbage in 2024, which led to a new offensive coaching staff. Offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik was replaced by former Los Angeles Rams tight ends coach and passing game coordinator (and longtime New England Patriots assistant) Nick Caley, and Caley promoted assistant offensive line coach Cole Popovich (who found out in 2019 that he is distantly related to legendary NBA coach Gregg Popovich) to the main job.

There was improvement in 2025, but the offense was still disjointed at times, and the Texans now hope that they have the right horses up front. Left tackle Aireontae Ersery and right guard Ed Ingram were supplemented by free agents Wyatt Teller at left guard and Braden Smith at right tackle, and the new center is first-round pick Keylan Rutledge from Georgia Tech, one of my favorite offensive linemen (heck, one of my favorite players) in this draft class. It's interesting in that Rutledge never played center in college, but he says he's getting the hang of things.

"Anything coming to the NFL is going to be more challenging," Rutledge said in early May during rookie minicamp. "Better players; [the] scheme is going to be different. It's going to be more… [Georgia Tech Head] Coach [Brent] Key prepared me well, always knowing conceptually what everybody was doing up front at Georgia Tech and obviously got snaps there at practice and did a little at the Senior Bowl. I'm very confident playing up there. Anywhere they need me to play, I'll play."

Outside of Stroud's comeback to that rookie season, the offensive line's improvement is the most important thing for the Texans in 2026. And it could have a similar effect on the team's Super Bowl chances, for better or worse.

Can the defense be even better?

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While the Texans ranked 19th in Offensive DVOA (15th in passing; 29th in rushing), there were no such issues on the other side of the ball. Houston ranked second in Defensive DVOA behind only the Seattle Seahawks (second in both passing and rushing), and there's so much talent on that defense, they don't really need to fancy it up much at all. The Texans don't blitz a lot, they don't stunt a lot, they don't engage in a huge amount of disguised coverage - it's really the best execution-based defense the NFL has seen since the Legion of Boom Seahawks in the early- to mid-2000s.

It's their best 11 against your best 11, and your best 11 is likely to undergo some painful losses.

And here's the scary part - the defense could be even better in 2026. Not because we expect Ryans and defensive coordinator Matt Burke to get all schematically interesting, but because the additions to that defense could pay serious dividends. Adding to a line that already has football's most formidable pass-rushing duo in Will Anderson Jr. and Danielle Hunter is Ohio State interior defensive lineman Kayden McDonald. The 6-foot-2 1/8, 326-pound McDonald established himself as perhaps the best ginormous run-stopper in this class, and he's got more pass-rush juice than people may think - which certainly could be a thing with offensive lines trying to stop Anderson and Hunter.

"Kayden is a great football player," Ryans said after the pick was made. "For me, we've had success with smaller defensive linemen. That doesn't necessarily mean that that was what we were looking for all the time. I've worked with some really good coaches who were able to get the best out of players and the traits that they possess. Those smaller guys, explosive traits, they were able to knock back. We've seen where you start to lose some in the run game, so you get a guy like Kayden who is not only just a big body, but he is an explosive guy. He has the twitch. He has the explosiveness and he is stout versus the run, that's a bonafide defensive tackle that's going to impact our defense in a major way."

The Texans also added safety Reed Blankenship in free agency on a three-year, $24.75 million contract with $16.5 million fully guaranteed. Blankenship was formerly the quarterback of the Philadelphia Eagles' defense under Vic Fangio, and he can serve that same role here.

"Sitting back and watching Houston fly around at times, I'm like, ‘Dang, this defense is legit,'" Blankenship said in March. "Fast forward to being able to play for them now, it's crazy that a team like that wants me to come in and to perform at a high level. It speaks volumes. I feel like with me coming into this defense, I can give everybody a sense of calmness. That's part of my game. I want to be the communicator out there. I don't want to step on anybody's toes at all, but I want everybody just to play free. Play free, have fun and at the end of the day, just go and hit dudes. That's just part of defense. I've been born and raised to go run and hit dudes for a living. I feel like this is a great fit. I know there's a bunch of dawgs in the secondary, linebackers, defensive line, everywhere. I'm super, super-excited, super-stoked for this. I'm just ready to build that relationship between all the levels, for sure."

On the whole, the Texans at their best could well compete for the Lombardi Trophy. It's mostly a matter of how good their offense can be, and how much Stroud can extract from his talent in 2026 and beyond.

Copyright 2026 The Arena Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This story was originally published May 26, 2026 at 6:55 AM.

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