The Houston Texans have found a window. They’re leaping through it.
The opportunity afforded by a dynamic rookie quarterback on a dirt cheap contract has created a boatload of surplus value against the NFL’s salary cap. CJ Stroud won 2023’s offensive rookie of the year behind a relevatory debut. Will Anderson Jr. won defensive rookie of the year after recording seven sacks and 16 quarterback hits in his final 10 games.
These two produced far above their paychecks, creating the leverage for Houston to divert assets elsewhere with two premium positions locked down. Danielle Hunter arrived to buttress the pass rush alongside Anderson on a two-year, $49 million free agency splurge. Stefon Diggs added an extra octave to Stroud’s slinging range for the cost of a second-round draft pick.
Those were the splurge moves on top of a common sense approach to roster building elsewhere. Denico Autry and Foley Fatukasi were relatively low-cost additions who can bring proven veteran performance to the defensive front. The Texans traded out of the first round of the 2024 NFL Draft, picking up the net value of a bonus third round selection in the process. The picks Houston did make early on brought proven college talent at positions of need, restocking the secondary and offensive line.
It’s all very clear what this is building to. It’s at least mildly surprising the Houston Texans are the ones getting it done so quickly.
With respect to the franchise, things have been extremely un-serious in Texas’ largest city. This is a team that gave Bill O’Brien enough control to systematically dismantle his reputation and a playoff team in an entirely avoidable fashion. It made the New England Patriots’ chaplain a trusted mind when it came to roster building. It hired David Culley and Lovie Smith as head coach in back-to-back years.
The charitable view was that this was all a low-key tank job meant to deliver the draft assets to compete once more. O’Brien’s roster management and the exiling of Deshaun Watson — who requested a trade before more than 20 accusations of sexual misconduct and what the NFL itself would later describe as “predatory behavior” came to light — necessitated a multiple-year reset. A stretch of hiring retreads, never-was-es and former Patriot bozos provided cover as Houston sank to the top of the draft order in 2022 and 2023.
The less charitable view is that the McNair family, owners of the Texans, aren’t quite as on top of things as they’d like. This recent success wasn’t the result of a revolutionary new technique or finding ways to game the system. Houston made common sense pickups to fuel 2023’s rise.
DeMeco Ryans was a top name on head coaching boards for two straight offseasons before the Texans brought him back where he’d won defensive rookie of the year honors in 2006. General manager Nick Caserio was a similarly smart, common sense hire who had done little in free agency (thanks to depleted resources) before 2024 but crushed his draft picks. That includes Stroud (passed over by the Carolina Panthers at No. 1 overall) and Anderson (a ready-made pass rusher at one of the league’s most valuable positions) at the top, but also mid-round finds like Tank Dell, Nico Collins, Jalen Pitre and Christian Harris.
This was enough to build the Texans from a pile of rubble into a good team. Making the leap from good to great, however, is going to take more than easy decisions.
Fortunately, the base has been laid to mitigate the risks of high-cost additions nearing the end of their NFL shelf life like Diggs (31 years old in November) and Hunter (30 in October). Let’s assume Stroud and Anderson will both be top 10 players at their positions in 2024 (Stroud may already be there. Anderson needs to continue the linear growth he showcased at the end of 2023). They’ll count a combined $16.2 million against the team’s salary cap while providing the kind of performance you’d have to pay two veterans of equal carriage $75 million in average annual salary ($48.8 million for a top 10 quarterback, $26.2 million for a top 10 edge rusher).
That’s $59 million that can be spent elsewhere — and that gap will only grow over the next two to three seasons as Stroud and Anderson play out their rookie deals. That space is the leverage to sign Derek Stingley to a big contract if he continues to flash his All-Pro upside (a bonkers 41.3 passer rating against in 2023). It can be used to re-sign Hunter when his deal expires in 2026 or Diggs when he hits the void years of his contract next spring (or, if his play falls of a cliff, can be used to absorb the $16 million in dead salary cap commitments for which Houston would be on the hook in 2025).
This 2024 spending will cut into the moves Houston can make in 2025; at the moment the Texans are only projected to have about $12 million in cap space, per Over the Cap. Restructures and cuts can push that to around $30 million with minimal effort, but current data suggest his team won’t be a big spender next spring.
Which is sort of the point! Houston’s push suggests this is the team it will go to battle with the next two seasons, particularly in an uneven AFC South. If that doesn’t work out, 2026 provides one more reset place — one last year before Stroud and Anderson’s contracts jump in value for their fifth years and the two, almost certainly, sign big money extensions.
Caserio and Ryans have two years to make this work, at which point they’ll have the chance to buy in further or change course. Knowing what we know about the 2023 Houston Texans, this will probably be a playoff team at the very least. Whether or not Houston can go farther — and make it to the first AFC title game in franchise history (or beyond) — will depend on whether the big swing, high cost veterans brought to Texas pay off.
Hunter and Diggs are about as safe a bet as the Texans could have found. They’re two more common sense plays for a franchise whose fortunes swung wildly once it stopped making the dumbest decisions possible.
