A new guard has landed in Houston.
Wyatt Teller has agreed to sign a two-year deal with the Texans, according to a report from NFL Media.
Teller was No. 58 on PFT’s list of the top 100 free agents of 2026.
Teller, 31, had spent the majority of his career with the Browns, playing for the club for the last seven seasons. He is a three-time Pro Bowler, having been selected in 2021, 2022, and 2023. He was also a second-team All-Pro in 2020 and 2021.
Teller started his career with Buffalo as a fifth-round pick in 2018 before he was traded to the Browns in August 2019.
He has appeared in 109 career games with 101 starts, starting 13 contests in each of the last two seasons.
The Texans have revised the contract of running back David Montgomery, who they traded for at the start of the league year.
He will receive a raise, per Aaron Wilson of KPRC, now due $16.5 million over the next two seasons on a deal that includes a $6.5 million signing bonus.
Montgomery, 28, will have a fully guaranteed $1.5 million base salary this year and can earn a total of $500,000 in per-game active roster bonuses. His first-year payout is up to $8.5 million.
In 2027, Montgomery is scheduled to have a $7.5 million salary, $2 million of which is guaranteed, and a total of $500,000 in per-game active roster bonuses.
He was previously due a non-guaranteed $5.49 million base salary this year and $7.49 million in 2027 with void years in 2028 and 2029.
Montgomery totaled 158 carries for 716 yards and eight touchdowns for the Lions last season, playing behind Jahmyr Gibbs. He requested a trade for an expanded role elsewhere, and the Lions sent him to Houston for offensive guard Juice Scruggs, a fourth-round selection and a seventh-round pick.
“Houston was definitely the place that I wanted to go,” Montgomery said Friday, via Wilson. “I was in Detroit, a very successful organization, and I practiced against Houston a couple of times and they’ve always been the hardest team to practice against.”
A day before Seahawks G.M. John Schneider addressed the potential impact of Washington’s looming “millionaire tax” on the defending Super Bowl champions, Simms and I stumbled into a conversation about state income taxes during PFT Live.
The spark came from the trade that has sent defensive tackle Osa Odighizuwa from the Cowboys (and Texas) to the 49ers (and California). In his last stop, there was no state income tax. At his new team, he’ll lose 13.3 percent, off the top.
It’s not as clean and simple as every penny of compensation being taxed, or not, by the state where the team plays. For road trips, the game check is taxed by the state in which the game happens. It gets more complicated as to per-game roster bonuses. As we hear it, some states try to tax the visiting player based also on a percentage of the full-year roster bonuses and/or the prorated portion of the signing bonus for the season in which the game is played.
And, yes, the lack of state income tax becomes a selling point in free agency, which explains Schneider’s concerns about Washington’s tax rate for millionaires increasing from 0.0 percent to 9.9. But, as Odighizuwa will learn the hard way, that doesn’t matter if the free-agent contract also doesn’t include a no-trade clause.
Regardless, the variations in state income tax create an imbalance as it relates to the most important aspect of anyone’s pay — how much they take home.
Simms mentioned on Thursday’s PFT Live that he heard something interesting from someone in the league who saw the tax discussion from the day before. (And, yes, plenty of people in the league watch PFT Live — probably because it features no phony debates, no false praise, no reckless hype, no minced words, and no performative antics.) There’s an argument to be made that the salary cap should take state income taxes into account.
It would be complicated, given that taxes depend on where games are played. Still, every team has eight or nine home games per year. That’s roughly half of the compensation, taxed based on where the team is located.
The real question is whether teams should get more to spend, given that more of what is paid will end up being taken off the top by the state government. Some teams may not want to do it, since having a higher cap means having a higher floor means spending more money that otherwise would be siphoned away as pure profit.
And the numbers would be significant. At a 2026 salary cap of $301.2 million, providing the Rams, Chargers, and 49ers with a 13.3-percent bump would push the cap to $341.2 million for those teams.
The deeper question is whether state income taxes make a competitive difference. As noted the other day, most of the teams in the no-tax states haven’t been to a Super Bowl this century. (The Seahawks and Buccaneers are the exception; the Titans, Cowboys, Dolphins, Jaguars, and Texans are not.)
Part of the problem is that most players don’t fret about state income taxes, even if they should. Players focus mainly on annual average, the true locker-room measuring stick that determines the pecking order among the most and least valuable players.
Although it would indeed be difficult to come up with the right way to determine cap credits, since the total tax burden depends on where games are played, that would be doable. The bigger challenge would be to get all teams in states with income tax to agree to a higher cap in order to account for it.
News flash: Not every team is as obsessed with winning as they pretend to be. For many owners, it’s about profit. Having more money to spend means having less to buy giant yachts or that much-needed tenth home. Especially since the owners of the teams in the high-tax states are also paying those increased rates, too.
Just kidding. The ultra-rich have seemingly cracked the code on eating nearly every ounce of what they kill. Which is another reason why the owners of the teams in the high-tax states won’t want to have more to spend — even if they have to say they do.
Veteran safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson signed this week with the Bills. In his introductory press conference, he addressed one of the biggest issues hovering around him — a reputation for being a not-ideal teammate.
Gardner-Johnson said he’s not concerned about perceptions.
“I look at it like this,” Gardner-Johnson said, “if — and I don’t throw shade. I don’t throw — because locker rooms that I’ve been in, we’ve won. But the situation I got traded to, like, it’s hard to go into something where you’re not really familiar. Like, it’s like spurts. . . . That’s like going to McDonald’s. You can eat McDonald’s, but you don’t know how to make the fries. So, it’s like, I’m not saying you didn’t know how to play football, it’s just like, you have to gather that relationship while trying to get better while trying — and the season comes quick and all. Once the moves, the draft picks get in, it’s on you.”
He was traded to Houston last year. After the deal was done, Gardner-Johnson said the Eagles shipped him out because they were “scared of a competitor.”
The Texans abruptly cut him after an 0-3 start, without trying to trade him. After a short stint with the Ravens, he landed in Chicago.
With the Bears, he had 10 regular-season appearances with seven starts. He also started the divisional-round playoff game against the Rams.
“For me, I look at, like, every place I’ve been with, I won,” Gardner-Johnson said. “If it was a locker room problem, I just result back to whatever came out. Why now? Like, why now? If I was a locker room problem, like why now? What was the news flashes when we were winning, going 14-3? When we were on the top of the mountain. . . . When I was catching six [interceptions], but where was those like — but why now? So I just take it with a grain of salt . . . it is what it is.”
Gardner-Johnson, 28, has played for the Saints, Eagles, Lions, Eagles again, Texans, Ravens, and Bears. He has appeared in 87 regular-season games with 71 starts, and he was a member of the Super Bowl LIX championship team in Philadelphia.
The Texans announced a series of moves on Friday. Most of them were re-signings or signings of free agents, but two were cuts.
The team released defensive tackles Kurt Hinish and Mario Edwards Jr.
Hinish, who turns 27 in April, appeared in 42 games with four starts from 2022-24. He went on reserve/physically unable to perform with an undisclosed injury before the 2025 season and did not play a down.
In his career, Hinish has totaled 57 tackles, 1.5 sacks and four quarterback hits.
Edwards, 32, spent the past two seasons with the Texans, playing 27 games with 12 starts. He totaled 44 tackles, 4.5 sacks and 12 quarterback hits.
The Raiders made him a second-round pick in 2015, and he has also played for Giants, Saints, Bears, Titans and Seahawks.
The moves come as the Texans re-signed defensive tackles Naquan Jones and Sheldon Rankins.
The Texans also announced they signed safety Reed Blankenship, defensive end Logan Hall, linebacker Jake Hummel, defensive end Dominique Robinson and offensive tackle Braden Smith.
