It’s been quite a year for Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair. The low point came after a three-game suspension in December 2024 for a hit delivered to Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence, sparking a brawl. The high point came this week, when Al-Shaair signed a three-year extension with an average of $18 million per year.
Al-Shaair addressed the differences between the low point and the high point in the press conference announcing his new contract.
“I think, when I reflect back to that time, it was a really challenging time in my life just trying to navigate through how I could be in a situation where people are attacking me as a man, my character for something that I did on the football field that happens in a split second,” Al-Shaair told reporters. “People get into car accidents and it’s like, ‘You’re at fault, you’re at fault. Oh, it happened so fast.’ That’s what football is, it’s split-second decisions. I worked my butt off for six years up to that point to even get myself in that position, to be here, to be a Texan and to be the leader of a defense. When all that stuff went down, to see the way people were talking about me as a person and as a player, it hurt because I just felt like everything kind of came crumbling down and it wasn’t a reflection of who I see myself as or who I try to be.
“To see, truthfully, how broken I was because I was truly broken. My heart was broken; my mother could tell you. Everybody who is here that I interacted with could tell you, I was in an extremely, extremely low, dark place.
“I think it’s crazy because some of the people that I leaned in on the most were people that I had to work with every single day. The trainers and the staff, just to get back. I think the conversations that I had on a daily basis with people just pouring into me, I needed it way more than they know. A lot of the people in this building poured into me and their job description might have been strength coach, or it might have been athletic trainer or rehab guy. I was dealing with an injury. I was dealing with all the off-the-field stuff and the stuff with the Trevor Lawrence stuff and the suspension and all of it, and people pretty much going for my character. I really leaned in on all these other people who did more than their job required them to do to try to make sure I was in a good place mentally. I’m so just grateful.”
After he returned from the suspension, Al-Shaair said he questioned whether he could continue his career.
“It was hard for me to see myself playing football again,” Al-Shaair told reporters in January 2025. “I really had a moment of, there’s no way I can go out and play football again if this is how people that I work with view me.”
The Texans obviously don’t view him that way. He’s a key player on the best defense in the NFL. And the Texans reconfirmed their faith in him by ripping up the final year of his existing contract and replacing it with a four-year deal that will keep him in Houston.
The Texans have brought defensive end Ali Gaye back for a second tour of duty with the team.
Gaye was waived by the Titans on Thursday and multiple reports on Friday say that the Texans have claimed him.
Gaye spent 2023 on Houston’s practice squad and moved on to the Titans after being waived in August 2024. He played 15 games in 2024 and returned to the Titans to appear in three games last year.
Gaye had nine tackles, three tackles for loss and a sack in his 18 appearances for Tennessee. He will vie for a role behind Will Anderson and Danielle Hunter at defensive end now that he is back in Houston.
Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair was headed into a contract season.
The team, though, has agreed with him on a previously reported three-year extension. NFL Media now reports that the contract is worth $54 million.
The $18 million average will rank Al-Shaair third in yearly average at his position behind only Fred Warner and Roquan Smith.
Previously this offseason, the Texans extended the contracts of defensive end Will Anderson Jr., defensive end Danielle Hunter, tight end Dalton Schultz and kicker Ka’imi Fairbairn.
Al-Shaair is coming off his second season in Houston and his first season as a Pro Bowler. He totaled 103 tackles, two interceptions and nine pass breakups in 2025.
The Cowboys had interest in a trade for Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair before the draft. The Texans had no interest in trading the Pro Bowler, and on Wednesday, the team and Al-Shaair agreed to a three-year extension, NFL Media reports.
The Texans previously extended the contracts of defensive end Will Anderson Jr., defensive end Danielle Hunter, tight end Dalton Schultz and kicker Ka’imi Fairbairn.
Al-Shaair’s first Pro Bowl came after he totaled 103 tackles, two interceptions and nine pass breakups in 2025. He wore the green dot for Matt Burke’s defense, which ranked No. 1 in total defense and No. 2 in scoring defense last season.
Al-Shaair and coach DeMeco Ryans are close, with Al-Shaair and Ryans spending four seasons together in San Francisco. After spending 2023 in Tennessee, Al-Shaair followed Ryans to Houston in 2024.
Al-Shaair was ejected from a game in Week 13 of the 2024 season after a blow to the head of Trevor Lawrence as the Jaguars quarterback was sliding to the ground. The NFL then suspended Al-Shaair for three games for “repeated violations of player safety rules.”
He was the team’s nominee for Walter Payton Man of the Year in 2025.
The Texans have made defensive end Will Anderson the highest-paid non-quarterback in the NFL, based on new-money average.
Anderson signed a three-year, $150 million extension to the two remaining years that Anderson was under contract.
It took a little time to track down the full details, due in part to the draft.
We’ve gotten the numbers. Here’s the full breakdown, per a source with knowledge of the terms:
1. Signing bonus: $32 million.
2. 2026 base salary: $1.145 million, fully guaranteed.
3. 2027 base salary: $21.918 million, fully guaranteed.
4. 2028 base salary: $39.6 million, fully guaranteed.
5. 2028 per-game roster bonus: $500,000.
6. 2029 base salary: $39.5 million, $5.5 million of which is fully guaranteed at signing, all of which is guaranteed for injury at signing. The remaining $34 million becomes fully guaranteed in 2028.
7. 2029 per-game roster bonus: $500,000.
8. 2030 base salary: $41.5 million.
9. 2030 per-game roster bonus: $500,000.
So, year, it’s a three-year, $150 million extension. But there are no extensions. The existing years were folded into the new ones.
Factoring in his “old money” of $27.063 million through 2027, it’s a five-year contract that pays out $177.063 million.
The total average from signing, then, is $35.4 million per year.
The guarantees are significant. Anderson has three of five years fully guaranteed, and the fourth year will be fully guaranteed by year four.
