More and more NFL figures are addressing the current chaos in college football. And most of them don’t like it.
Texans G.M. Nick Caserio joined the chorus on Tuesday, with two observations.
“First of all, it’s ridiculous,” Caserio told reporters. “Secondly, it doesn’t really impact our job. The whole concept, we could spend an hour having that discussion. It doesn’t necessarily materially impact kind of what we’re doing specific to training camp and those types of things. If they are in college, if they go back to college, you just evaluate them as if you would through the college lens, through the college process. We didn’t have any players that fell under that restraining order so it wasn’t really going to affect us. Conceptually it’s affected basketball as well. There was a kid that went back to Alabama that was in the G-League. Look, if you’re a professional player then you’re a professional player. To go from being a professional player to a college athlete or amateur athlete, the whole thing is kind of ridiculous.”
But is it really ridiculous to expect the NCAA to adopt a five-year rule while also denying a fifth year to those who didn’t have access to one? Plenty of players who entered the draft would have stayed put if they’d known they’d have another year.
All problems in college sports trace to a system that denied compensation to players for as long as possible and the problems the reckoning has created. The players are simply reacting to the circumstances, and attempting to secure fair treatment under the relevant rules.
Regardless, the process of sorting out who will and won’t be able to play college football this year after spending time on 90-man rosters continues. And the NFL will proceed unaffected by the situation, except for the fact that the players who return to college can’t be signed by NFL teams during the 2026 season.
Texans Clips
Former NFL assistant coach Kippy Brown died this week, Matt Young of the Houston Chronicle reports. Brown was 71.
Brown spent 22 seasons as an NFL assistant, coaching for seven different teams. His final job was the wide receivers coach with the Seahawks on Pete Carroll’s staff from 2010-14. The Seahawks’ win in Super Bowl XLVIII gave Brown his only Super Bowl ring.
Brown was Jimmy Johnson’s offensive coordinator for two seasons with the Dolphins and served as the Lions’ associate head coach under Rod Marinelli during Detroit’s 0-16 season in 2008. He interviewed for the Texans’ head coaching job in 2006 after Dom Capers was fired, but Houston hired Gary Kubiak instead.
Brown coached Hall of Fame wide receiver Andre Johnson in his four seasons in Houston.
In addition to the Dolphins, Seahawks, Lions and Texans, Brown also coached with the Bucs, Jets and Packers.
Brown was head coach of the Memphis Maniax in the short-lived XFL in 2001.
As a player, Brown became the first Black quarterback to play at Memphis during his time there from 1974-77.
The wait for wide receiver Tank Dell to return to the Texans lineup will last at least four more games.
Dell was placed on injured reserve as the team moved to a 53-man roster on Sunday and that gives him more time to work on regaining his form after the knee injury that has kept him out since late in the 2024 season. On Tuesday, Texans General Manager Nick Caserio shared why Dell went on injured reserve after avoiding the physically unable to perform list to open camp.
“I’d say he’s close,” Caserio said at a press conference. “He is not quite there, which is why he’s in the category that he’s in. I think we’ll have a better idea with a lot of these guys after four weeks or four games, whatever it is. I’d say he’s definitely closer now than he was — let’s say in training camp. There’s a little bit more work that remains. Overall, he’s in pretty good spirits. There are certain things we just have to see. Some of this too, is honestly for him mentally to make sure he has enough confidence so that he can go out there and perform the way he’s capable of, the way he knows how to.”
The Texans traded for Kayshon Boutte after Jayden Higgins tore his ACL this summer, but the return of a healthy Dell would still be a needed boost to the receiving corps at some point this season. It will be several weeks before we have a better idea of when such a return might be possible.
The Texans are taking a page from the Steelers’ book on contract negotiations.
The Steelers have long refused to engage in contract negotiations with players during the regular season and Texans General Manager Nick Caserio said that Houston will take the same approach with quarterback C.J. Stroud this year. Caserio said in July and again on Tuesday that the team has had talks with the 2023 first-round pick about a new deal, but that those talks will be put on hold when the Texans face the Bills in Week 1.
“If we don’t get it figured out before the season starts, then it’ll be something we address in the offseason,” Caserio said, via DJ Bien-Amie of ESPN.com.
The Texans have already picked up their option on Stroud’s contract for 2027, so the quarterback will remain under contract regardless of how things play out on the field this year. A strong season would make it harder for the Texans to continue playing the waiting game, but anything resembling Stroud’s postseason performance from last season would lead to a lot of questions about the future of the quarterback position in Houston.
Texans General Manager Nick Caserio shared a handful of roster moves that the team made during a press conference on Tuesday.
Offensive tackle Braden Smith is going on injured reserve as a result of the foot injury he suffered in practice last week. Smith will have to miss at least four games before he can be returned to the active roster in Houston.
Caserio said that offensive lineman Sam Hagen will also be placed on injured reserve.
The Texans will fill the two roster spots by re-signing tight end Brevin Jordan and defensive lineman Dominique Robinson. Both players were released as part of the team’s moves to get down to the 53-player limit on Sunday.
The Texans have their initial 53-player roster.
They announced a series of moves Sunday that included the termination of the contracts of CB Bryce Hall, linebacker Caleb Johnson, defensive tackle Naquan Jones, wide receiver Zay Jones, tight end Brevin Jordan, safety George Odum, defensive end Dominique Robinson, quarterback Brett Rypien, wide receiver Sterling Shepard and wide receiver Justin Watson.
The Texans waived defensive tackle Dominic Bailey, wide receiver Lewis Bone, cornerback Brandon Codrington, center Eli Cox, cornerback Stephen Hall, tight end Louis Hansen, linebacker Jamal Hill, cornerback Alijah Huzzie, running back Jawhar Jordan, wide receiver Josh Kelly, offensive tackle Jarrett Kingston, safety Kaevon Merriweather, offensive tackle James Neal III, defensive end Derek Parish, tight end Layen Pryor, wide receiver Treyvhon Saunders, wide receiver Daniel Sobkowicz, running back Deuce Vaughn, running back Noah Whittington and running back Owen Wright.
Defensive end Solomon Byrd and defensive tackle Kyonte Hamilton were waived with injury designations.
Wide receiver Tank Dell and safety Ja’Marcus Ingram were placed on injured reserve with a designation to return.
Defensive end Ali Gaye went on season-ending IR.
Linebacker E.J. Speed and safety M.J. Stewart were placed on reserve/PUP.
Texans wide receiver Tank Dell is still not ready to return from the knee injury he suffered in December of 2024.
Dell will star the season on injured reserve, designated for return, which means he will miss at least the first four games of this season.
The 26-year-old Dell was a 2023 third-round pick of the Texans and looked like one of the NFL’s most promising future stars. But he wasn’t quite as effective in 2024, and his devastating knee injury raised questions about whether he had an NFL future at all.
The Texans do think Dell will eventually return to the field. But 21 months after his injury, he’s still at least another month away.
Nate Thomas began training camp competing with Tyler Guyton for the starting left tackle job in Dallas. He ends it headed to Houston.
The Texans agreed to a trade for Thomas, a seventh-round pick of the Cowboys in 2024, in return for a 2027 seventh-round pick.
Thomas could not even win the Cowboys’ swing tackle job as Dallas traded with the Steelers for offensive tackle Broderick Jones on Saturday. Jones’ arrival made Thomas expendable.
Thomas played all 17 games last season, starting four.
The Texans, meanwhile, continue to tinker with their offensive line, which has been one of the league’s worst in recent seasons.
The 49ers are making a trade to add to their offensive line depth.
According to multiple reports, they have agreed to a trade with the Texans for Jarrett Patterson. There’s no word on compensation for the Texans, who also agreed to a separate trade with the Cowboys for offensive lineman Nathan Thomas.
Patterson was a 2023 sixth-round pick in Houston. He played in 39 games and made 21 starts over the last three seasons, but was listed as the third-string right guard on the team’s preseason depth chart.
Patterson also has experience at center and will hope to land a more secure spot on the depth chart with the 49ers.
The Patriots recently traded receiver Kayshon Boutte to the Texans. After New England’s preseason finale against the Browns, Patriots coach Mike Vrabel was asked about the decision to move on from the 2023 sixth-round pick.
“That was one place where we do have some depth,” Vrabel told reporters. “I think for all parties involved, that was probably the best thing without injuries, you know? OK, sure, he probably would have been inactive, unfortunately, because it’s kind of the way it was. It’s just him not playing special teams.”
It really does become a numbers game. The deeper a receiver slides on the depth chart, the less he’ll play offense. And the more of a role he’ll have on special teams.
As Vrabel said, Boutte wouldn’t have been playing special teams. So they needed to move on.
“I tried to thank Kayshon as many times as I could,” Vrabel said. “Just his maturity, his growth. His ability to put into words last year and share his own personal struggle, but also the growth that he made from that, that is positively going to affect a lot of people. I know that that wasn’t easy for him to do, and I tell him all the time about how much I respect him.”
Vrabel was referring to Boutte’s willingness to go public with his gambling addiction from his time at LSU. And Vrabel is right; Boutte’s candor will indeed help others who are dealing with the same issue.
