The Texans signed running back Evan Hull on Monday, the team announced.
Hull was among the tryout players the Texans had in their rookie minicamp.
Hull, 25, entered the NFL as a fifth-round pick of the Colts in 2023. He has also played for the Steelers and Saints, rushing for 49 yards on 20 carries and catching two passes for 12 yards in his career.
The team cut tight end Luke Lachey in a corresponding move.
Lachey, a seventh-round draft pick from Iowa in 2025, spent last season on the Texans’ practice squad. He is the son of former NFL offensive tackle Jim Lachey.
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When trade rumors swirled about Texans wide receiver Nico Collins ahead of the draft, General Manager Nick Caserio didn’t hesitate to make it clear that the team has no interest in parting ways with the wideout.
Caserio said anyone thinking that a trade could happen “can shove it” because the Texans won’t be making a deal. That sounds like it was music to Collins’s ears because he said this weekend that he does not have any interest in wearing a different uniform.
“I love the Texans,” Collins said, via Aaron Wilson of KPRC. “I got drafted here. It’s somewhere I want to end. I love the city, the people, the community. There’s a lot of great positive vibes coming out of the city of Houston. So, it’s definitely a place I would like to retire.”
While Collins wants to stick around the Texans, the business side of things will always play a role in how a career plays out and Collins has slipped down the list of best-paid wideouts since signing an extension in 2024. That deal could be revisited, but a failure to find common ground could lead to different thoughts about a shared future in Houston.
The Texans have taken care of an important piece of business on Saturday.
Houston and second-round pick Kayden McDonald have agreed to his rookie contract, ESPN’s Adam Schefter reports.
McDonald’s fully guaranteed deal is worth just over $12.9 million.
The No. 36 overall pick of the 2026 draft, McDonald was the last player remaining in the green room in Pittsburgh when he was selected on Day 2.
McDonald was a first-team All-Big Ten selection and the Big Ten Defensive Lineman of the Year in 2025.
The Texans announced the addition of a dozen undrafted free agents to their 90-man roster on Friday.
The group includes running backs Josh Pitsenberger and Noah Whittington. David Montgomery, Woody Marks, and Jahwar Jordan are the veteran backs in Houston.
Pitsenberger ran 313 times for 1,571 yards and 19 touchdowns at Yale last season. Whittington ran 129 times for 829 yards and six touchdowns with Oregon in 2025.
The Texans also signed Tennessee defensive tackle Dominic Bailey, South Dakota State offensive lineman Sam Hagen, Missouri cornerback Stephen Hall, N.C. State defensive end Sabastian Harsh, Iowa State offensive lineman James Neal III, Colgate wide receiver Treyvhon Saunders, Illinois State wide receiver Daniel Sobkowicz, Syracuse punter Jack Stonehouse, Incarnate Word wide receiver Jalen Walthall, and Stanford cornerback Collin Wright.
The Texans are going to take a look at a quarterback during their rookie minicamp.
Per Jonathan Alexander of the Houston Chronicle, Clayton Tune has accepted an invitation to try out for the club this weekend.
Tune, 27, was a Cardinals fifth-round pick in 2023. He appeared in 13 games for the club in his first two seasons before he was waived during roster cuts.
Tune then signed with Green Bay’s practice squad, starting the club’s Week 18 loss to the Vikings with the Packers resting starters for the postseason.
In his 15 career appearances, Tune has completed 21-of-38 passes for 112 yards with three interceptions.
Tune played his college ball at Houston, making this weekend’s tryout a homecoming of sorts.
The Texans didn’t waste much time after defensive end Will Anderson became eligible for a contract extension before signing him to a new deal that ties him to the franchise through the 2030 season.
Anderson was drafted one pick after Houston selected quarterback C.J. Stroud in 2023, but the team has not moved as quickly to secure his future. They exercised their option on his contract for 2027 and have been consistent about their belief in him, but a rough end to the 2025 season helped make for a different approach to the one they deployed with Anderson.
On Monday, Texans owner Cal McNair didn’t offer much of an update about where talks between Stroud’s camp and General Manager Nick Caserio might stand but he did reaffirm that the team wants to move forward with Stroud as their quarterback.
“We’ll leave that up to Nick and those communications are behind the scenes, but, yeah, we’re fully committed to C.J.,” McNair said, via Aaron Wilson of KPRC. “We exercised his fifth-year option and we’ll see how that all works out.”
With the option in place and no apparent agitation from Stroud to get something done now, there’s not much reason to think the Texans will be rushing to finalize a deal before they’re back on the field. That could leave Stroud’s deal as a major item next offseason and the stances on both sides could look quite a bit different if that’s the case.
As free-agent receiver Stefon Diggs waits for his next opportunity, he has an important piece of legal business to attend to.
His trial on felony strangulation and misdemeanor assault charges began on Monday.
As of this posting, the jury has been selected. Opening statements will happen next.
A live stream of the proceedings can be watched here, courtesy of the folks at NBC 10 in Boston.
The trial is expected to last a couple of days. The prosecution’s case largely hinges on the testimony of the alleged victim, who claims that Diggs assaulted and strangled her during an argument over an unpaid bill for her personal chef services.
The Patriots released Diggs in March, at the start of the new league year. He remains unsigned, with no team being linked to him yet.
Some teams could be waiting to see how the trial goes, since a conviction would undoubtedly result in a suspension under the NFL’s Personal Conduct Policy.
Diggs, 32, has played for the Vikings, Bills, Texans, and Patriots. He had his seventh 1,000-yard season in 2025, despite having his 2024 season shortened by a torn ACL.
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.
