The Texans are bringing back one of their veteran defensive players.
Per Jeremy Fowler of ESPN, safety M.J. Stewart has agreed to return to Houston on a one-year deal.
Stewart, 30, has been with the Texans since 2022. He appeared in nine games with four starts in 2025 before missing the rest of the season with a torn quad suffered in November.
Stewart recorded 25 total tackles with two passes defensed and one forced fumble in 2025.
A second-round pick in 2018, Stewart has appeared in 99 career games with 14 starts for the Buccaneers, Browns, and Texans.
Texans Clips
Another year, another one-year extension for Texans pass rusher Danielle Hunter.
Per multiple reports, the Texans and Hunter have agreed to terms on a one-year extension that will pay him $40.1 million.
Last year, the Texans and Hunter executed a one-year extension worth $35.6 million.
The 2025 extension put Hunter $100,000 per year ahead of Maxx Crosby’s annual average of $35.5 million. At the time, Crosby was the highest-paid player at the position. The latest deal inches Hunter past Myles Garrett, who is making $40 million per year.
The market at the position is currently led by Micah Parsons ($46.5 million), Aidan Hutchinson ($45 million), and T.J. Watt ($41 million).
Hunter, 31, has spent two seasons with the Texans. He had 12.0 sacks in 2024 and 15.0 in 2025. Most recently, he landed on the All-Pro second team.
The Jets will not tender restricted free agent John Metchie, according to Jordan Schultz of The Schultz Report.
That will make Metchie a free agent.
The Texans selected Metchie with the 44th overall pick in 2022, but he missed his rookie season. While working his back back from an ACL tear, Metchie was diagnosed with leukemia.
Metchie, 25, caught 40 passes for 412 yards and a touchdown in 2023-24 in Houston before the Texans traded him to the Eagles for Harrison Bryant and a swap of third-round picks in training camp last summer.
At the trade deadline in 2025, the Eagles shipped him to the Jets in exchange for Michael Carter II and a late-round 2027 swap. He caught 29 passes for 256 yards and two touchdowns in nine games for the Jets last season after making four receptions for 18 yards in seven games with the Eagles.
The Texans have announced DeMeco Ryans’s coaching staff for the 2026 season.
Offensive coordinator Nick Caley returns for his second season in Houston. He’ll be working with assistant head coach/running backs coach Danny Barrett, offensive assistant Taylor Embree, tight ends coach James Ferentz, wide receivers coach/offensive passing game coordinator Ben McDaniels, offensive line coach/offensive run game coordinator Cole Popovich, offensive assistant Asauni Rufus, quarterbacks coach Jerry Schuplinski, assistant wide receivers coach Tiquan Underwood, offensive assistant Alex Ward, and offensive assistant Cole Weeks.
Defensive coordinator Matt Burke is in his fourth season with the Texans. He’ll be joined on that side of the ball by safeties coach Stephen Adegoke, defensive/special teams assistant Sean Baker, linebackers coach Bill Davis, senior defensive assistant Bill Lazor, assistant defensive line coach Frank Okam, defensive assistant Mark Sheridan, defensive assistant Jay Simpson, defensive backs coach Dino Vasso, and defensive line coach/defensive run game coordinator Rod Wright.
Special teams coordinator Frank Ross, assistant special teams coach Will Burnham, and assistant to the head coach Jake Olson round out Ryans’s staff.
Trent Brown will be back with Houston in 2026.
According to multiple reports, Brown has agreed to stay with the Texans on a one-year deal worth $7 million.
Brown, 32, signed with Houston as a free agent last March. He was released during roster cuts at the end of August, but was signed to the team’s 53-man roster in October. He then started seven games for the team late in the season and Houston’s wild card victory over the Steelers in the playoffs.
A seventh-round pick in the 2015 draft, Brown has appeared in 110 games with 103 starts for the 49ers, Patriots, Raiders, Bengals, and Texans.
The Texans are set to add running back David Montgomery in a trade with the Lions when the new league year starts next week and their leading rusher for 2025 says he’s looking forward to having Montgomery in Houston.
Woody Marks ran 196 times for 703 yards while splitting time with Nick Chubb last season and the Montgomery trade ensures he’ll be in line for another timeshare in his second NFL season. That could limit his chances to build on his rookie performance, but Marks said that he’s hoping to capture some of what the Lions were able to do with Montgomery and Jahmyr Gibbs in their backfield.
“I’m very excited,” Marks said, via Aaron Wilson of KPRC. “Just looking back at the clips with him and Jahmyr Gibbs, it looked like they was having so much fun out there. When the running back room doing good and everybody blocking, it’s a party in the running back room. So, we’re looking to have that same joy him and Jahmyr Gibbs had bringing it down here in Houston.”
Marks caught 261 passes over his five seasons in college, but only had 24 for the Texans last year. If he can make more of an impact in that area, the Texans’ combo will stand a better chance of reminding people of what the Lions have rolled out on offense the last few seasons.
The Texans announced the release of veteran safety Jimmie Ward, a move reported on Monday. The team also announced on Tuesday it re-signed cornerback Ja’Marcus Ingram.
Ingram was scheduled to become an exclusive rights free agent.
The Texans claimed Ingram off waivers from the Bills on Dec. 4, and he played four games with Houston. He saw action on 39 defensive snaps and 84 on special teams with the Texans, totaling six tackles and two passes defensed.
He made the Bills as an undrafted free agent, and in three-plus seasons in Buffalo, Ingram played 29 games.
In his career, Ingram has played 365 defensive snaps and 505 on special teams. He has 39 tackles, a sack, two interceptions and six pass breakups.
The Texans love older running backs. The latest addition of a player closing in on 30 closes the door on their existing stable of seasoned tailbacks.
The Texans traded for Joe Mixon in 2024. Last year, Houston added Nick Chubb as a free agent. The official arrival of Lions running back David Montgomery next Wednesday via trade necessarily means that neither Mixon nor Chubb will return in 2026.
Chubb rushed for 506 yards in 15 games (nine starts) for the Texans in 2025. Mixon spent all of last season on the non-football injury list; the nature and extent of his foot injury was one of the biggest mysteries of the year.
Chubb is a free agent. Mixon undoubtedly will be released. Both will be available to any other team.
There’s simply no room for either of them on the Houston depth chart, given that Montgomery and Woody Marks will be leading the way at the running back position. The third-string running back almost always plays special teams, too. That’s something very few older running backs ever do.
Chubb is 30. Mixon turns 30 in July. Their only path back to Houston would entail neither signing elsewhere and an injury opening the door to a reunion.
They’ll pay Montgomery $6 million this year. He’s due to make $9 million in 2027. He’ll be the older option for at least one year if not two, while Marks (who had 703 rushing yards as a rookie) continues to develop.
The decision to agree to a trade for Montgomery, on the first business day after the end of the Scouting Combine, suggests that the Texans explored the potential free-agent running back options and opted for a sure thing at a relatively low cost, in comparison to what the best available running backs will get.
Of course, the Texans also had to give up multiple assets (headlined by a fourth-round pick) to make the deal. And they had no qualms about doing so for a guy with seven years of experience and who turns 29 in June.
But that’s their approach. One older running back, one younger one. Along with significant annual overhaul of the offensive line, which is a curious strategy to say the least.
Some of the moves that will be made over the next week will be surprising. Some will not be.
In the “not surprising” category comes the news, via Adam Schefter of ESPN.com, that the Texans will release veteran safety Jimmie Ward.
Ward, 34, didn’t play in 2025, due to both placement on the Commissioner Exempt list and, after that, the Physically Unable to Perform list. He suffered a foot injury late in the 2024 season.
The move, per Schefter, creates $750,000 in net cap space.
Picked in the first round of the 2014 draft by the 49ers, Ward spent nine seasons in San Francisco. He signed with the Texans in 2023, when 49ers defensive coordinator DeMeco Ryans became the head coach of the Texans.
Ward appeared in 10 regular-season games with 10 starts in 2023, and 10 regular-season games with 10 starts in 2024.
The Lions agreed to trade running back David Montgomery to the Texans today, and Montgomery is saying farewell to his home for the last three years.
“It’s hard to find the right words for a goodbye like this,” Montgomery wrote on social media. “Detroit has never just been a location to me -- it’s been a community. And you all have been more than supporters or a team. You’ve been steady hands, loud cheers, honest feedback, and quiet strength when I needed it most. You believed in me when things were uncertain. You stood beside me through challenges. You showed up -- consistently, fiercely, unapologetically. There is something special about the people here. The resilience. The loyalty. The way you don’t just support someone -- you ride with them. I have felt that from each of you, and I will never take that lightly. This isn’t goodbye because something ended. It’s goodbye because something grew. And growth sometimes calls us forward. Please know this: Everything I do next carries a piece of Detroit with it.”
In his three seasons with the Lions, Montgomery totaled 562 carries for 2,506 yards and 33 touchdowns, plus 76 catches for 650 receiving yards. But after being a starter his first two years, last season Montgomery’s role in the offense was reduced, as he became a backup to Jahmyr Gibbs.
The Texans gave up offensive lineman Juice Scruggs, a 2026 fourth-round draft pick and a 2027 seventh-round pick for Montgomery. Paying that price and paying Montgomery $6 million this season shows the Texans view Montgomery as a starter. Going to a team where he’ll be the No. 1 running back may make this a trade that benefits everyone involved.
