‘4 Downs’ with Rich: the Houston Texans’ Biggest Questions ahead of the ‘26 NFL Season

Sometimes the smartest thing you can do with a season preview is refuse to overthink it. Rich took that approach with the Houston Texans, a team that made the playoffs again under DeMeco Ryans, reached the divisional round again, and has a defense good enough that he declined to even ask a question about it. Not whether it can repeat last year. Not whether Will Anderson Jr. proves he is worth 50 million a year. All four downs went to one guy.

First down: who is going to catch it from C.J. Stroud? Nico Collins is the answer, and then the room gets wide open, especially with Jayden Higgins out for the year. That is a real loss and it creates real opportunity. Xavier Hutchinson, Justin Watson, Tank Dell, Jaylin Noel, plus a tight end group of Dalton Schultz, Foster Moreau and Cade Stover. Somebody in that group has to step up.

Second down: who is going to protect him? Protection was a problem a couple of years ago before Houston seemed to sort it out, and the interior of that offensive line is where the work has gone. Keep Stroud upright, open holes for David Montgomery and Woody Marks, and stay healthy. The line remains the question mark on that side of the ball.

Third down: who is going to pay him? That bill is coming due, and Nick Caserio is the one holding it. Houston does not carry a Velcro wallet, they pay people, and they just paid a guy. Whether Stroud gets his this summer or whether this eventually turns into a franchise tag conversation is the open item.

Fourth down: who is C.J. Stroud going to be? This is the one that actually decides the season. The rookie year was unicorn stuff, a kid who looked generationally great. Year two was definitely not the same, though it ended with a playoff win and Stroud finally beating Jim Harbaugh. Last season he got hurt, came back, and went a solid month without hardly throwing an interception. Terrific stretch, another playoff win, then he showed up in New England and flipped a hand grenade deep in his own end with the Texans defense in position to close it out and send Houston to its first AFC Championship game.

Three straight seasons, three playoff wins, one persistent pattern. Stroud has been somewhere between serviceable and really good since the opening act, which is enough to win a game in January and not enough to get past it. Either he steps it up, or he stops turning it over and lets the rest of the roster, the group that did not even earn a down here, handle the rest.

The Monday night cameras caught Stroud doing eye work before the game, tracking his hands, looking up, looking down, checking his peripheral vision. Vision training is showing up all over the quarterback position now. Whatever works. Nobody wants another Adam Gase moment out of it, but it was clearly deliberate, and the skill set behind it has never been in question.

What Houston really wants, Rich argued, is for Stroud to lean on his Michigan man. Marlin Klein is there too, another Michigan national champion tight end who did not get a mention until the end. If Montgomery brings what he brings and Marks runs the way he ran, and that offensive line controls the line of scrimmage the way it did on that smooth opening drive, this is a dangerous team. The coach is in place. The opportunity is knocking for a lot of pass catchers.