Houston Texans
NFL teams rely upon community support. It’s fitting for those franchises to support the community in times of need.
Horrific flash flooding in Texas has claimed 59 lives, with 11 young girls who were attending a summer camp still missing. Both the Texans and the Cowboys have donated $500,000 to the relief and recovery efforts.
“We are heartbroken by the loss and damage that our neighbors in the Texas Hill Country has endured,” Texans ownership said in a statement issued on Saturday. “We are especially devastated to hear about the children who are still missing and we are preating they are reunited with their families soon. Our hearts will remain with everyone affected and in addition to our donation, we will continue to support the search, rescue and recovery efforts in the coming weeks.”
The Cowboys made their announcement on Sunday.
“Our hearts are heavy as we witness the devastation and loss of life caused by the floods in Kerr County and Texas Hill Country,” the Cowboys said, “especially for the young girls and their families, as well as all of those lost and their loved ones. This has been devastating to see and we hold everyone impacted in our thoughts and prayers. Standing side by side with The Salvation Army’s critical response, we are also donating $500,000 to provide immediate resources for rescue, relief and long-term recovery efforts.”
Donations to the Salvation Army’s disaster relief fund can be made here. Donations to the American Red Cross’s disaster relief fund can be made here.
Thursday’s #PFTPM including a simple question: “What are your thoughts on a potential Bills-Rams Super Bowl?”
My thoughts are it could happen, because both teams are firmly in the Super Bowl window.
In any given year, not many teams truly are. And while teams not apparently in the window can, in theory, win their way in, the salary-cap system has matured to the point where some teams have cracked the code — and some teams can’t crack their way out of a paper bag.
It also helps to have drafted and developed a franchise quarterback.
In most years, roughly 10 teams are in the window, roughly 10 teams aren’t, and the remaining 12 could break either way. This year, the AFC’s true short-list contenders are the Chiefs, Bills, Ravens, Bengals, and Texans. The Broncos and Chargers could force their way into the conversation.
In the NFC, it’s the Eagles, Lions, Rams, 49ers, and Commanders. Maybe the Buccaneers. Maybe the Vikings.
Again, things can and will change. That’s why they play the games, as someone once said. All the time.
For those who like a little variety, it would be nice for someone other than the Chiefs to get a turn in the Super Bowl. And for someone other than the Eagles, 49ers, or Rams to emerge from the NFC.
Since 2017, it’s been the Eagles three times, the 49ers twice, the Rams twice, and the Bucs once. For the AFC, it’s been only the Patriots, Chiefs, and Bengals.
That’s it. Over eight seasons, seven total franchises have taken the 16 total Super Bowl berths.
Free agency, the salary cap, and a draft process that rewards failure should be enough to mix things up. But the reality is that good teams stay good, and bad teams stay bad.
Former NFL linebacker Bryan Braman is fighting a rare and aggressive form of brain cancer, at the age of 38. Diagnosed in February, he has had multiple surgeries while undergoing treatment in Seattle.
Via ESPN.com, a GoFundMe page has been created to assist Braman with expenses arising from his treatment. As of this posted, more than $53,000 has been raised. Former teammate J.J. Watt has given $10,000, and other former teammates have contributed.
Braman and Watt joined the Texans in the year — 2011. Braman was undrafted, but he made the team and remained in Houston for three seasons.
He played the next four years with the Eagles. Braman capped his NFL career with a win over the Patriots in Super Bowl LII.
En route to the championship, Braman blocked a punt in the divisional round win over the Falcons.
Braman, who appeared in 97 career regular-season games, contributed mainly on special teams. One of his more memorable moments came in the final game of his rookie season, when he lost his helmet and still made the tackle on a punt return.
Jack Easterby’s NFL career evaporated even more quickly than it suddenly materialized. Now, nearly three years after the V.P. of football operations was abruptly fired by Texans owner Cal McNair, Easterby has offered an explanation for how and why things fell apart.
Appearing on the Ross Tucker Football Podcast, Easterby suggested that he was done in by rampant fan criticism.
“There also were a lot of people that, quite frankly, we had to transition out of there,” Easterby told Tucker, via Matt Young of the Houston Chronicle. “So, that was probably one of the other things that I would say that was really hard for people to understand on the outside. Fans love football, man. So if they’re like, hey this is in between me and where I want to be, there’s going to be criticism and justifiably so. That comes with it, right? That’s just part of it.”
It’s also perhaps just part of why McNair made what at the time was a surprising decision to part ways with Easterby.
He glossed over the fact that his ouster happened in 2022, the second year of G.M. Nick Caserio’s tenure with the team. If things were bad enough from a fan standpoint to get McNair to dump Easterby, they weren’t bad enough for McNair to also sever ties with Caserio — the G.M. who was reportedly hand-picked by Easterby, in defiance of the formal Korn Ferry search process.
Blaming the move on fan reaction adroitly glosses over reality. The Texans, while Easterby was still employed there, pulled off one of the all-time coups, dumping quarterback Deshaun Watson onto the Browns for three first-round picks, and then some. With the Watson trade-and-sign becoming the single worst transaction in NFL history, the Texans deserve plenty of credit for engineering it.
Consider the circumstances. Watson didn’t play at all in 2021. He had more than 20 civil lawsuits pending, each of which arose from allegations of misbehavior during massage-therapy sessions. And yet the Texans managed to get four teams to submit acceptable trade terms, allowing the Browns, Panthers, Saints, and Falcons to compete for Watson’s contract.
Easterby was there when it happened. And yet, only months later after the Texans pulled it off, Easterby was gone. Was it really a product of fan discontent, or was there something else going on that caused McNair to break free from what seemed like the strange and inexplicable hold that Easterby had over him?
The perception, if not the reality, was that Easterby climbed far faster than he should have. That he landed in a key football position without the objective skills or abilities that many other candidates possessed. If anything, fans and some in the media saw through the façade at a time when McNair did not.
Something got McNair to view Easterby differently than McNair had. While Easterby’s reputation, earned or otherwise, among the fan base didn’t help, it’s not as if McNair faced losing his role as owner over it. As Jed York once said, you don’t dismiss owners.
The other thing that undermines Easterby’s effort to blame his firing on fan opinion is the simple reality that the Texans went from being hopefully dysfunctional with Easterby in a position of significant influence to highly competitive without him. If his firing was simply an effort to give disgruntled fans a pound of flesh, it had the incidental (and perhaps, in his mind, coincidental) benefit of pivoting the team toward becoming the perennial contender it now is.
The fact that none of the other 31 teams has been linked to the potential hiring of Easterby underscores that it was something more than “the fans didn’t like me.” Easterby, whose arrival sparked among other things questions about the accuracy of his resume, has been unwanted by any other NFL team.
Easterby is currently back in North Carolina. So is his former boss in New England, Bill Belichick. And despite some stray speculation and rumors that Belichick could be bringing Easterby to Chapel Hill, it hasn’t happened.
That possibly says it all. Unless, of course, Easterby’s sudden emergence during the NFL’s slow time is a trial balloon in advance of Belichick giving him a job.
Regardless, like Belichick, it seems that Easterby’s time in the NFL has ended. If that’s because of any fan base, it would be a rare example of fan opinion overruling the whims of the people who own the teams.
Nearly two years after a civil lawsuit was filed over the shooting of a teenager who was playing “Nerf Wars” on Texans running back Joe Mixon’s Ohio property, the suit has been settled.
PFT has confirmed that the case is over.
Sheree Paolello of WLWT reported within the past hour that the case was resolved “a few weeks ago,” and that “[n]o details are being released per the settlement.”
That’s very common in civil settlements involving private entities. And while the report implies that Mixon wrote a check (he “has settled” the case), it’s possible if not probable that Mixon’s homeowners insurance policy, not Mixon, made the payment.
Mixon, a second-round pick of the Bengals in 2017, spent seven years in Cincinnati. He was traded to the Texans in 2024.
The collusion grievance, which found that the NFL/Management Council encouraged teams to violate the CBA, flowed from an effort to limit the spread of fully-guaranteed contracts. And there’s an ongoing effort to limit the spread of fully-guaranteed contracts.
The vast majority of all 2025 draft picks have signed their four-year rookie deals. In round two, 30 of the selections have yet to sign.
The problem is that, for the first time ever, a second-round pick has gotten a fully-guaranteed contract. It started with Texans receiver Jayden Higgins, the second pick in round two. That sparked a fully-guaranteed contract for Browns linebacker Carson Schwesinger, the first pick in the second round.
For the next 30 picks, nothing has happened. Obviously, the players and their agents want as many of the deals as possible to be fully guaranteed. The teams want to draw the line as close to the third pick in round two (Seahawks safety Nick Emmanwori) as possible.
There’s no colluding to be done, since the common goal of limited guaranteed deals is obvious. Still, it’s the current battleground when it comes to whether the full four years of a contract will be guaranteed.
None of the players will take something less than a fully-guaranteed deal below Emmanwori, because they don’t want to be responsible for ending the run of fully-guaranteed deals. And every team will want to be the one that successfully held the rope and won the full-guarantee tug-o-war.
Eventually, someone will have to blink. It’ll probably start later in the round, with players who wouldn’t expect to get a full guarantee anyway. And then it could work its way up the ladder.
At some point, a player is going to insist on a fully-guaranteed deal and the team is going to insist on not fully guaranteeing the deal and there will be no middle ground.
In a roundabout way, the mere existence of this problem proves that collusion, if it’s happening, is far from universal. The Texans created the predicament by becoming the first team to give a fully-guaranteed contract to a second-round pick. If all 32 teams were in cahoots on a plan to limit fully-guaranteed contracts, the Texans never would have done that.
However it plays out from here, one thing is clear. There won’t be any emails or other written communications encouraging the teams to resist giving players fully-guaranteed deals. Documents like that nearly created a major problem for the NFL.
It would still be a major problem, if the NFLPA had any inclination to capitalize on the leverage they’ve secured.
For a few days in training camp, the Texans will try to beat the Houston heat by holding practice away from home.
The Texans announced on Wednesday that they will spend Aug. 4-7 at The Greenbrier in Sulphur Springs, WV. A popular training camp destination for teams across the league, this will be the third time the Texans have gone to The Greenbrier for summer practices. They also went in 2017 and 2018.
The team will go from West Virginia to Minneapolis to play a preseason game against the Vikings.
Back at home, the Texans will host seven open practices at their facility in Houston, beginning on Saturday, July 26. While practice is free to attend, fans will need to register for a ticket via the team’s website.
Houston will host Carolina for a joint practice on Aug. 14 that is open to the public.
The Texans will also practice with the Lions in Michigan on Aug. 21 ahead of the preseason game between the two teams.
The Steelers are expected to sign veteran long snapper Tucker Addington, Aaron Wilson of KPRC reports.
The Texans released Addington last week.
Christian Kuntz is the other long snapper on the Steelers’ roster.
Addington signed a futures deal with the Texans in February before they drafted a long snapper.
Addington has appeared in 10 career games for New England, Washington and Miami since entering the league in 2022. He’s also spent time with the Cowboys and Jaguars.
Longhorn legend Ricky Williams, who also did pretty well as an NFL running back, openly lobbied for Texas Governor Greg Abbott to veto a THC ban that had been passed by the state’s legislature.
Late Sunday night, and roughly an hour before the deadline for doing so, Abbott scrapped the bill. He also issued a lengthy explanation of the decision.
The move saved the hemp industry in Texas. Abbott reasoned that the bill would have caused farmers to choose between that which is legal under federal law (specifically, the 2018 Farm Bill) and that which would have become illegal under state law. He also explained that the law would have triggered a legal that “would never go into effect” due to valid constitutional challenges.
Abbott also called a special session in July aimed at coming up with a solution to the situation that will better reflect current federal law.
Said Williams in opposition to the bill: “This plant helped me stay balanced and healthy through the grind of professional football. Now it’s helping veterans manage PTSD and families manage pain. These changes in the law don’t protect Texans — it punishes them. The people of Texas deserve freedom of choice and don’t need the government to tell them what they can and can’t put in their body. If we have learned anything from the past decade it has been that.”
It was a very contentious issue among Texas politicians. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick argued aggressively for the bill, arguing that THC puts the lives and mental state of users in peril.
The Texas effort cuts against the current national mood regarding THC. It’s permitted for medicinal reasons in more and more states, and recreational marijuana use has been permitted in 24 states and the District of Columbia.
The Texans have made the signing of cornerback Damon Arnette official, announcing the deal on Friday.
As a corresponding move, Houston has waived long snapper Tucker Addington, making undrafted rookie Austin Brinkman the winner of the team’s long snapper competition.
Addington had signed a futures deal with the Texans in February. Houston added Brinkman after this year’s draft in May.
Addington has appeared in 1 career games for New England, Washington, and Miami since entering the league in 2022. He’s also spent time with the Cowboys and Jaguars.
Brinkman played his college ball at West Virginia.