Texans Thursday: The patching Nick Caserio faces

It gets lost in the offensive line (and overall blocking) performance from last season. It gets lost in how the Texans failed to take a true step forward. It is … most of Nick Caserio’s offseason bets on defense turned out pretty well.

Danielle Hunter earned All-Pro votes for his performance on defense. Denico Autry was suspended at one point, but played well when he was in the lineup. Azeez Al-Shaair had a, um, let’s call it memorable year. But I’d say he mostly played great run defense for the a team that needed a great run defender, and he bounced between acceptable and rough in pass coverage. Folorunso Fatukasi was a good run stuffer, Mario Edwards was also in the good-when-not-suspended camp. And as a result of those signings, the Texans were a tough out in the postseason. They smothered Kansas City’s wideouts in the Divisional Round and, were they anchored to a pass offense that could block, we’d be singing their praises.

I hate this phrasing because it is very Reply Guy but … what did not age well last year? It was trading for Stefon Diggs and giving out an extension to Dalton Schultz before he hit free agency. Schultz, as I think I expressed at the time, I liked fine as a lower-rung receiver but didn’t strike me as enough of a matchup threat to commit to. I loved the Diggs move — thought it was ballsy — but after tearing his ACL the move has gone sour in a hurry.

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I don’t think either of those moves were the ones that truly sunk ships for the Texans in 2024, but I do think they help set the scene for where we are in 2025. Houston would need to sink Schultz’s money in a trade to gain appreciable salary space in moving on from him. (I’ve seen it bandied about that he could take a paycut, but I don’t know what threat the Texans have to really come to the table with on that.) With Diggs, the damage is already done due to void years — and I think you can read between the lines of almost zero contract talk leaks and the fact that Nick Caserio hasn’t exactly said the words “we want him back” and know that it was very much a one-year gamble that has cost the Texans a second-round pick. Diggs is on the ledger with a $16.6 million dead cap figure for this year.

The Texans have a very limited amount of cap space this year. Not enough to keep them out of free agency entirely, as you can see from Caserio noting that it won’t stop them, but enough to keep something truly radical from happening. The Texans aren’t a Myles Garrett team. I think the Garrett Wilson front has died now that Aaron Rodgers is gone from the Jets. You see some available players that would fit well behind Nico Collins as a No. 2 wideout, but you don’t see one that is wartless.

The plan to patch