Houston Texans Defense is on Historic Pace at Quarter Pole of the NFL Season

To start, allow me to state the obvious... with only four games in the books, it may be just slightly premature to begin looking at season-long trends. But hey, when so much of the conversation surrounding the Houston Texans for the first quarter of the 2025 NFL season has been focused on the struggles of the offense, I say it's time we take a break from all the negativity and celebrate Houston's defense.

Coming into the year, it was widely accepted that the Texans defense would be among the best units in the NFL. Nobody really disputed that, and that includes members of the Texans organization who set lofty goals ahead of the season, like All-Pro cornerback Derek Stingley Jr., who claimed that Houston's D should lead the league in interceptions by "10 to 15."

Absurd predictions like that aside, the Texans defense has thus far lived up to that billing, even if they've only forced 3 turnovers through the first four games of the season. By any other metric, Houston's D has been lights out, and that includes the most important metric... points allowed.

Presently, the Texans have surrendered fewer points this season than any other team in the league. In fact, the different between the Houston Texans (51 points) and the 2nd-ranked scoring defense in the league (the Denver Broncos and Seattle Seahawks, who have each given up 67 points) is just as large as the difference is between the 2nd-ranked scoring defense and the 12th-ranked scoring defense (Indianapolis Colts).

Again, it's early, but this four-week start has the Texans on pace to finish as one of the league's top scoring defenses of the last quarter-century. Since the year 2000, only six teams have managed to make it through an entire NFL season giving up fewer than 13 points per game. If the Texans continue stifling opponents the same way they have through Week 4, they could end up becoming the 7th team in the last 25 years to reach that impressive mark.

One thing that each of those six defenses has in common with the Texans is an offense that wasn't capable of carrying the workload. Not a single one of those teams finished with a top ten scoring offense, and again, that makes the Texans similar to all of those groups. Thus far this season, Houston is 29th in scoring, which explains their 1-3 record despite an historically dominant defensive start.

Can the Houston Texans keep this pace for 17 games?

This may end up being the question that determines whether Houston ends up making the Playoffs for the third consecutive season. We shouldn't necessarily bank on the Texans continuing to hold opponents under 13 points per game, especially since scoring is up across the NFL compared to any one of those previously mentioned seasons. There's a reason the last time a defense held their opponents to under 13 points per game happened nearly 20 years ago.

But even if that numbers swells by a couple of points per game, if the Texans remain the league-leader in points allowed by a considerable margin -- and if the offense continues to make strides after their promising 26-0 win over the Titans this past Sunday -- it could propel Houston back into the postseason picture. But just for the sake of amusement, let's consider whether the Texans can actually keep up this pace.

Now while a shutout win over the Tennessee Titans doesn't prove much, the work that the Texans defense did against their first three opponents of the season does inspire some confidence that this could be a history-making season.

Take away those games against Houston, and each of the Texans first three opponents of the season would be top ten scoring offenses in the NFL in this season. So while there are still some high-octane offenses that the Texans will need to contend with later on down the line this season, there's reason to believe that each of those teams could struggle in a similar fashion as the Rams, Bucs and Jaguars did.