By this time last season, the Houston Texans were being celebrated as potentially having one of the best defenses of the modern era of NFL football. Between a highly-dominant front-seven, a smash-mouth pair of ferocious linebackers and one of the most suffocating secondaries since the 2015 "No Fly Zone" Denver Broncos defense, Houston rode a nine-game winning streak into the playoffs and even decimated an Aaron Rodgers-led Pittsburgh Steelers team to the tune of a 30-6 defensive onslaught.
Fast forward to not even 10 months later, and they're being jeered for having what projects to be the most disappointing defensive unit in the entire league through seven weeks. They can't rush the passer effectively enough, their linebackers have either been injured or highly-ineffective and their secondary is currently the sixth-worst of its kind in the NFL.
Even worse, Houston's defense has been responsible for not only allowing 30-plus points in four out of their first seven games (they allowed only one 30-point game in 2025), but they've also single handedly blown all four of the games in which that's happened, surrendering four fourth-quarter leads in the final 2:00 minutes. The most recent example of their catastrophic failure was arguably their most egregious, seeing as though it involved being embarrassed at home by a New York Giants team lead by castoff quarterback J.J. McCarthy, a just-recently benched running back in Cam Skattebo and a Giants defense ranking bottom-five in stopping the run.
Not only did Houston lose the game 27-21 in overtime, but it included a sequence of events in the contest that stripped the Texans' of much of the remaining defensive dignity that they had remaining heading into the bye week.
The Houston Texans' defense is currently the laughingstock of the NFL after implosion against the New York Giants
For those with short memories, Houston lost as quickly in overtime as I'd ever seen, thanks to the combined rushing prowess of Skattebo and a former Houston Texan in running back Devin Singletary. All it took was three total plays after New York got the ball on offense and they were off and running into a hard-earned victory at Reliant Stadium. Most notably, it all got started when Skattebo—who'd already bullied Houston's formerly top-five-ranked rush defense in regulation—hammered the unit yet again with a shocking 42-yard run right up the middle of the defense to take his team all the way down to Houston's 30 yard line.
Not only was the run itself deflating enough, but Giants right tackle Jermaine Eluemunor made it a point to mention how nonsensical the defense' situational game plan was right before it happened.
Appearing alongside NFL Analyst and host of the Up and Adams Show, Kay Adams, Eluemunor explained the Texans' peculiar defensive scheme choices by recounting,
"And for that play in general, we ran that play a couple of times against that front because they're D-tackles aren't the biggest. They want to rush the passer and not really defend the run. And so, the way they were aligned, I don't know why they called this defense, but they just spiked to the left. And Pat Ricard, our all-world fullback, just freaking washed Will Anderson down the line and I was able to bounce back, go up to Azeez and put him out, and Skat just took off."
That's about as thorough of an indictment as you will read about what's supposed to be a "vaunted" defensive unit in the NFL. In effectively critical fashion, Eluemunor just highlighted what many in the Texans' fan base have openly bemoaned about this defense. That being what seemingly is a fractured defensive scheme that head coach DeMeco Ryans—and the former play caller in defensive coordinator Matt Burke—have constantly assured onlookers is "just fine" at this point in the season.
The reality is, it's not "fine", and it hasn't been "fine" since the final whistle of the 2025 postseason. Outside of Houston's 26-3 trashing of arguably the league's worst team in the Tennessee Titans in week five, there hasn't been a single offense of note that Houston has been able to stop on a consistent basis. And now, not only are teams licking their chops to further dismantle Houston's formerly threatening defense, they're also openly criticizing the dysfunctional quality with which they approach defensive situations.
Insult, meet injury. Injury, meet insult. My oh my, how the mighty have fallen in 2026.
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