With nine weeks of action in the books, we've officially reached the halfway point of the 2025 NFL season, and accordingly, various outlets are publishing their midseason superlatives. Our friends at Pro Football Focus are following suit.
On Tuesday, PFF revealed it's midseason All-Pro Teams, using their own player grades as a metric to determine all of the guys who would make up their 1st and 2nd All-Pro Teams. The Denver Broncos and Detroit Lions led the way with 5 players each, followed by the Indianapolis Colts and Philadelphia Eagles, who each had four players on their roster named to the midseason All-Pro Team, though for the Colts, one of those players isnewly acquired cornerback Sauce Gardner.
Despite a 3-5 start to the season, the Houston Texans had two players who have earned their way onto these hypothetical rosters.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, those two players are safety Jalen Pitre and edge defender Will Anderson Jr. Pitre (80.2 grade, 2nd-ranked safety in the NFL per PFF) was named to the PFF All-Pro 1st Team, while Anderson (90.8 grade, 4th-ranked edge defender) was edged out by Myles Garrett and Micah Parsons, and bumped to the 2nd Team.
Pitre and Anderson have both been subjects of each week's Defensive Spotlight series here at Toro Times, so their efforts on the field have been recognized at length. At 26 and 24 years old respectively, Pitre and Anderson are undoubtedly two of the most significant building blocks on the Houston Texans defense. But they aren't the only players that the Texans should feel good about, nor are they the only players who deserved consideration for spots on PFF's Midseason All-Pro Teams.
Toro Times' Honorable Mentions
In addition to Jalen Pitre and Will Anderson Jr., there were a handful of other Texans players who, despite not being mentioned by PFF explicitly, could be considered notable omissions from the Midseason All-Pro Teams based on both their PFF grade and the eye test. Predictably, three of the four players who I believe have earned Honorable Mention status are on the Texans defense.
Those players -- Kamari Lassiter, Sheldon Rankins and Danielle Hunter -- are all ranked in the top 15 of their respective positions per PFF. While Rankins and Hunter are each on the wrong side of 30, at only 22 years old, Lassiter is one of the youngest players on the entire Texans defense. If you're listing the notable building blocks for this team, he has to be mentioned right alongside Anderson and Pitre.
One player whose absence from this conversation is noteworthy is cornerback Derek Stingley Jr., a 2024 All-Pro and the highest-ranked Texans player in the NFL's Top 100 Players list that was revealed ahead of the 2025 season. Stingley's PFF grade has slipped to 56.6 this season, a huge drop from last year, when Stingley's 80.4 grade was the 4th-highest in the NFL among 116 qualified corners.
On the other side of the ball, only one Texan deserves mention as a possible candidate for PFF's Midseason All-Pro Team. Guard Ed Ingram, who was acquired in the offseason and considered an afterthought, has been a revelation on the interior of the Texans offensive line. His 73.9 grade is 8th-highest among players at his position.