Texans
Texans GM Nick Caserio said that RB Joe Mixon‘s status is uncertain for next year after suffering a freak accident last offseason that caused him to miss the entire 2025 season.
“We haven’t seen Joe in a little bit, so I think at some point we’ll see him and then we’ll be able to evaluate kind of where he is, and then based on information, we’ll see where his status is,” Caserio said, via ESPN.
The details are still vague, and Caserio didn’t confirm what happened to Mixon, but he confirmed that it wasn’t anything that he did irresponsibly.
“It wasn’t like he was riding a snowmobile or anything like that,” Caserio said. “It was more of a medical condition or situation that never … really didn’t improve maybe as much as everybody would have hoped. I’m not trying to evade the question, that’s the reality of the situation. He didn’t jump off a building. He wasn’t cliff diving or anything. He wasn’t doing anything irresponsible. It was just a freak thing.”
Texans
The Texans finished their season with a Divisional Round berth and a 12-5 record in the regular season. On the topic of QB C.J. Stroud, GM Nick Caserio said they need to do a better job of limiting turnovers after the quarterback tossed four interceptions in their playoff loss to the Patriots.
“Every player in the offseason is about improvement. What are some of the things you can do better? C.J. had a really good season,” Caserio said, via TexansWire. “He’s done a lot of great things. He’s done a lot of great things for his team, a lot of great things for this organization. Any time you pass [Denver Broncos QB] John Elway in terms of what you’ve accomplished in a short period of time, talking about a Hall of Fame quarterback. C.J. played good football this year. It wasn’t our best day as a team when you go back and look at the game from Sunday [the AFC Divisional Round against New England]. You can’t turn the ball over. You look at the Divisional Round, the teams that turn the ball over, they lost the game. Buffalo [Bills] turned the ball over four times. [San Francisco 49ers QB] Brock Purdy and the ‘Niners [San Francisco 49ers] turned it over three times. [Chicago Bears QB] Caleb [Williams] threw three interceptions. In the end, our ball security… I think this was a franchise record for the fewest turnovers. We’ve shown that we can take care of the football. We did a poor job of it in the game the other day and it cost us. We still had an opportunity to win the game despite how poorly we played, which I would say that game was emblematic of the first three games. When you go back and look at it, the first three games of the season, that’s what happened. The reality is, what can we do better individually? As a player you got to look at some of the things you can work on and what are some of the things that you can do to improve your performance. So, again, I think taking care of the football for a quarterback, like… We talked about this, [Head Coach] DeMeco [Ryans] and I talked to all the quarterbacks about this, including C.J., your number one job as a quarterback is to mitigate risk. Period. End of story. Every single play. If you do that, you’re going to give your team a pretty good opportunity to win. If you don’t do that, it’s probably going to be a little bit harder. Drake [Maye] put it on the ground the other day a couple of times. Unfortunately, we put it on the ground more. That’s why the result was the result.”
Titans
The Titans elected to fire former HC Mike Vrabel in 2024, who is currently leading the Patriots to the AFC Championship. When appearing on the Bussin’ With The Boys podcast, Titans DE Jeffery Simmons said people in the locker room wonder how things may be different if they elected to hold onto Vrabel.
“That’s the nature of it,” Simmons said. “We talked about it in the locker room. … Guys, they’re gonna speak their mind, like ‘Damn, what if? What if we could be in that situation right now?’”
Simmons feels like they never established a clear identity throughout the 2025 season under former HC Brian Callahan.
“When you look at it from a player’s standpoint, it’s like, ‘What is really our identity?’” Simmons said. “I feel like, as a team, that was something I was trying to help find. Because later in the season, we started running the football. It was like ‘Damn, why couldn’t we do this earlier in the season?’ I feel like that should’ve been our identity to start off with to help a young quarterback, which is no knock on the coaches or whatever, but I feel like going forward, it all starts with the foundation. It’s just like building a house: If your foundation’s not there and not good, you’ve got a s—ty house.”
Simmons continued that they had an understanding of their identity under Vrabel, but that fell apart after his departure.
“When Callahan first got in — and it’s no knock to Cally, Cally’s a great guy, great coach — I don’t think it was just the time for that. Going from Vrabel, we all knew what it looked like. The guys who’ve been there, me, Hook (safety Amani Hooker), we knew what it looked like to not let things slip. The first maybe year or so that we’re going through the coaching change, you guys saw the roster. We’ve got maybe six, seven rookies playing at one time or at one point in the season. So when you have such a young team, what can you really fall back on? Who are the Tennessee Titans? What do we really stand for? We didn’t have that. We knew what Vrabel expected. I was telling guys, like, the first day of meetings … I get there and I see guys running around looking for notebooks and pencils. Vrabel, the last year that he was here … everybody coming in with notebooks and pencils. And he was like, ‘What are you guys ready to write down? I’m not gonna talk about nothing right now.’ We knew what Vrabel expected, and we knew what he wanted out of the team. The message was in the locker room, and it’s like this past year, we didn’t have that.”
- ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler lists former Giants HC Brian Daboll, Steelers OC Arthur Smith, Dolphins pass game coordinator Bobby Slowik, and 49ers OC Klay Kubiak as some names worth watching for the Titans’ offensive coordinator vacancy.
- However, Slowik has since been hired as the Dolphins’ offensive coordinator, and Kubiak has withdrawn his name from consideration as he prefers to remain in San Francisco.
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