Houston Texans toiling with $43 million dollar dead cap hit

The McNair’s are basically paying for two full offensive lines

Whether via trade or outright releasing a player, every team has to cut fat on their roster. “Due to the structure of NFL contracts, when a team chooses to forgo the remainder of a player’s deal, it assumes a financial penalty known as dead cap. Spotrac defines Dead Cap money as:

Any future, unpaid, guaranteed salary or bonus + any already paid signing bonus that hasn’t yet been allocated to the salary cap becomes the responsibility of the team in the event of a release.

For the Texans entering the 2025 offseason, they had two big decisions to make; what to do with Stefon Diggs and whether to maintain the extremely poor, extremely expensive offensive line.

They chose to clean house. Those decisions plus several others incurred $43M dollar dead cap bill that accounts for over 15% of the Texans salary cap this season. That’s 10th most in the NFL next season, but separately is only half of San Francisco 49er’s league-leading $91.7M dead cap hit.

72% of the Texans dead cap can be attributed to Laremy Tunsil and Stefon Diggs. Houston’s restructuring of Stefon Diggs’ ghastly contract from Buffalo was meant to offer Houston protection if Diggs personality got in the way of his play. It wasn’t supposed to protect against his first major injury of his career. Because Nick Caserio voided the last three years in Diggs’ contract, Houston owes him $15M this year to now suit up for the New England Patriots.

Diggs is not unfamiliar with receiving large paychecks from former teams. When the Buffalo Bills traded him to Houston, they took on the largest non-QB dead cap in NFL History.

Fortunately, not all of the cash is going to players to play for other teams. There are a few rookies who were cut and then resigned later via the practice squad. Namely, Jawhar Jordan and Solomon Byrd from the 2024 class are still Texans with dual income in 2024 (from their original contracts and new ones after resigning.

After Diggs and Tunsil, a pair of former lineman line the Texans dead cap receipt. Unsurprisingly it’s Shaq Mason and Kenyon Green, the former free agent and first rounder who were both unceremoniously cast off this offseason. They were casualties of Houston recasting the offensive line this offseason.

The lowest amount owed goes to Killian Zierer, the 6’7 undrafted left tackle from Munich, Germany. Houston owes the now Atlanta Falcon $3,334, just less than the Apple Vision Pro costs.