Nick Caserio opened his only in-season press conference on Monday with the number that frames everything in Houston right now. “Two and five, we are where we are,” the Texans general manager said. “Definitely can play better. … Myself included.” A day after a 27-21 overtime loss to the New York Giants, Houston’s fourth defeat in four home games, Caserio talked about C.J. Stroud’s contract, the trade deadline and what has gone wrong, before head coach DeMeco Ryans said there would be no changes to his staff during the bye week.
Stroud: “We were pretty close”
The Texans and Stroud’s representatives negotiated an extension through the offseason and the preseason but did not reach an agreement. Houston has picked up his fifth-year option, so he is under contract through 2027. Asked whether Stroud had bet on himself by not taking a deal, Caserio said: “You can ask C.J. what his thoughts are. … We had really good discussions. I’d say we were pretty close. We weren’t able to consummate an agreement. I don’t think anybody’s really too worried about it.”
Stroud has 1,877 passing yards, fourth in the league, with 11 touchdowns and one interception. Caserio said that was no surprise and pointed back to the criticism the quarterback took in the offseason. “There were very few people, other than maybe DeMeco and myself, who supported him all offseason when he was essentially bad-mouthed for like four months about one bad half of football,” he said. “I think the contract will take care of itself, whenever that is.”
Asked why the Texans did not simply close the gap if the two sides were close, he said: “I don’t really have anything else to add. We negotiated, we went back and forth, we didn’t reach an agreement, no hard feelings, and everybody moved forward. … At some point, I would expect an agreement to be figured out. I’m not sure this is that complicated.” He added that “nobody was reluctant on anything” and that he has “a lot of respect” for Stroud and his agent.
“We’re always open” at the deadline
Asked whether Houston would be a buyer or a seller before the trade deadline, Caserio did not pick a side. “Every opportunity, we’ll look at it. If it makes sense, great. If not … we’re always open,” he said. “We’ve talked to most of the league here. Teams have started to reach out a little bit, trying to figure out, all right, where are teams, what are you looking for, where’s a surplus, where do you potentially have a need. … We’re not going to eliminate anything.”
He also said the roster will not change much before the spring. “The team is what the team is, so we’re not going to see significant change relative to personnel till the offseason,” he said, adding later: “I’m sure there’s some players that are here that won’t be here next season. That’s just part of the cyclicality of this.” Houston will not make “any knee-jerk decisions on the heels of what happened yesterday,” he said.
On the Marvin Harrison Jr. trade, which cost Houston a 2027 second-round pick, he said the Texans were comfortable paying that price because they control the receiver through next season and possibly one more year. “I don’t think anybody’s really worried about the draft right now,” he said. “There’s a lot of ways that you can recoup picks.”
“One of the worst tackling teams in the league”
Caserio did not dress up the problems. “One of the worst penalized teams in the league, one of the worst tackling teams in the league,” he said. The Texans were flagged 10 times for 80 yards against the Giants, and the game ended on Devin Singletary’s 30-yard touchdown run in overtime. “Tackling is a mindset,” Caserio said. “We’re not wrapping, we’re not driving, we’re not finishing. … Some players are tough and some aren’t. It’s just the reality of it.”
He said four of the five losses came on the final possession. “There’s no reason to mope around and wallow in our sorrows,” he said. Asked why the defense has dropped off with mostly the same players as last season, he said: “Every year is different. … The ’25 team was a ’25 team.” He added that missed tackles, explosive plays allowed and a lack of takeaways were the main reasons, while the offense has been one of the best in the league at protecting the ball. On the offensive line, he said its play had been “a little bit up and down,” with good pass protection but blocks not being finished in the run game.
Caserio called Tank Dell’s return on Sunday, his first game since December 2024, “a pretty cool moment.” “To see a player who’s honestly probably had as close to a career-ending injury as anybody … speaks to really the individual and the person,” he said.
Ryans: the staff stays
Ryans spoke after Caserio. Asked whether he would stay the course with his current coaches, he said: “Yes, we will.” Asked what “coaching better” means, he said: “If it’s not showing up, I really got to do a better job to make sure it shows up. Like, what you see on tape is what we’re coaching.”
He said the tackling problem comes down to defenders “kind of waiting on the back” instead of “playing fast and just going and shooting our shot and everybody swarming to the football.” Asked whether he was surprised to be 2-5, he said: “Not surprised. It’s the reality of where we are.” He also answered the comparisons with last season directly. “This is 2026,” he said. “It’s about what you do right now when the ball is snapped in 2026. And right now in 2026, we’ve been in some tight ball games and we have not closed the games out as we should have.”
On going 0-4 at home, he said: “It’s not where we want to be right now. … We want to give our fans better and we got to find a way to turn that around.” The Texans play the Los Angeles Chargers after the bye, a team Caserio said is “probably better than what their record is,” like his own.
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