The Houston Texans have reached a point where a familiar fix may be the best one.
After four games, the defense that once looked like one of the league’s best has slipped badly, and the most recent example came in Week 4 against the Dallas Cowboys. That slide has helped drag Houston into a rough 0-4 start, and it has opened the door to a pretty simple question: is it time for DeMeco Ryans to take back defensive play-calling duties?
Ryans has done this before. He opened his Texans tenure running the defense himself while handing the offense to Bobby Slowik, and now to Nick Caley.
Then last season, after Houston fell to 0-3, he turned those duties over to defensive coordinator Matt Burke. The move worked well enough for the Texans to finish 12-5.
This year, though, the same setup has produced a much different result. Burke is running the defense, Ryans is overseeing the entire operation, and Houston has only dug itself deeper.
That’s why a shift back to Ryans is worth serious consideration. This would not be some wild overreaction. It would be a coach with a defensive background stepping back into the role he has already handled in Houston.
And there’s reason to trust him there. Ryans guided the Texans to top-half defensive finishes in both 2023 and 2024, and he did it while helping shape some of the players who define this unit now. That includes Kamari Lassiter and Jalen Pitre in their rookie seasons, Azeez Al-Shaair in his first year with the Texans, and Will Anderson Jr. on the way to a Defensive Rookie of the Year award in 2023.
The raw numbers say Burke’s version of the defense was better last season than what Ryans produced in his first two years in Houston. But this group is also more experienced now, more connected, and in a different place than it was when Ryans first handed over control.
When Ryans was asked after the Week 4 loss about the possibility of taking back those duties, he didn’t shut it down. That alone makes this feel like something that could already be in the works as Houston heads into this weekend’s game against the Tennessee Titans.
The issues are pretty clear. The Texans have done a good job against the run, and the pressure on opposing quarterbacks has largely held up.
The problems have shown up elsewhere: explosives allowed and shaky pass coverage. Those are the two leaks that keep undoing the rest of the work.
Houston still has the talent to clean it up. The question is whether the right voice needs to be the one leading the room again.
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