The Houston Texans can win the Super Bowl but the NFL's best defense needs CJ Stroud to fire
New England Patriots quarterback Drake Maye faces the biggest test of his young NFL career when he faces the Houston Texans and their No 1-ranked defense in Sunday's Divisional Round matchup; watch live on Sky Sports NFL and Main Event from 8pm
Tuesday 13 January 2026 18:20, UK
Modern NFL defenses tend to like a scalpel. The Houston Texans prefer a sledgehammer.
In an era of smoke-and-mirror football brimming with disguise and subterfuge designed to stay ahead of the curve, the Texans make no secret of their intentions. They punch you in the mouth, they punch you again, and they punch for all 12 rounds.
DeMeco Ryans isn't averse to muddying the field with yo-yoing down linemen and mugged front retreats, nor, though, does he need to rely on too much funk.
Houston's head coach is armed with the league's most potent four-man rush and its accompanying herd of velociraptors at the second and third level, which, when coupled, beats the best minus the trickery.
There is Josh Allen and Buffalo's 'nearly-men' narrative, there is Ben Johnson's offensive sorcery in newly-purring Chicago, there is Sam Darnold's comeback tale, there is Matthew Stafford's MVP charge, there is Kyle Shanahan's sorcery with down-but-never-out San Francisco, there is the Bo Nix-Sean Payton axis in Denver. And there is the Houston hunt.
They entered the playoffs as the nightmare encounter for any team, they await as the toughest test of Drake Maye's blossoming young NFL career and they could yet hoist the Texans to an unlikely Super Bowl. The onus is now on their hit-and-miss offense to live up to their side of the deal.
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"I think everybody knows we are the best defense," said Texans safety Calen Bullock said. "The whole world knows that. Every time we go out there we show it."
Aaron Rodgers has seen just about every defense football could have possibly tossed in his direction across 21 seasons in the NFL. He has deciphered some of the best and fallen to some of the best. He hasn't, though, faced too many quite like the Texans unit that smothered him on Monday night.
The Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback is yet to decide whether or not he will retire from the NFL this offseason. Houston campaigned to make that decision for him as they sacked the four-time MVP on four occasions, hit him 12 times, turned his fumble into a 33-yard Sheldon Rankins touchdown return and intercepted him for a 50-yard Bullock pick-six to cap their 30-6 Wild Card victory.
CJ Stroud and the Texans offense had been a non-factor; in truth, they had been a liability at times. None of it mattered as another frightening performance on defense amplified the story of the season in Houston.
Rodgers was pressured on 46 per cent of his dropbacks, the highest pressure rate he has faced in a playoff game since ESPN began tracking pressure stats in 2009. For context, he had been pressured on a league-lowest 21.5 per cent of dropbacks during the regular season. Sure, there is the argument for a 42-year-old's regressive mobility playing its part, but the Texans have routinely dropped clinics in quarterback harassment this season.
Rarely do they lean on stunts, rarely do they turn to simulated pressures to fog the field read and rarely do they commit extra bodies up front, finishing the regular-season with the fifth-lowest blitz rate in the league. The latter contributes to them ranking a modest 17th in pressure rate, not quite a fair reflection of their command.
The ability to attack with just four up front is customary to any defense wishing to compete for a championship in the modern NFL, and the Texans do it better than most behind a tandem in Will Anderson Jr and Danielle Hunter that combined for a league-best 153 pressures.
Anderson has been everything expected and more since coming out of Alabama as the third overall pick in 2023, a game-wrecking stalwart instrumental to accelerating Houston's rebuild under Ryans. He bullies offensive linemen with power, he conquers with elite burst at the snap, he shifts inside and out with the balance and speed of the best athlete on any field and sees through the desired deception of option designs desperate to slow him and the new breed of road runner pass rushers down.
Once Nick Saban's chief attack dog, Anderson posted a pass rush win rate of 26.2 - the second-best single-season mark in Pro Football Focus history. He finished with a second-most 85 quarterback pressures and third-best pressure rate among players with at least 200 pass-rush snaps, while recording a career-best 54 tackles, 20 tackles for loss, 12 sacks and three forced fumbles alongside the most third-down pressures recording in the Next Gen Stats Era with 48.
A nod to a player's focal point impact can often be found in a team's alignment. Earlier on this season Jeff Hafley underlined as much with Micah Parsons in Green Bay as he dialled up a lop-sided front to isolate his star rusher on the outside and deny the offensive line the ability to slide across to him. The Texans would do the same with Anderson, clearing his runway one-on-one from wide alignments.
Across from him Hunter ranked third in the league with 15 sacks behind only Brian Burns (16.5) and Myles Garrett (23), as well as managing 54 tackles, 15 tackles for loss, three forced fumbles and a fumble recovery. Of his 15 sacks, 11 notably came across the final nine games, including 3.5 against the Jacksonville Jaguars.
So much of their success, too, stems from the influence of Rankins and Tommy Togiai on a stubborn interior, where quarterbacks are denied the space to step up in the pocket and in turn lured into the path of Houston's edge disruptors. Denico Autry and Derek Barnett have meanwhile been invaluable to the rotation of Ryans' front in preserving Houston's freedom to keep bodies in coverage.
In the secondary Derek Stingley Jr lives comfortably on islands against the best wide receivers on the field as one of football's most accomplished shutdown corners, while second-year Kamari Lassiter is a throwback to old school ferocity as one of the hardest-hitting tacklers in his position and an exemplifying beacon of Ryans' Texans defense. It is for their throttling influence, as well as that of Jalen Pitre and Bullock, that quarterbacks so often fall into the laps of Houston's closers up front, and why Houston are the No 1-ranked defense in the league with the third-most takeaways.
They attack in packs, they fly to the ball quicker than any unit in the league, they strike harder, they wrap more efficiently, they limit the room for more elaborate route concepts, they beat you with speed and with brute force, they play with no let-up for all four quarters.
Next up is the job of hunting a quarterback in Maye who was sacked a fourth-most 47 times this season.
It is a championship-calibre defense and some, but one that has compensated for inconsistencies on offense too often for the Texans' liking.
Stroud was intercepted once and lost two of five fumbles during Monday's Wild Card win over the Steelers, who converted his turnovers into just one of their two field goals. Houston finished the regular-season down in 22nd in total EPA on offense while Stroud himself was ranked 13th in EPA+CPOE composite (expected points added plus completion percentage over expected), measuring down-to-down efficiency.
They now face a New England Patriots defense that allowed the fourth fewest points per game on average, with the availability of lead wide receiver Nico Collins uncertain following his latest concussion setback.
Second-year regression in the NFL is real, but Stroud's influence has waned a little more than he and the Texans might have envisaged since a rookie year in which is touch passing, his anticipation and his invention lifted him among the most polished young quarterbacks in football. The beauty, though, of this Texans team and its overwhelming defense is that he need not be spectacular.
It had been Stroud's lightning adjustment to the NFL that propelled the Texans ahead of schedule in his first year, and it is now the league's most feared defense that has taken on the baton to thrust them into contention while riding a 10-game winning streak.
Drake Maye, whose MVP candidacy alongside Matthew Stafford is undisputed, is about to face the best defense in his career. For Houston, it is an opportunity to advance beyond the Divisional Round for the first time in their history.
Maye vs the monster, for a place in the final four.
Watch the Houston Texans against the New England Patriots in the Divisional Round of the NFL playoffs live on Sky Sports NFL from 8pm on Sunday.
