Unbeliveable: Nico Collins Announced A Departure After Insulting The Coach DeMeco Ryans With His….
The Houston Texans are locking up one of their young stars ahead of the 2024 NFL season. According to Dianna Russini of The Athletic, Houston has signed wide receiver Nico Collins to a three-year contract extension that will pay him roughly $24 million per season.
Collins, 25, is the latest wide receiver to be handed a massive contract extension this offseason. The market continues to reset itself as teams show just how valuable this position is around the NFL.
A third-round pick of the Texans back in 2021 out of Michigan, Collins had a breakout 2023 campaign catching passes from then-rookie C.J. Stroud. He tallied 80 receptions for 1,297 yards and eight touchdowns. Collins’ previously best season came in 2022 when he tallied a mere 481 yards.
This past season also saw Stroud boast a 129.6 QB rating when targeting Collins. Obviously, he’s an extremely important figure for the upstart Texans.
For Houston, this extension comes after it acquired Pro Bowl wide receiver Stefon Diggs from the Buffalo Bills in a blockbuster trade earlier in the offseason. The Texans also added Pro Bowl running back Joe Mixon from the Cincinnati Bengals.
Houston is coming off a 2023 campaign in which the team won the AFC South with 10 victories. It’s seen as one of the most-talented young squads in the NFL. Extending Collins only adds another layer to that.
If there was one big item for the 2023 Houston Texans, it was improvement. The coaching was vastly improved from previous seasons, which led to great development and improvement of most of the players, and ultimately a gargantuan improvement in the team’s record, from 3-13-1 in 2022 to the 10-7 renaissance of last year.
However, not everyone was improved, and not everyone played well. I mean, the Texans DID lose seven games, so somewhere along the way, there were things that went wrong. Bradley Locker of Pro Football Focus, wrote a piece over the weekend identifying a “bounce back” candidate for each of the 32 NFL teams. In other words, he is naming a player who can rebound from a subpar 2023.
For what it’s worth, Locker’s Texan bounce back candidate was newly acquired running back Joe Mixon, who, in this exercise, would be bouncing back from his 2023 performance as a Cincinnati Bengal:
Mixon is almost 28 and approaching the point of no return in running back age and production, but I’m willing to expect better play from him in 2024. Mixon’s yards after contact per carry number dropped marginally from 2022 to 2023, and his elusiveness rating was actually 7.7 points higher. Beyond that, he should face more light boxes than before, given the Texans’ deadly aerial attack with C.J. Stroud, Nico Collins, Stefon Diggs and Tank Dell.
Likewise, offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik maintained a run-first identity last year despite Stroud’s exceptional play. Given those roots in the Shanahan tree and the desire to establish the run to set up play action, Mixon’s carry share could look more like 2021 than the past two years.
Naming Mixon is fine, I suppose, but I didn’t watch a ton of Bengals football last season. I was really hoping to see if my “eye test” on at least one of the Texans’ 2023 underachievers matched that of a presumed expert on PFF. Alas, that was not the case. That said, if I had to pick four 2023 Houston Texans for “bounce back” candidacy in 2024, there are mine (with PFF ranking at their position in 2023):
4. DAMEON PIERCE, RB (46th of 59 RB’s)
Pierce took the team by storm in his rookie season in 2022, as much as any single player could take that undermanned version of the team by storm, rushing for nearly 1,000 yards. With the hope that Pierce and Devin Singletary would form a 1-2 punch in 2023, the new staff anointed him the starter, but he never really grasped the offense. By the end of the season, Pierce was getting no snaps on offense, and was solely on the team as a kick returner. If OTA’s are any indication, the team is counting on a bounce back from Pierce this season, with DeMeco Ryans even referring to a “1-2 punch” with Mixon and Pierce.
