Houston Texans: What to do with Jadeveon Clowney and Tyrann Mathieu

It’s the off season for the Houston Texans and Jadeveon Clowney and Tyrann Mathieu are free agents. What to do with them? Here’s the best plan of action.

The Houston Texans embarrassing 21-7 Wild Card round loss to the Indianapolis Colts is in the rear-view mirror but it certainly gives the franchise an idea of a pulse check to see where they’re in terms of moving forward.

Did the Houston Texans get lucky with a beneficial schedule that had them face a lot of inexperienced quarterbacks, allowing them to rack up the W’s?

That’s debatable but their 11-5 record and their third division championship in the past five years cannot be taken away from them as they earned it fair and square.

But with the team’s pathetic performance against the Colts this past Saturday, it goes to show how much of a long way they have to go in terms of ensuring this team has the goods to compete with the best.

There is a ton of talent on this team but the offensive line must improve in order for Deshaun Watson to remain healthy and upright and for the offense to be as robust as possible.

I’ll be talking a lot about what the Houston Texans need to do to remain competitive this off season but the first plan of business before the draft is to resolve the issue of edge rusher Jadeveon Clowney and safety Tyrann Mathieu being free agents.

Although we were expecting more out of each, they both provided a valuable contribution to this team through the 2018 season. Most importantly, two guys that had issues with their health in the past remained stout throughout all of the 16 games this season, which is a credit to the new training staff that was brought in after the team used an NFL-record 77 players just to stay afloat back in 2017.

A extension for Clowney was supposed to be complete by the end of this past off season but the Houston Texans decided not to move on it and let him play out his $12.3 million 5th-year option and revisit the concern in the 2019 off season.

Well that moment has arrived plus the team must decide on what to do with Mathieu, who has publicly expressed his interest to return after completing a one-year, $7 million deal with the Houston Texans.

Here’s what the Houston Texans should do with both.

The team should go on and award the franchise tag to Jadeveon Clowney as more of a “prove it” type deal for 2019, if he excels, the team can sign him to a long-term deal starting with the 2020 season.

Clowney, 25, finished with 47 combined tackles (38 solo), 9.0 sacks, 16 tackles-for-loss and 21 quarterback hits which quite frankly, he and us all expected for him to produce more than what’s on the stat sheet. He did appear in 15 games this season, sans the Week 2 Tennessee Titans matchup on the road where he eventually was talking trash from the bench in street clothes.

According to Pro Football Focus (subscription required), Clowney was ranked 4th among edge rushers with at least 818 snaps with an excellent 89.2 grade for the 2018 season. He has also ranked 1st in run defense (91.8), 2nd in coverage (87.1) and 7th in pass rush (79.1). Clowney took 902 snaps this past season.

PFF thinks that he’s getting the job done but I expect for that sack total to be a bit higher than what it was this season.

Who knows where the Houston Texans are at with what to do with Clowney but I think they

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should just tag him exclusively, preventing him from negotiating with other teams.

I’d imagine this year’s tag based off his position would be worth around $15 million this season and with the Houston Texans expected to have more than nine-figures worth of cap space this off season, he’d fit comfortably within the books.

As for Mathieu, although he leveled off a bit after a tremendous start to the season, should be offered a three-year deal worth $30 million with $13.5 million guaranteed. His contract should be incentive-laden where he could earn up to $40 million based off of certain statistics that he could hit throughout the deal.

Mathieu, 26, had 89 combined tackles — 70 solo — with five tackles-for-loss, four quarterback hits, two interceptions, eight passes defensed and one fumble recovery. Those numbers are on-par with 2015, his lone Pro Bowl season so overall, Mathieu’s body of work has been impressive.

PFF has Mathieu ranked as the No.1 safety in the league with at least 895 snaps, garnering a 77.9 overall grade and an excellent 84.6 run defense grade, ranking him 3rd among safeties. The Honey Badger took 1,045 snaps in all 16 games at safety this past season, which is 8th among his counterparts at the position.

Retaining each of these guys is a no-brainer but how the team decides to execute such a plan remains to be seen. Each should be rewarded for their hard work but the Houston Texans have to be coy with their money as there are other pressing needs this team needs to address this off season.

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We’ll have to see but the Houston Texans have already expressed their desire to bring both back into fold so I’d imagine we’ll know within the next month or so what the franchise decides to do.

Keep your eyes peeled!

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