Winston and Lienart were both waived/cut

Excited for next season. Hopefully the tv shows more Texans games. Only games that usually get shown are Greenbay, Pitt. and Seattle.

I'm going to be bummed out if the rumors are true that the Texans plan to release DeMeco Ryans later today. Jerome Solomon from the Houston Chronicle was reporting late last night that DeMeco Ryans and Jacoby Jones will be the next two players cut. I understand the reasoning from a financial standpoint. Texans already cleared close to $12 million in cap space by releasing Eric Winston ($5 million), releasing Leinart ($1.5 million) and Andre Johnson restructured his contract to give the team extra cap space this season ($5 million). They want to try and clear another $7 or $8 million on top of that.

If they are doing it to try and keep Mario I think they are crazy... One of the Texans strong points is their O line and if they gut that I'm not so sure they will be able to fix it in the FA and draft. Also DeMeco is a great mentor and strong piece of that defense I think it will be tough to try and find a replacement for him as well. I heard maybe its because they see him not fitting well as the MLB in the 3-4 but he looked pretty good last year IMO.

DeMeco Ryans can still be a pro bowl caliber linebacker. His numbers have gone done over the past few seasons because the season-ending injury a few years ago but I felt he was starting to look strong again the final five or six games last year. Losing Ryans may not be in the end of the world if they re-sign Mario Williams and Brooks Reed is able to make a successful switch from OLB to ILB.

Texans would still have four great starting linebackers in Barwin, Mario, Cushing and Reed. They would then need to draft a linebacker for depth purposes (first three rounds, IMO). All I heard is the Texans approached DeMeco Ryans about restructuring his contract but if he refuses to do it then he'll surely be released.

And I agree about gutting the offensive line. Already lost starting right tackle Eric Winston. Now our pro bowl center Chris Myers and solid right guard Mike Brisiel are both free agents. We may potentially lose three of our starters from a great offensive line last year. We still have a stud in left tackle Duane Brown at least. Much easier to rebuild an offensive line on the fly when you've got an anchor at Left Tackle. It would surely help to re-sign Myers though. I can live with trying to fill the void on the right side via the draft or free agency.

Not looking good on the Chris Myers front. He's not happy with the Texans offer and calls them "conservative instead of negotiating." He's looking for a Nick Mangold type of deal according to his agent, Drew Rosenhaus. So something in the neighborhood of 8 years and $57 million. Myers is already saying he's excited about being on the open market and his return to Houston is not looking good right now.

Not sure how much Salary cap we have, but I added the cap we cleared from Andre's restructure, Eric Winston, Lawrence Vickers, and Matt Leinart's releases, and the extra cap space from the Cowboys and the Redskins.

Andre restructured his contract from $6.5M to $700K, which would give us an extra $5.8M salary cap, Eric Winston was dued to $5.5M before his release, Lawrence Vickers was dued to $2M, and I believe Matt Leinart was dued $3M(2 Years, $5.5M), and the $1.6M from Dallas and Washington, and that would add up to $17.9M in Cap Space cleared. I'm not sure if the 28 teams, including us, are still getting the $1.6M or what Leinart's contract for this year.

I'm surprised Jacoby Jones hasn't been released yet, especially if cutting him can save the team another $4 or $5 million. At least DeMeco Ryans appears to be in the team's plans. He's pretty much the leader of the defense even though his numbers have gone down the past two seasons.

I think his contract is structured so that if we cut him before a certain period in the FA, we'd owe him the full $3M, but after that point we'll only owe him half that.