The Texans held a short practice that lasted a little over an hour inside of the bubble Saturday afternoon.
They’ll hold joint practices this week with the Miami Dolphins, ahead of Saturday's game at NRG stadium.
CJ Stroud continued to take all of the first team reps.
Despite playing in just two series, which amounted to 11 total snaps, according to Texans offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik, the rookie learned a lot from the sidelines in his NFL preseason debut.
“You can still get a lot of good coaching points from watching other people operate and he was doing that, he was locked in, he was engaged with his teammates, he was engaged with me,” Slowik said. “We had to have two or three, five minute conversations on the sideline about what was going on when he wasn’t even out there, so it was a really good step.”
Offensive line
The Texans pieced together a starting offensive line for their preseason opener last Thursday night.
With Laremy Tunsil inactive, along with Shaq Mason and the injured Tytus Howard, the Texans started second-year pro Austin Deculus at right tackle, alongside Michael Dieter at right guard, Juice Scruggs at center, Kenyon Green at left guard and George Fant at left tackle.
During practice on Saturday evening, Austin Deculus took all of the first team reps at right tackle while George Fant spent much of the practice riding the stationary bike.
Tunsil, Green, Scruggs and Mason were the other four-fifths of the line.
Teagan Quitoriano participated in practice for the first time all training camp on Saturday.
The second-year pro rotated first teams reps with Dalton Schultz, Eric Tomlinson and Mason Schreck at tight end.
He missed all of training camp last year with knee swelling and wasn’t activated from IR until early November.
The Texans' fifth-round pick out of Oregon State had seven catches for 113 yards and two touchdowns last season.
Tank Dell continued to stand out. He showed off his hops Saturday evening, leaping up over a corner in man coverage to high point a nice ball from Davis Mills.
However, that’s not what caught my attention.
In fact, it was what Texans offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik said regarding Dell that jumped off of the screen when they watched the game in the team meeting room.
“The awesome thing watching Tank in particular was, he was grinding in the run game,” Slowik said. “He showed up. He was always working to get his assignment. If he wasn’t working to his assignment, he was working to block somebody else. He wanted to make sure he was covering somebody by the time the play ended. And that’s something that, Houston, his college, it just wasn’t emphasized as much. So we weren’t sure how that was going to play out when we got into a game setting and he excelled. I think everyone kind of noticed that in the offensive meeting.”
That isn’t a small compliment.
The Texans want to run the ball and rely on receivers being dept at blocking in this offense. If Dell can play like he did without the ball in his hands, he'll get on the field more.
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