Something happened to Joe Mixon last spring. Nobody's quite sure what.
That's the maddening part of this whole saga. The Houston Texans spent an entire season dodging questions about their starting running back, and Wednesday's press conference from GM Nick Caserio didn't exactly clear things up.
"It wasn't like he was riding a snowmobile or anything like that," Caserio told reporters. "It was more of a medical condition or situation that never really improved maybe as much as everybody would have hoped."
Cool. So it wasn't snowmobiling. Good to know.
"He didn't jump off a building. He wasn't cliff diving or anything. He wasn't doing anything irresponsible. It was just a freak thing."
A freak thing that cost him 17 regular season games, two playoff appearances, and potentially his career in Houston.
The timeline that makes no sense
Mixon showed up to OTAs and minicamp last May nursing what everyone assumed was the same ankle that bothered him during his strong 2024 debut. No big deal, right? Running backs manage these things all the time.
Then training camp arrived in late July. Mixon went straight to the Non-Football Injury list—a designation that tells you whatever happened, it didn't happen at the facility. The Texans went radio silent. DeMeco Ryans gave three-word updates. Caserio kept saying "we'll know more in a few weeks."
Those weeks turned into months. By November, NFL Network's Ian Rapoport reported Mixon wasn't expected to play at all in 2025. The running back fired back on social media: "I'm just curious, Ian—how do you know more about me than me?"
Rapoport was right. Mixon never played a snap.
What Houston loses—and what it found
Go back to January 2024, and the Mixon trade looked like a steal. The Bengals, in cost-cutting mode, shipped him to Houston for a seventh-round pick. The Texans immediately locked him up with a two-year extension worth $27 million.
He delivered. 1,016 rushing yards. 11 touchdowns. A Pro Bowl nod. In the wild card round against the Chargers, he ripped off 106 yards and a score. He was exactly what C.J. Stroud needed—a reliable, physical presence who could close out games and keep defenses honest.
Without him this year? Houston scraped by. The running game ranked 23rd in the league at 107.6 yards per game. Rookie Woody Marks, a fourth-round pick out of USC, emerged as the lead back with 703 yards on the season. Nick Chubb, signed in June as Mixon insurance, added 506 yards but looked like what he is—a 31-year-old coming off major knee surgery.
The Texans still made the playoffs. Still beat the Steelers 30-6 in the wild card. But that divisional round loss to New England exposed the truth: Houston managed just 48 rushing yards. You can't win in January like that.
The money tells the story
Here's where it gets uncomfortable for Mixon.
His contract has one year remaining. The Texans can cut him after the 2026 league year begins and save $8.5 million against the cap—over 80% of his $10.5 million hit. The dead cap charge? Just $2 million.
For a 29-year-old running back with 1,816 career carries, multiple foot injuries in consecutive seasons, and zero snaps in 2025, that math is brutal. This is the NFL. Sentiment doesn't pay the bills.
Caserio was asked directly if Mixon would be ready for training camp 2026. His answer tells you everything.
"We'll see. Believe me, I'm not smart enough to be a doctor so I'm going to leave that up to the medical experts."
The quiet part
What nobody's saying—but everyone's thinking—is that Caserio admitted the team hasn't even seen Mixon recently.
"We haven't seen Joe in a little bit, so I think at some point we'll see him and then we'll be able to evaluate kind of where he is."
That's... strange. Your starting running back is rehabbing a mysterious injury, and you haven't checked in? That's either a HIPAA thing, a relationship thing, or both. None of those options suggest a happy ending.
Maybe Mixon comes back healthy. Maybe some team takes a flier on a talented back with miles on his legs and question marks about his body. Maybe he proves everyone wrong.
But if you're looking at this situation honestly, the most likely outcome is that Joe Mixon played his last snap as a Houston Texan on January 18, 2025, when he ran for 88 yards in a playoff loss to Kansas City.
He just didn't know it yet.