Texans News: Jayden Higgins Suffers Torn ACL
Houston Texans wide receiver Jayden Higgins suffered a torn ACL during the team’s joint practice on Tuesday against the Las Vegas Raiders, sources told Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network. “A tough blow to the Houston receiving room,” Rapoport wrote, and Higgins will now miss the entire 2026 season.
It’s a difficult loss for Houston’s offense. The second-year wideout was set to operate as a key part of the passing attack alongside Nico Collins, having earned a starting spot on the team’s unofficial depth chart entering camp. Before the injury, the 23-year-old product of Iowa State looked like a real Year 2 breakout candidate after catching 41 passes for 525 yards and six touchdowns as a rookie in 2025, tying Collins for the team lead in receiving scores. His role had also been trending in the right direction late in the year, with his target share climbing 8.1 percentage points during Houston’s nine-game winning streak to close the regular season.
This marks the second serious knee injury to hit Houston’s roster within the past week, following a torn ACL suffered by backup quarterback Graham Mertz in the team’s preseason opener against the Chargers, adding to a rough stretch of camp for the Texans.
Fantasy managers can now avoid Higgins in all redraft leagues for 2026. With him out of the picture, Xavier Hutchinson moves up as a starting-caliber option alongside Collins, while Tank Dell, Jaylin Noel, and Justin Watson make up the next tier on the depth chart. Dell, who missed all of 2025 recovering from a serious knee injury of his own, remains a genuine wild card; his health and role this season carry even more weight for Houston’s passing game now that Higgins is out.
Noel, Houston’s third-round pick from the same 2025 draft class as Higgins, is the name most likely to see an expanded target share as a result of this injury. However, Noel is currently dealing with a hamstring issue of his own in camp, which tempers how big a beneficiary he can realistically be in the short term if he’s not fully healthy to start the season. His outlook as a flex option will depend heavily on both his own recovery timeline and how quickly Dell can return to the form that made him a 1,376-yard receiver across the 2023 and 2024 seasons.
Given the uncertainty surrounding both Dell’s and Noel’s availability entering the year, Houston’s receiving room outside of Collins remains genuinely unsettled, a situation worth monitoring closely as the preseason and final roster cuts play out.
