The Los Angeles Rams‘ first opponent of the 2025 NFL season will be without one of their top players in Week 1.

The Houston Texans announced Monday that starting running back Joe Mixon will miss the first four weeks of the season after being placed on the Reserve/Non-Football Injury list. The veteran has been dealing with a foot/ankle injury all summer and is officially out for the first portion of the year.

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It’s unclear who the immediate starter is over Mixon, so the Rams will likely see some combination of Dameon Pierce, Dare Ogunbowale, ex-Cleveland Browns running back Nick Chubb and fourth-round rookie Woody Marks. Chubb is listed as the team’s second running back, but all four players have seen action in training camp and in the preseason.

Despite his age and injury history, Mixon is a good dual-threat back. So not having to face him at the start of the Rams’ season is a boon for L.A.

Mixon, who made the Pro Bowl in 2024, rushed for 1,016 yards and 11 touchdowns in his first season with the Texans this past year. He also caught 36 receptions for 309 yards and a touchdown. Mixon has tallied five 1,000-yard rushing seasons since 2018, with 74 career touchdowns since 2017.

The quartet of Chubb, Marks, Pierce and Ogunbowale isn’t nearly as formidable as facing Mixon would have been for this Rams squad. Chubb was, at one point in his career, one of the best running backs in the league, but his past two seasons ended with injuries and he only played 10 total games over that span. He sustained a horrific knee injury in Week 2 of the 2023 season and broke his foot in Week 13 of the 2025 season.

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Marks is a rookie out of USC, Pierce is a fourth-year player who rushed for 900 yards as a rookie but has just 709 yards in the past two seasons, while Ogunbowale has mostly played special teams and never rushed more than 45 times in a single season.

This will be the first test for the Rams’ upgraded run defense after L.A. allowed the 22nd-most rushing yards in 2024. The team’s young players are all a year older, though, and the Rams added veteran run-stuffer Poona Ford and fifth-round rookie Ty Hamilton to the unit.

It’s an easy start for sure, but things won’t get easier for the Rams. L.A. will face Tony Pollard, Saquon Barkley, Jonathan Taylor, Christian McCaffrey and Derrick Henry in the subsequent five games of this season.

This article originally appeared on Rams Wire: Rams won’t face Texans’ Pro Bowler after being placed on NFI list