The Houston Texans honored running back Joe Mixon’s request to be released Friday, according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, who also reported the team will save $8 million against the cap as a result.
Mixon, 29, missed all of last season with a foot injury that Texans general manager Nick Caserio described as “kind of a freak thing” in January.
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On Monday, news broke that Houston is acquiring running back David Montgomery in a trade with the Detroit Lions. The Texans will reportedly send their 2026 fourth-round pick, offensive lineman Juice Scruggs and a 2027 seventh-round pick to Detroit for the 28-year-old Montgomery.
In three seasons with the Lions, Montgomery totaled 33 touchdowns. Houston is expected to pair him with second-year back Woody Marks.
Montgomery is the latest veteran player at the position the Texans have brought aboard. Mixon also filed into that category when Houston traded for the former Cincinnati Bengals star ahead of the 2024 season.
In his first year with the Texans, Mixon logged the fifth 1,000-yard rushing season of his career. He also found the end zone 12 times, in large part thanks to 11 touchdowns on the ground. In the process, he made his second Pro Bowl and his first since 2021.
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But last August, the Texans placed Mixon on the reserve/non-football injury list. He had been sidelined with a foot injury he sustained while away from the team and that kept him out of offseason OTAs, minicamp and all of training camp.
Leading up to the season opener, Caserio said the team would take Mixon’s situation “one day at a time.”
By late November, reports surfaced the Texans didn’t expect to get Mixon back for the remainder of the season.
Flash forward to season’s end, after the Texans lost to the eventual AFC champion New England Patriots in the divisional round, and Caserio was asked about Mixon again.
“It was a very unique situation,” Caserio said Jan. 21. “I don’t think anybody really had any clarity, honestly, from the start of the year until now. I’d say Joe worked very, very hard to try to get himself ready to play football, it just never manifested itself and came to fruition.
“… It was as unique a situation, an injury, as I’ve been associated with. I don’t want to call it a freak thing, but it was kind of a freak thing. Joe worked really hard, put his best foot forward. It just didn’t work out.”
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At the time, Caserio characterized Mixon’s setback as “more of a medical condition.”
“He didn’t do anything off the field. It wasn’t like he was riding a snowmobile or anything like that,” Caserio said. “He didn’t jump off a building. He wasn’t cliff diving. He wasn’t doing anything irresponsible. It was a freak thing.”
Mixon spent the first seven seasons of his career with the Bengals, who selected him out of Oklahoma in the second round of the 2017 draft.
If he gets back on the field in 2026, it will be with a team other than the Texans.