{"id":275519,"date":"2025-08-09T23:54:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-09T23:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/275519\/"},"modified":"2025-08-09T23:54:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-09T23:54:10","slug":"5-quick-takeaways-from-the-first-preseason-game-of-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/275519\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Quick Takeaways from the first preseason game of 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

2. Strong Defensive Pressure from Pass Rush Depth The Texans’ defensive line showed good depth with multiple players getting sacks. Houston Texans’ defensive end Casey Toohill and Haggai Ndubuisi both wrapped up Vikings QB Brett Rypien.<\/p>\n

3. John Metchie III Producing Texans’ QB Davis Mills stood in and waited for the hole in the defense to open, then zipped the ball into John Metchie III’s hands for a smart 18-yard pickup. Metchie III had five catches for 45 yards to lead the team. He also led the squad in targets with eight.<\/p>\n

4. Ka’imi Fairbairn’s Reliable Kicking No surprise that Ka’imi Fairbairn started preseason off by smacking home a 43-yarder. Fairbairn and punter Tommy Townsend are working with a new long snappe this season. Rookie Austin Brinkman<\/a> is snapping after Jon Weeks moved on to the 49ers.<\/p>\n

5. Competitive Performances This game offered a chance for a lot of new names to show their stuff. New QBs Kedon Slovis and Graham Mertz threw a combined 29 times between them, and rookie RB Woody Marks rushed three times, collecting four yards. Berrios paced the new receivers with three catches but Houston’s two draft picks out of Iowa State each snagged two receptions as well. Jaylin Noel’s pair of catches for 16 yards doubled that of Jayden Higgins who pulled down two for eight yards. Rookie TE Luke Lachey also caught two for a total of two yards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"2. Strong Defensive Pressure from Pass Rush Depth The Texans’ defensive line showed good depth with multiple players…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275520,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2056],"tags":[53292,7,34,221,253,52129,2368,6,222],"class_list":{"0":"post-275519","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-texans","8":"tag-2025-pre1-stories-texans-at-vikings","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-homepage-cp","11":"tag-houston","12":"tag-houston-texans","13":"tag-houston-texans-at-minnesota-vikings-2025-pre-1","14":"tag-houstontexans","15":"tag-nfl","16":"tag-texans"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115001508871312654","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}