Inside: Dane Brugler ranks the 2027 draft class, the Texans as a legitimate contender and there’s a newly troubling CTE report.This article is from The Athletic’s NFL newsletter. Sign up here to receive it directly in your inbox. It’s free to subscribe. 2026 Texans: This year’s Seattle? Last August, I wondered if the Seahawks were quietly fielding a Super Bowl contender. They were.The Seahawks had an elite defense that just needed its offense to take a step. The latter group, led by Klint Kubiak and Sam Darnold, was intent on establishing the run behind a new-look line.In other words, they looked similar to this year’s Texans. Seattle wouldn’t have won last year’s Super Bowl without a dramatic improvement from its offensive line, which was one of the league’s worst units in 2024.The line became unsung heroes, as Kubiak’s linemen-friendly system paired with a new position coach and first-round guard Grey Zabel to give Seattle one of the league’s top units.The Texans’ line needs a similar jump. “If the Texans’ offensive front can become an average unit that moves people off the line of scrimmage in the run game, Stroud would get the most help he’s had,” Ted Nguyen noted in his story on Houston’s league-winning potential. “If the offense is even average, the Texans are bona fide Super Bowl contenders.”Don’t be fooled by those sack numbers. Houston is not starting at a better place than last year’s Seahawks were.That’s because it wasn’t good protection that allowed C.J. Stroud to avoid sacks. His line ranked 30th in pass-block win rate (which measures how often linemen sustain blocks for 2.5 seconds or longer). That forced him to get the ball out quickly. Only two teams had more throws in under 2.5 seconds than Houston did.Houston’s run game was meanwhile non-existent. That line had the league’s worst run-block win rate, and Stroud faced second-and-longs and third-and-longs more often than all but two quarterbacks.The Texans made offseason changes, quietly: