Jordan emerges in passing game
Rookie tight end applies lessons from vets to make his mark in his first four games
The Jets rushed seven. Unstable protection by the Texans caved quickly. Tyrod Taylor flicked the football forward and was absorbed by a pile of pads.
There was no time to throw where the play initially was designed. No space for Taylor to take another breath and let Nico Collins finish his route from the outside in. The 6-1 quarterback could only lob a prayer toward a rookie tight end who’s steadily becoming a trusty target for a rebuilding franchise.
Brevin Jordan hadn’t yet curled his hitch when the third-down pass was airborne. Ball met chest at the Jets 5, and Jordan pivoted past a fallen defensive back and plunged into the end zone for a 13yard score.
“Tyrod just really took a blind faith on me and threw the ball to a spot where I was going to be,” Jordan said.
There are glimpses of promise amid the mounting losses by the Texans (2-9), snapshots that will be filed away and remembered when (and if ) they’re reflected in future moments in more consequential settings.
Jordan’s second career touchdown catch wasn’t a game-winner. It merely gave the Texans a fleeting 7-3 lead over another 2-8 team that eventually overtook them when familiar fatal flaws emerged in another second-half meltdown. But the former fifthrounder out of Miami showed progress in his fourth game.
That’s because the Dolphins rushed seven defenders, too. That blitz-happy defense harassed the Texans in their touchdownless 17-9 loss in early November, irritating Taylor into completing just 10 of 22 passes for 143 yards and two interceptions when it rushed five or more.
There was no successful answer to Miami’s “zero blitzes,”
those heavy pass rushes that sell out for sacks with minimal man-on-man coverage providing insurance downfield. But when the Jets rushed seven on Sunday, leaving just four defensive backs to cover four Texans receivers, Jordan sensed the space in the middle of the field and gave Taylor disaster relief.
“He learned from it from the previous couple of weeks, made a play on it and got us a touchdown,” Texans coach David Culley said. “That’s just from him playing and those guys doing their thing and getting a feel for what we are doing.”
It’s plays like these that reveal how Jordan gradually is blossoming into the allaround tight end the Texans hoped he’d become. General manager Nick Caserio was impressed enough with Jordan’s threeyear college career at Miami (105 catches, 1,358 yards, 13 touchdowns) that he spent a fifth-round pick on a tight end despite the team’s surplus at the position.
Caserio said the selection was less about depth and more about “trying to add good football players to your team,” and for the season’s first seven games, the depth at tight end allowed Jordan to fine-tune his technique, bulk up to 250 pounds and prepare mentally for his transition to the NFL.
Although Jordan always was on the team’s 53-man roster, the Texans kept him inactive until starter Pharaoh Brown was sidelined with a thigh injury in Week 8 against the Rams. Jordan got the call-up and caught three passes for 41 yards and scored a late touchdown in Houston’s 38-22 loss. He said he benefited from spending the first few months watching veterans Brown, Jordan Akins, Antony Auclair and practice squad addition Paul Quessenberry.
“I had to learn how to be a pro,” Jordan said. “And once I got my feet wet and learned what it takes to last in this league a long time, I was ready to go. The Texans saw it, the staff saw it, so they’re just letting me loose.”
The Texans, in a tangible sense, have adapted the way they play on offense by using Jordan more frequently. The coaching staff knew his pass-catching prowess gave him potential as a one-on-one matchup winner, and his progress as a blocker allowed Culley and offensive coordinator Tim Kelly to lean more on personnel packages that featured the rookie after they re-evaluated their struggling offense during the open week.
Coming out of the open week, the Texans deployed their 12 personnel packages (one running back, two tight ends and two wide receivers) a season-high 54 percent of the time against the Titans, according to Sharp Football Stats, and 36 percent of the time against the Jets, also significantly higher than Houston’s average usage of the package in 2021 (28 percent).
The two-tight-end package was partly used in runoriented situations featuring Brown and Auclair as blockers against the Titans; but the Texans also subbed Jordan in for a receiver against the Jets on a drivestarting screen pass that was negated because of a penalty because the coaching staff felt he gave them a favorable matchup.
Jordan also replaced Akins as Houston’s favored
tight end in their 11 personnel packages (one running back, one tight end and three wideouts). Taylor targeted Jordan three times against the Titans in thirddown situations, and, although Jordan caught just one pass for 7 yards on those attempts, he held on to the same role against the Jets and caught two passes, including his touchdown, both out of 11 personnel as the featured tight end.
In all, it’s part of a notably different offensive strategy than how the Texans began the season. Culley said the team’s 13 personnel package (one running back, three tight ends and one receiver) was the “best personnel on our football team offensively,” after their Week 1 win over the Jaguars. The run-heavy package represented the run-oriented philosophy Culley wanted to install in Houston. But, since then, the offense has needed to adapt while its plodding run game ranks last in the NFL with 3.2 yards per carry.
The Texans have almost completely stopped using 13 personnel. After using the package 36 times in the first six games, the Texans didn’t use it at all against the Cardinals, Dolphins and Titans and deployed it on just one snap against both the Rams and the Jets.
“I think it’s worked better for us,” Culley said. “Having Brevin in there right now, it changes things a little bit. It gives us a little bit more versatility in the pass game, so we’ve just kind of moved in that direction.”