Cashing Out | August 19, 2026 | Hour 2

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
This is Cashing Out with your host, Dustin Swedelson on VSiN, The Sports Betting Network.

**Dustin Swedelson** (0:10)
Coming at you from the Circus Sportsbook in downtown Las Vegas, I'm Dustin Swedelson, and I'll be with you all night long on VSiN, The Sports Betting Network. You can always catch the show on SiriusXM Channel 158, YouTube TV, the VSiN Watch app and radio affiliates across the United States of God Bless America. We've got preseason football here, people. It is happening tonight, week two, Niners and the Chargers and then the precursor, the Raiders and the Texans to help us talk about Houston, not just for this one game, the season where they're the favorites to win the AFC South with a quarterback in a pivotal contract year facing an injury to a guy that a lot of people projected to have a monster season in Jayden Higgins. We're going out to Progressive Guestline, welcoming in one of my favorites. He's Cole Thompson. Check him out at the Texans Wire, also SEC Unfiltered Podcast at Mr. Cole Thompson on X. And he joins us live from Houston. Buddy, thanks for doing this as always. And when you saw the news earlier today, Jayden Higgins going down with the ACL done for the year.
How devastating was that for this offense for Houston?

**Cole Thompson** (1:16)
Yeah, so I actually got to see the play happen live in person, and you knew pretty instantaneously this is not good. Now, the thought was, OK, he's gonna miss a little bit of time, maybe not be good for week one. But to tear your ACL in a crucial year, where right now the wide receiver room is already a weak point for the Texans, this is massive. And Texans fans will sit here and say, well, we still got 12 wins last year, we'll figure it out like we always do. No, no, no, no, no, no.
That's not what you want to hear. What you want to hear is that you are good enough to replace a guy like Jayden Higgins, and not miss a beat on route to becoming an AFC contender, a legitimate one that can go to the conference championship for the first time in franchise history. Right now, the Texans don't have that playmaker outside of Nico Collins, a wide receiver. They really like what they got in the tight end position with Dalton Schultz. They feel really confident about the emergence of tight end rookie, Marlon Klein inside that can do a lot of the receiving aspect of things. But that receiver spot is so detrimental, Dustin, because they're already dealing with the pink Dell news of everything. On top of that, Jaden Jalen-Knoll, the third round pick from Iowa State last season, has missed the entire start of training camp due to a finger issue, and then also hamstring tightness. Going into tomorrow's preseason game, where starters are expected to seldomly play, and if they do play, it will be for only one series. You have Nico Collins, Xavier Hutchinson, and sixth round rookie Lewis Bond, more than likely being your starters. If not him, now you got to go turn to undrafted free agent Jared Wayne, who has been on this roster for four years and has never made the active roster on a permanent basis. It is a major downfall. It's not a deciding factor that will completely derail the Houston Texans opportunity of being the representatives of the AFC, but it ain't looking that pretty, man. I'm not gonna lie to you.

**Dustin Swedelson** (3:05)
Okay, but this is also an offense that can't afford it, Cole. When you look at what's gone down the last couple of years, the regression of CJ Stroud on this offense, they tried to blame Bobby Slawick, he left and it kind of went the same way last year.
What would you put your finger on as the reason why this Houston Texans offense has taken such a big step back?

**Cole Thompson** (3:26)
There's a couple of things. I think the first one was last season, they had a lackluster run game and that's a major element of a Nick Kaley offense that needs to be implemented.
I don't think that Kaley was in the best position to be successful last year working alongside with CJ Stroud. So you went out this off-season, brought in a more physical bruising running back in David Montgomery to hopefully get you to live in situations of second and four, a third and one that will allow you to open up the playbook a lot more. The other thing is that they needed to get run blockers. They had very little success in the rushing department, not just because of the backfield, but also because of what they had in the trenches. So they go out, they re-sign Ed Ingram, who was their best run blocker a season ago. They bring in Keelan Rutledge from Georgia Tech. That guy is an absolute animal who is going to murder somebody on the football field. I'm not joking on that. He literally picks a fight every single day. They go bring in Wyatt Teller, they go bring in Braden Smith, two of the more high-profile run-oriented offensive linemen in the NFL. So there's now an identity with this offense, but the main thing it comes back to is CJ Stroud. There were times last year where Stroud looked comfortable running the offense. Now, it wasn't perfect, but he was delivering clean strikes, he was finding open avenues, he wasn't rushing through his progression.