Joe Mixon's prolonged foot injury is expected to cost him the entire 2025 season.
The Houston Texans running back will remain on the team's non-football injury list through the regular season, which will sideline him the rest of the campaign, NFL Network Insider Ian Rapoport reported on Thursday.
The Texans (5-5), who play Thursday night against the Buffalo Bills (7-3), will move forward with veteran Nick Chubb and rookie Woody Marks.
News of Mixon's foot ailment first surfaced over the summer, sending him to the team's non-football injury list before the start of the regular season and disrupting the Texans' intentions with their backfield. At first, the hope was Mixon would return at some point during the 2025 season, restoring Houston's leading rusher from 2024 to an offense that has since proven it could certainly use him.
Instead, the Texans have been forced to lean on Chubb -- a veteran with his own lengthy injury history -- and Marks, splitting carries evenly (99 each) through 10 weeks.
Houston initially signed Chubb in June to fill a secondary role behind Mixon and drafted Marks, a USC product, in the fourth round with the hopes he could be a spell back and long-term developmental option. Without Mixon, the two have been called into more significant action, producing a rushing attack that is averaging 107.6 yards per game but ranks 23rd in the NFL.
Mixon's absence has been felt throughout the Texans' offense in 2025, a unit that has struggled mightily for significant stretches with an offensive line that is still settling in and has proven inconsistent for most of the campaign. C.J. Stroud, who will miss Thursday's game due to a concussion, has appeared all but doomed at times in this offense, and while the Texans have won three of their last four games to improve to 5-5, it has undoubtedly been laborious.
If Mixon cannot play at all in 2025, it's fair to wonder whether we've already seen the last of him in the NFL. The 29-year-old was productive in his first season with Houston in 2024 -- a marriage made possible only by Cincinnati's financially motivated decision to part with the former Bengals bell cow after seven seasons -- but battled multiple ankle injuries throughout the year, limiting him to 14 games.
Houston signed Mixon to a two-year extension shortly after trading a seventh-round pick to the Bengals for the running back in March of 2024, setting up what should have been a multi-year partnership intended to provide Stroud with a reliable weapon in the running and passing game. Now, it seems as if that deal might never see its end. The Texans can save $8.5 million in cap space -- more than 80 percent of his $10.5 million cap number for 2026 -- by releasing Mixon after the start of the 2026 league year.
If Mixon indeed misses all of 2025 and isn't in Houston's plans entering 2026, it would be easy for the Texans to move on from him.
Such a decision would also cast doubt on whether another team would be interested in a back with 1,816 carries on his odometer and multiple foot-related injuries in the last two years as he approaches his 30th birthday.
For now, the Texans will proceed as they have for all of the 2025 season with Chubb and Marks as their top two options. We'll see if Mixon ever becomes one for them again.
