Texans All-Pro corner Derek Stingley Jr. at the height of his game
How Texans All-Pro corner Derek Stingley Jr. is staying on top of his game: ‘I’m a little bit quicker now’ Houston Texans cornerback Derek Stingley Jr., left, returns an interception thrown by Las Vegas Raiders quarterback Geno Smith for a touchdown during the first half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Dec. 21, 2025, in Houston.
– The instincts. The vision. The lightning-quick reactions to the football, essentially running receivers’ routes for them. During a recent organized team activity, Stingley snatched away a pass from C.J.
Stroud intended for wide receiver Jayden Higgins and returned the errant throw for a touchdown. Stingley is a huge chess piece for the Texans’ returning top-ranked defense, erasing opposing receivers as a downfield threat. A scary thought for NFL quarterbacks? Stingley is even getting better heading into his fifth NFL season and just shy of his 25th birthday.
“I feel like I’m a little bit quicker right now,” Stingley said. “I’ve just still got to work on my feet, hands, eyes. Whether that’s beginning of the route, the end of the route, I got to make sure I catch all the ones that come my way. ” Stingley, a shutdown corner in rare air financially with an annual average of $30 million annually as part of a $113 million contract, just keeps on rolling.
The former LSU star and first-round draft pick has intercepted 15 career passes, returning one for a touchdown on an acrobatic pick of Las Vegas Raiders quarterback Geno Smith last season. He has 51 passes defensed and is generally avoided by quarterbacks. At least the smart ones. For his career, Stingley has allowed just 126 completions on 254 targets for a 49.6 completion percentage on throws in his direction and a 55.1 passer rating.
“What I’ve seen from Stingley this year is, he comes out and he’s as consistent as ever,” Texans coach DeMeco Ryans said. “He’s in mid-year form already here in May and June. “He’s making big-time plays, as we’ve all seen him make. He’s doing a great job in coverage, being sticky, being exactly where he needs to be.
”One year after allowing the fewest yards in the NFL and ranking second in scoring defense, the Texans have added former Philadelphia Eagles safety Reed Blankenship to an absolutely loaded secondary that includes Stingley, Pro Bowl corner Kamari Lassiter, Pro Bowl safety Calen Bullock and hard-hitting nickel Jalen Pitre.
“As soon as he stepped out there, he meshed well with everybody,” Stingley said of Blankenship, a former Eagles team captain for a Super Bowl champion. “He’s out there communicating, he knows how to converse with everybody off the field, nothing’s forced, he’s being himself, and I think he going to make a lot of plays just like he’s been doing everywhere else he’s been. ..
“As a team, I feel like we just got to keep stacking on defense, make sure we got communication. I know we got a couple of new pieces, but they just stepped up since we’ve been out here on the field, they just stepped up, kept doing work to the level that they should be at. ” Stingley is the only cornerback in franchise history to earn Associated Press first team All-Pro honors.
Stingley attributed his growth as a player to the coaching and example established by his father and namesake. Now, Stingley is a father, too. Stingley and his fiancee celebrated the birth of a boy. His name is Derek Stingley III.
“I know I’m playing for my son,” Stingley said. “It’s crazy, I don’t know how to explain it. It’s just crazy. ”“That I’m somewhat as good as my dad, like, in a sense of being a dad,” Stingley said.
“That’s it. ” On the field, Stingley is avoided for the most part because of his rare coverage skills and penchant for intercepting passes. He recorded 36 tackles, 15 passes defensed and four interceptions last season for a defense that finished the season ranked first in the NFL in total yards allowed per game , second in points allowed per game and allowed the league’s third-lowest passer rating .
He is the only cornerback in the NFL to record at least four interceptions in each of the previous three seasons. Stingley returned his first interception for a touchdown against the Raiders and forced a fumble. He led all cornerback ballots with 130 votes in the All-Pro selection process.
“He can do anything he wants to do,” Pitre said. “He’s the best cornerback in the league. He could play receiver. I don’t know if y’all have seen him on a juke, but he could play running back.
And I know y’all haven’t seen him at practice, but he also could play quarterback. There’s nothing he can’t do. ” During the off-season, the Texans executed a simple conversion of his originally scheduled $21.595 million base salary into a $20.38 million signing bonus. His new salary-cap figure is down to $10.791 million from $27.095 million.
The total savings is $16.304 million. A voidable year in 2030 was added. His salary cap figure for 2027 is $29.576 million, $30.576 million in 2028, and $31.576 million in 2029.
“One thing I’m most proud of, and this is our entire group, when you see a young guy make a play, one of our young corners, they make a play, bat a ball down, like to see the excitement from Sting, Kamari on the sideline of them encouraging the young guys with the plays they’re making,” Ryans said. “That’s what I’m most excited to see. ”A lot of it has to do with camaraderie.
Some of it has to do with scheme.
“The simple fact that we want to see each other make plays and win every single rep,” Stingley said. “We know how to talk to each other, so if something’s going wrong, we’re not going to get on each other. If something happens out there, we know how to fix it, or we know what happened. ”“No, I don’t think thinks about last year,” Stingley said.
“You’re trying to go out there and be the best every single snap in practice, in the game. Nah, I am not worried about that. ”Aaron Wilson is an award-winning Texans and NFL reporter for KPRC 2 and www.click2houston.com. He has covered the NFL since 1997, including previous stints for The Houston Chronicle and The Baltimore Sun.
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