The Houston Texans are making a significant change ahead of their Week 5 matchup with the Tennessee Titans, the first of two AFC South meetings between the teams.

Texans coach DeMeco Ryans announced at his Wednesday podium availability that he is taking defensive play-calling duties back from defensive coordinator Matt Burke. Burke had called the defense for a little over a year.

The timing is… curious! This is the exact opposite of the move Houston made around this time last season. The Texans were winless then, just like they are now, and they were about to play the Titans for the first time, just like they are now. That switch kicked off a historic run back into the playoff picture. What will the switch back do for them?

How Houston’s last play-calling switch flipped its season

Ryans was hired in large part because of his defensive background. He’s a former NFL linebacker, and his rise as a head coach was built on what he did for the defenses he oversaw. So it raised some eyebrows last season when the Texans started 0-3 and Ryans handed off play-calling to Burke in Week 3 under what I’d call somewhat dubious circumstances.

Titans fans will remember that Brian Callahan did the same thing on the offensive side of the ball that same week last season. The thing about moves like these is that it’s always wise to be a little suspicious of whether a coach made that call under duress. Coaches don’t like giving up their play-calling power. Period. When it happens that early in a season with an 0-3 record, you can’t help but wonder whether upper management or ownership pushed (or even forced) the decision.

Whatever the reason, it worked for Houston. The Texans blanked the Titans 26-0 in their first game with Burke calling the defense. From there, they clawed their way back in historic fashion. They didn’t just sneak into the playoff picture, they made the playoffs and won a playoff game. Houston finished 2025 with the No. 1 scoring defense in the NFL and won 12 of its 14 games after the switch.

Flash forward to this season. The Texans are 0-4 with Burke still calling the defense, and Ryans is taking the keys right back before Titans Week Pt. 1. He’s trying to pull off the same trick in reverse, and once again the Titans are first in line.

Robert Saleh’s history with DeMeco Ryans

There’s another layer to this one. The Titans are now coached by Robert Saleh, an old friend of Ryans. Ryans coached under Saleh in San Francisco not too long ago, before Saleh landed his first head coaching job with the New York Jets and Ryans got his in Houston.

At his Wednesday availability in Nashville, Saleh shared a quick story about Ryans from his days as a quality control coach with the 49ers. Here’s what Saleh said:

DeMeco is unique. DeMeco is very, very bright. I think DeMeco’s ‘aha’ moment, and I don’t know if it was, you’d have to ask him, but But when he was a QC, just a quick story, he was trying to coach. One of the biggest things that former players have, the biggest issues when they get into coaching, is they struggle to kind of find their niche. And DeMeco comes in one day and is like, ‘Rob, I’m trying to teach this dude run block destruction and all that. And I said, Meek, the first thing you have to understand in coaching is that not all of them are you.’ And DeMeco is an All-Pro linebacker. I mean, just beat the daylights out of people. So I said, you’ve got to give him a toolbox. And as a coach, you take the toolbox and you give him— you watch him, you watch him use all of those tools, and then you narrow it down to what works for him. And I think DeMeco has really taken his knowledge as a football player along with his knowledge on how to be a teacher and how to develop each kid and turned into a pretty damn good football coach.

That’s high praise from a coach who knows Ryans’ defensive mind as well as anybody in the league. And it’s not hard to connect the dots on why Ryans believes he’s the right man to call this defense when things go sideways.

Both teams come into this game at 0-4. Houston is betting that a big switch on defense lights a spark the same way it did last year, in an eerily similar spot. It’s an ironic twist, to say the least.

If Ryans retaking the defense works out for the Texans the way Burke taking it over did just over a year ago, it’ll be painfully ironic for the Titans to be on the wrong end of it again.