It’s been quite a year for Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair. The low point came after a three-game suspension in December 2024 for a hit delivered to Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence, sparking a brawl. The high point came this week, when Al-Shaair signed a three-year extension with an average of $18 million per year.
Al-Shaair addressed the differences between the low point and the high point in the press conference announcing his new contract.
“I think, when I reflect back to that time, it was a really challenging time in my life just trying to navigate through how I could be in a situation where people are attacking me as a man, my character for something that I did on the football field that happens in a split second,” Al-Shaair told reporters. “People get into car accidents and it’s like, ‘You’re at fault, you’re at fault. Oh, it happened so fast.’ That’s what football is, it’s split-second decisions. I worked my butt off for six years up to that point to even get myself in that position, to be here, to be a Texan and to be the leader of a defense. When all that stuff went down, to see the way people were talking about me as a person and as a player, it hurt because I just felt like everything kind of came crumbling down and it wasn’t a reflection of who I see myself as or who I try to be.
“To see, truthfully, how broken I was because I was truly broken. My heart was broken; my mother could tell you. Everybody who is here that I interacted with could tell you, I was in an extremely, extremely low, dark place.
“I think it’s crazy because some of the people that I leaned in on the most were people that I had to work with every single day. The trainers and the staff, just to get back. I think the conversations that I had on a daily basis with people just pouring into me, I needed it way more than they know. A lot of the people in this building poured into me and their job description might have been strength coach, or it might have been athletic trainer or rehab guy. I was dealing with an injury. I was dealing with all the off-the-field stuff and the stuff with the Trevor Lawrence stuff and the suspension and all of it, and people pretty much going for my character. I really leaned in on all these other people who did more than their job required them to do to try to make sure I was in a good place mentally. I’m so just grateful.”
After he returned from the suspension, Al-Shaair said he questioned whether he could continue his career.
“It was hard for me to see myself playing football again,” Al-Shaair told reporters in January 2025. “I really had a moment of, there’s no way I can go out and play football again if this is how people that I work with view me.”
The Texans obviously don’t view him that way. He’s a key player on the best defense in the NFL. And the Texans reconfirmed their faith in him by ripping up the final year of his existing contract and replacing it with a four-year deal that will keep him in Houston.
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