Houston Texans Reward Jalen Pitre With Three Year, $39 Million Contract Extension

If you’re a Houston Texans looking to get a contract extension sometime in the future, the recipe has become pretty clear over the last year or so — come in, keep your head down, work hard, be a good teammate, be low maintenance, and most importantly, do your job well on Sundays, and you will be rewarded.

Nico Collins found that out last May, when the team rewarded him with a three-year extension. Derek Stingley, Jr. found that out in March, and Danielle Hunter, too, learned that first hand, shortly after Stingley, when each of them signed big deals for new money. Well, go ahead and add safety Jalen Pitre to the list of Houston Texans who will be here for at least the next few years.

On Friday, as first reported by Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network, the Texans and Pitre agreed to a three-year, $39 million contract extension:

The three years of this new deal will be tacked onto the final year of Pitre’s rookie deal, in which he is set to make around $3.6 million, so effectively, Pitre now had a four year, $42.6 million contract, which works out to a little over $10.5 million per year.

Coming up with an accurate target annual value for a Pitre deal is tricky, because he plays such a unique position. After playing two seasons of safety very inconsistently in 2022 and 2023, Pitre was moved to a hybrid position in 2024, where he was part slot cornerback and part box linebacker. As the 2024 season wore on, Pitre made more and more impact plays, until his season was cut short by a torn pectoral muscle in Week 12.

Here are some further thoughts on what will likely be the last contract extension for an existing Texan this offseason:

Pitre’s extension should come as no surprise to anyone who listens to me and Seth Payne on the radio
I’ll let my cohost Seth Payne take over this bullet point, via his Twitter account:

The bottom line is that the Texans have loved everything about “Pitre the leader” and “Pitre the teammate” since he set foot in NRG Stadium in 2022. The play of “Pitre the safety” was tougher to get high level excited about. However, the Pitre’s on-field performance caught up to his off-field ethos in 2024, and here we are.

Pitre’s coverage troubles may be a tad overblown
In changing positions in 2024, Pitre took to certain parts of it like a fish to water. When it came to making impact plays in the backfield or making stops in the run game, Pitre played his new spot like he was raised to do so from his Pop Warner days in Stafford. However, Pitre had rough moments in coverage. (People had a tough time getting the image of Davante Adams scorching Pitre on Thursday Night Football.) However, I’ll credit Cody Johnson with this breakdown, which shows that Pitre’s bad coverage was essentially confined to three games, and in the other nine games in which he played, Pitre did so at a high level:

This notion is not to excuse Pitre from his bad performances, but merely to point out that he should become more comfortable in his second season playing his new position, and it would seem logical that it looks a lot more like the nine good games than the three poor ones.

Holy smokes, this secondary!
Three years ago, the Texans didn’t have a single position group that you could say was even remotely average. They were a bottomed-out mess of a roster, and needed heaping helpings of players at every position. Now, if you’re looking for the position group that is the most fully “rebuilt,” on a team that is a very solid overall squad, the secondary shines the brightest, With Pitre’s extension, here are the key players in the secondary, along with the duration for which the Texans control them contractually:

CB Derek Stingley, Jr., under contract through 2029
S Jalen Pitre, under contract through 2028
CB Kamari Lassiter, under contract through 2027
S Calen Bullock, under contract through 2027
S C.J. Gardner-Johnson, under contract through 2026

That’s strong, and unless they see a cornerback they really, REALLY like in the draft, I would expect that they will be fortifying other position groups on the first two days of the draft next week.