Jake Andrews came to the Houston Texans as an offseason waiver claim after playing 70 offensive snaps in two seasons with the New England Patriots. In the first round of the NFL playoffs on Monday, the former Stanhope Elmore High School and Troy standout will make his 17th straight start at center for the Texans.
Houston will take a nine-game winning streak to Pittsburgh, where it will play the Steelers at 7 p.m. CST Monday at Acrisure Stadium in the final game of the NFL’s Wild-Card Weekend.
“Hopefully, we can make it a 13-game winning streak or whatever it ends up being,” Andrews told Aaron Wilson of KPRC-TV. “I’m really excited. Obviously, I’ve never had an opportunity to be in the playoffs. So, yeah, I’m just taking it like a regular game. It’s not a regular game, obviously. We all know what’s at stake, but just going to prepare the same way and try to go up to Pittsburgh and execute and get us a ‘W’ and go on to the next one. …
“I think anything’s possible. We just got to continue to execute the simple stuff. Execute, keep our heads on straight, never too high, never too low. We like to say up front: One play, one life. Give credit to my boy (offensive lineman Jarrett Patterson) on that one. That’s one of my favorites. I like to steal from him. So I think us five up front, like, we’re going to do what we can. We’re going to execute as much as we can and hoping the ball goes our way and we get to make a little run here.”
The Pittsburgh defense recorded 48 sacks, the third-most in the AFC, during the regular season and will face a Houston offensive line that has undergone many variations during 2025. Another former Alabama high school standout, former Monroe County quarterback Tytus Howard, has spread his 16 starts across three positions and should be at right tackle against the Steelers.
“It’s going to take all five of us up front to really execute and be on the same page all week long,” Andrews said. “They’re all really good players. I don’t know if we have faced a front that’s going to be as good and play as hard as these guys have all season.”
A 2017 All-State selection at Stanhope Elmore in Millbrook, Andrews earned All-Sun Belt recognition in 2022 with Troy, where he played center and guard in five seasons with the Trojans.
A fourth-round selection of New England in the 2023 NFL Draft, Andrews played in 16 games, with one start, as a rookie. At his second NFL training camp, Andrews sustained a meniscus injury and went on season-ending injured reserve on Aug. 5, 2024. He joined the Texans on April 29 after being waived by the Patriots.
Andrews rated his first season as an NFL starter as “not bad.”
“Jake has done a good job of setting the table when it comes to the protections, the Mike points, IDing up front,” Houston coach DeMeco Ryans said on Monday. “He’s done a good job of communicating, which is what we need. We need a guy up front who is loud, can communicate, make sure everybody’s on the same page, and Jake has done that for us.”
Like Andrews and Howard, Ryans was an Alabama prep standout, playing at Jess Lanier in Bessemer.
There are 24 players from Alabama high schools on the active rosters of the NFL playoff teams, including two from Spain Park – Carolina Panthers cornerback Mike Jackson and Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Nick Mullens.
Like Andrews, Howard and Ryans also are former college stars in the state – Howard at Alabama State and Ryans at Alabama.
On the active rosters of the postseason teams, there are 34 players from Alabama, 15 from Auburn, five from Troy, two apiece from Jacksonville State, South Alabama and UAB and one from Alabama State.
