Dalton Schultz Camp Update — August 23: A Touchdown in the Joint Practice

Dalton Schultz caught a touchdown from C.J. Stroud in Tuesday's joint practice against the Raiders — one of two scoring throws Stroud delivered on the day, per Jared Koch at Texans On SI. On Saturday he was in the practice file again: Cody Stoots at HouFootball dot com charted a perfectly placed strike from Stroud to Schultz. After a week of total silence, that is two attributed connections with the starting quarterback in five days, both in the kind of work that counts.

The June read on Schultz was that the target volume was the whole argument — he led Houston with 82 catches on a hundred six targets last season — and the risk was never his game but the crowd forming around it: Tank Dell returning, rookie tight end Marlin Klein arriving, Jayden Higgins promoted to the number-two receiver job. This week the crowd thinned, and not in a way anyone wanted. Higgins tore his ACL in that same Tuesday practice, first reported by Ian Rapoport at NFL Network, and went on injured reserve Friday; Houston's answer was to sign veterans Zay Jones and Sterling Shepard on Saturday, per the club's transaction report. A hundred-plus targets that were going to be contested by a rising second-year receiver will now be contested by two late-August street signings. Nobody should celebrate an injury, and this episode won't — but the target math that shapes Schultz's season moved this week, and it moved toward him.

The game itself offered no Schultz evidence: he had no attributed line in Thursday's 22 to 20 loss to the Raiders, in which most starters rested after the joint practice, per Koch.

Next week: the joint practice with Carolina and Friday's finale — watch where Schultz sits in the route rotation when the starters work — and then cutdown on Sunday, when the receiver-room survivors define the real competition for targets. We'll check after cut day.

_Data via nflverse._