Nico Collins Camp Update — August 23: Testing the Raiders All Session
2026 NFL Season · Sunday, Aug 23
Nico Collins spent the joint practice attacking the Raiders' secondary with C.J. Stroud, per the Raiders' own site, and drew one of Stroud's best throws again on Saturday. He also became the only returning starter left in his receiver room.
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When Houston's starters finally faced another defense, Nico Collins was the one testing it. The Raiders' own team site — Levi Edwards, in its joint-practice notebook — described C.J. Stroud and Collins going at the Las Vegas secondary throughout Tuesday's session, and Jared Koch at Texans On SI charted Collins catching a completion of 10-plus yards from Stroud on the day. Saturday's practice added the same note it always adds: Cody Stoots at HouFootball dot com called a Stroud sideline throw to Collins a beautiful toss. Week after week, the best throw in the practice file keeps landing in the same hands.
The week's real Collins story, though, happened to someone else. Jayden Higgins, the second-year receiver who starts opposite him, tore his ACL in that same joint practice, first reported by Ian Rapoport at NFL Network, and is out for the season. Houston signed veterans Zay Jones and Sterling Shepard on Saturday, per the club's transaction report, and per Nick Shook at NFL dot com the rest of the room is Xavier Hutchinson, Jaylin Noel, and Justin Watson. The June read said Collins himself was the settled part of this offense — three straight years as the clear number-one target — and the variables were all situational. One of those variables just moved: whatever coverage attention Higgins was going to absorb now has no obvious home, and the target concentration that made Collins' profile so steady has even less competition than June imagined.
He had no attributed line in Thursday's game against the Raiders, when most starters rested after the joint practice, per Koch.
Next week: the Carolina joint practice and Friday's finale — watch whether Stroud's first look keeps finding Collins against a third unfamiliar defense — then cutdown on Sunday settles who is actually behind him. We'll check after cut day.
_Data via nflverse._
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