Woody Marks Camp Update — August 23: A Twenty-Yard Touchdown Run

Woody Marks scored on a 20-yard run against the Raiders on Thursday, finishing with four carries for 37 yards plus a catch for eight, per Jared Koch at Texans On SI, who named him one of the game's winners. Two days earlier he had caught a touchdown pass from C.J. Stroud in the joint practice against Las Vegas, also per Koch, and by Saturday Cody Stoots at HouFootball dot com was charting him catching passes in practice again. That is a full week: a score as a runner, a score as a receiver from the starting quarterback, and steady work in between.

Frame the game honestly. The Raiders sat Kirk Cousins, Maxx Crosby, Ashton Jeanty, and Brock Bowers, per the CBS Sports box score, and Houston lost 22 to 20 on a last-minute drive against its reserves, so the touchdown came in August company. But the joint-practice touchdown came in first-team work against another club's defense, and the June read said the passing-down connection with Stroud was the half of this backfield worth having. This week produced the receiving evidence and an explosive run besides — the yards-per-carry doubt was always the asterisk on his rookie year, and a 20-yard burst is the kind of rep that argues against it, one carry at a time.

The room also tilted toward him at the margins: by Saturday the healthy backfield was down to David Montgomery, Marks, and one other back, with Noah Whittington, British Brooks, and Jawhar Jordan sidelined, per Stoots, and Whittington's nine carries for 11 yards in the game did not press the case from below, per Koch.

Next week: the Carolina joint practice and Friday's finale — watch the third-down and two-minute packages, the job June said was his path — and then Sunday's cut to 53, which decides how many backs Houston keeps behind the tandem. We'll check after cut day.

_Data via nflverse._