By any measure, the Houston Roughnecks’ 2024 season fell short of expectations. At 1-9, they were by record, the worst team in the UFL. Though head coach Curtis Johnson and much of his coaching staff remain for 2025, there’s a new general manager in Will Lewis and a very different-looking roster. Fewer than one-third of the players in training camp were on the team last year.
That’s by design. Johnson and Lewis had three goals in adding new faces: Get younger, healthier, and faster. “We were a little bit old last year, and (dealt with) a ton of injuries,” said Johnson recently at his first media availability of the season. “Just too many injuries. And so these guys look like they’re in much better shape. They can run fast. It’s a faster team…we got a couple of big guys, they look good, but defensively, it’s a lot more speed.” Houston’s youth movement led to them bringing six of their 10 College Draft picks to training camp, the most among UFL teams.
Houston struggled with injuries, leading to significant missed time for potential difference-makers like RB Kirk Merritt (called “one of the best players we have” by Johnson), LB Reuben Foster and DT Olive Sagapolu. According to Johnson, the trade of CB Kiondre Thomas to the D.C. Defenders for QB Jalan McClendon was due, in part, to Thomas’s inability to stay healthy.
Tasked with the objective of getting younger and faster was Lewis, a longtime former personnel man in the NFL. “I like the changes Will Lewis brought,” said Johnson. “He’s a spring league guy. So he knows how to make a spring league roster.” Lewis was most recently the Director of Player Personnel with the San Antonio Brahmas in the XFL in 2023, but has also worked on the personnel side with teams in the Alliance of American Football in 2019 and XFL 2020.
While a new GM joined Houston, the fourth the team has had in four years since the relaunch of the USFL in 2022, Johnson kept much of the coaching staff intact. “I don’t really think, for the first year as a team…that you can really, really assess the coaches,” Johnson said. “Then all the injuries…I looked at two years ago when we were in the USFL, I didn’t feel we had a very good roster at all. And we won five games.
“I think the coaching was good, I think we just had to change the culture a little bit. I didn’t think it was coaching. We had seven games where…they were close at the end. In this league, I don’t think you need to blow the thing up unless it was necessary. If we were getting blown out, blown out, blown out, I probably wouldn’t have a job. But I think we’re smart enough to figure out, this is what we have to do, this is how we have to do it. And I think I have the right guys.”
One addition Johnson did make to the coaching staff was to bring aboard former NFL head coach and offensive line guru Tom Cable as the team’s run game coordinator. A weakness of the team last year was the offensive line, a group Cable, the college roommate of Johnson at San Diego State, is in charge of upgrading. “(Cable) has his fingerprint on every one of the offensive linemen,” said Johnson. “We’re bigger and we’re fitter. I trust what he’s doing. I think one of the problems a year ago, everybody was small (on the offensive line). And man, you get knocked around enough, we kind of gave up, kind of quit.
“The offensive line I thought, a year ago, not to say the coaching was bad, I just felt that was one position we really needed a change in the building.” Cable replaces Bob Connelly in leading the offensive line. Connelly lasted just one year on the job in Houston, and was the only staff change made by Johnson in the off-season.
While the coaches return, the roster looks significantly different. One of the higher-profile additions is CB Damon Arnette, a former first-round NFL Draft pick of the Oakland Raiders in 2020 who has been out of football for almost four years. Johnson noted he wanted to bring Arnette in last year, but UFL Executive Vice President of Football Operations Daryl Johnston asked him to wait a year due to Arnette’s various legal entanglements, the latest of which took place in January of 2024.
One group that has experienced significant turnover is at quarterback, where only Nolan Henderson returns. The team also added McClendon and Anthony Brown. After the first week of practices, Johnson noted that no one had yet pulled ahead in the race for starter. “I really like these quarterbacks, their demeanor, their approach to the game,” Johnson said. “They’re doing a really, really good job.
McClendon has a big arm, great arm talent, knows what to do with the ball. I don’t see him as much of a runner as I anticipated when he was with the Defenders. Lot of poise, lot of leadership.” The addition of McClendon spoke to a desire Johnson had to get the QB room more established. He was impressed with the way McClendon led D.C.’s offense in limited action last year.
“Nolan’s a little bit of everything,” Johnson said of Henderson. “Little bit of Drew Brees, little bit of run (ability), very good touch on the ball. So he’s playing very, very well.” Johnson indicated that while Henderson’s experience in the offense gives him a leg up in some ways over the others, it’s not enough to automatically put him in position to start.
Originally an undrafted free agent of the Baltimore Ravens in 2022 out of Oregon, Brown was most recently on the Buffalo Bills’ practice squad, playing the role of scout team QB to emulate Lamar Jackson prior to Buffalo’s playoff game against the Ravens. “I love Brown,” said Johnson. “He’s very, very smart, always talking through the situation…He can run, he can throw it. All these guys have a great attitude.”
Though much of the roster has been replaced, hold-overs remain, and those tend to be the players that take on leadership roles. Though it’s early, Johnson identified a few players who have provided such leadership. “(Markel) Roby is the one guy that, he’s vocal, he’s communicating, he’s playing well. When you’re doing those things, I like it. And I love having Olive (Sagapolu) back…even last year, with the older guys, if he said something, everyone listened.”
A short training camp doesn’t allow a lot of time for new players to gel within a system, but Johnson and his staff are hoping their targeted youth and speed movement will improve the team’s odds this year. “Here’s what I think we’ve done: We got younger and hopefully we can stay healthy and compete to win some of these games.”
