Third-year Texans receiver Xavier Hutchinson’s journey to the NFL was made possible with the lessons taught by his older brother Quinton.
Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle
It’s Xavier Hutchinson’s third NFL season, but many people are still learning his name.
For some, the Houston Texans wide receiver has become known for his role in a memorable play against the Los Angeles Chargers in last year’s playoffs.
The Texans were facing third-and-16 from their own 17-yard line with 2:24 left before halftime, trailing 6-0. Quarterback C.J. Stroud didn’t immediately see the ball being snapped, and it flew past him and bounced into the end zone. Somehow he managed to scoop it up in one try, ran right and looked downfield before throwing it across his body to Hutchinson, who was wide-open in the middle of the field to pick up the first down.
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That play, it could be argued, saved the Texans’ season. They went on to beat the Chargers 32-12 and advanced to the divisional round.
But before that, Hutchinson has largely flown under the radar.
He has done the dirty work for the Texans, playing on both sides of the special-teams unit and serving as a fifth-string wide receiver who mostly blocked on run plays.
Now he’s being used in critical situations in the receiving game and being interviewed by prominent sports figures.
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“I’m just happy that he’s getting the recognition he deserves,” said Stroud, who was in the same draft class as Hutchinson.
His 12 catches through five games have already matched the previous high Hutchinson had all of last season.
He’ll continue to be counted on moving forward, including Monday night, when the Texans (2-3) visit the Seattle Seahawks (4-2), hoping to extend their two-game winning streak.
Veteran wide receiver Christian Kirk was ruled out Saturday with a hamstring injury. That will mean more snaps for Hutchinson as he tries to build momentum off one of the better games of his career.
He scored the first two touchdowns of his career in the Texans’ 44-10 win against the Ravens two weeks ago. His two scores had everyone pumped, from the players to the coaching staff.
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“He loves football and when you love football, you want to be great at all of it,” wide receivers coach Ben McDaniels said. “It shows every day in his preparation. So whatever the job requirement is, he’s always up for it.”
How Hutchinson, a sixth-round pick in the 2023 draft from Iowa State, got here was the result of hard work, persistence and staying focused on the prize.
He learned that from his older brother Quinton Hutchinson, who is currently serving the remaining two years of a prison sentence.
Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud was bullish in the preseason on Xavier Hutchinson’s potential and his draft classmate has proved him right through five games.
Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle
Lessons learned from big brother
Xavier Hutchinson grew up the youngest of two in Jacksonville, Fla. Quinton is eight years his elder, and Xavier had always considered him a role model.
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Quinton also played football through high school, and it was the reason Xavier gravitated to the sport.
The little brother looked up to the big brother. He was always around him. He was a copycat. Whatever Quinton did, Xavier was trying to do, too.
But the lessons his older brother taught him, whether intentional or unintentional, have guided Hutchinson throughout his career.
“He never told me what I wanted to hear, always told me what was real,” Hutchinson said, which helped him realize early on the important things in life. “I realized what can stop you from being great.”
“At the end of the day, you can make a lot of excuses, but you have the choice to determine who you want to be and how you want to be.”
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Mistakes happen and Quinton made a few. He’s had a couple of brief stints in prison when Xavier was in high school and college, and he is finishing up the final two years of another stint for a parole violation. Hutchinson hasn’t talked about his brother’s situation much, nor does he do it much in private.
He says his motivation is to make him proud.
“I want to let him know his shortcomings, all the lessons that he had to deal with early on, I learned from them,” Hutchinson said. “It helped me be where I’m at today.”
Though he has never been to prison, Hutchinson’s choices weren’t always the right ones, either. He had to take an alternate route in college before getting to the NFL.
His journey began not far up the road from here. He didn’t qualify academically to play for a Division I program after high school. “It was pretty much my fault,” he says. “I procrastinated and didn’t take school seriously.”
Texans wide receiver Xavier Hutchinson, shaking hands with Texans owner Cal McNair in Baltimore, had an atypical journey to the NFL that started at Blinn College.
Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle
So he went to junior college first, and attended Blinn College in Brenham, a small town of 17,000 best known as the home of Blue Bell ice cream, and focused on studying and playing football.
Blinn was more than 940 miles from Jacksonville — where his parents continue to reside — nearly a 14-hour drive. For the first time, Hutchinson, then an 18-year-old with little money, had to fend for himself.
“It turned me into a man very fast,” he said. “Because you can’t depend on anybody but yourself once you get to JUCO. You’re in that position because of what you did, and the only way you can get out of it is what you do.”
What Hutchinson did was focus on his grades and football. He also leaned on his brother’s advice to stay focused. In his two seasons at Blinn, he caught 58 passes for 961 yards and seven touchdowns, and eventually caught the eyes of the coaches at Iowa State.
With the Cyclones, he took off and made himself into an NFL prospect. He was a three-time All-Big 12 selection from 2020-22. He was a first-team All-American in 2022. He set the school’s single-season school record for receptions, and posted the second-best mark in receiving yards in a single season, a feat later passed by his two Cyclones-turned-Texans teammates Jaylin Noel and Jayden Higgins.
Hutchinson remains the school’s all-time leader in receptions, is third in receiving yards and is tied for seventh in receiving touchdowns.
But it wasn’t just his NFL talents that stood out.
The first thing everyone points out when talking about Hutchinson is that his energy is contagious. And he plays with a joy that is unmatched.
“He’s got such a great energy about him,” Texans offensive coordinator Nick Caley said of Hutchinson. “Then you see him out here working. He’s a tireless worker…This guy works his ass off.”
His reason for working hard is his family. He wants to be an inspiration to his younger cousins, who now look up to him, like his brother did for him.
Hard work pays off
It wasn’t easy to get to the point where he is today. While Hutchinson is having success, his brother is currently unable to watch him play in person.
But Hutchinson said he found peace in knowing his brother remains alive, and that he can talk to him regularly. Hutchinson said his brother is growing and improving as a person.
They talk weekly by phone, sometimes twice a week during the season, and every day in the offseason. Quinton remains Xavier’s biggest confidant and he often goes to his big brother for advice.
“I don’t take any of those things for granted,” Hutchinson said. “He really just taught me life. ‘Everything can be taken from you in the blink of an eye with one bad decision.’
“He made me value the things that were important to me in my life and I put those on a pedestal first before anything else.”
After not seeing much playing time in his first two seasons, Hutchinson was frustrated. But Quinton would often tell him to attack each day, and treat each practice like it’s a game day — as if it was the last time he’d touch the field.
Quinton knew his younger brother’s time was coming.
When: 9 p.m. Monday
Where: Lumen Field, Seattle
TV: CBS (in Houston), ESPN
Radio: 610 AM, 100.3 FM, 101.1 FM (Spanish)
Hutchinson remained patient and kept putting in the work. This offseason, he took another leap, training in Los Angeles and working on the things that he had struggled with previously. Both coach DeMeco Ryans and Stroud kept saying during training camp that they had noticed how much he had improved, foreshadowing his emergence in the offense.
“Just watching him, watching the way he worked, especially in training camp, watching him make play after play in training camp,” Ryans said recently. “He just proved and he showed that confidence in camp and he showed that he was deserving of more opportunities.”
Those opportunities finally came two weeks ago. On the final play of their first drive against the Ravens, the Texans ran a play with Hutchinson as the first read. Hutchinson ran a flat to the right corner of the end zone. Stroud hit him with a perfect pass, and Hutchinson walked in for his first touchdown.
Three drives later, in the second quarter, the Texans went to him again. He ran a fade route from 10 yards out on the right side. Stroud threw it to a place where only Hutchinson could get it and he brought it in for his second score in tight coverage.
It was a weight off his shoulders and solidified everything he had been working towards and what his brother had taught him. He found his swag.
“To really get in the end zone off a play you made, it was phenomenal,” Hutchinson said. “It just shows you this time and effort you put in never goes to waste. And at any moment, man, everything can click for you.
“I definitely felt like that was the moment for me.”
