The outing of Ray Rice, whose stunning knockout of his fiance (now wife) was caught on elevator cameras and viewed more than 8.6 million times on YouTube, has caused football fans around the country to take a second look at the NFL stars they thought they knew. Good news for Houston — the Texans are relatively well behaved.
USA Today’s Brent Schrotenboer has maintained a database of NFL arrests since 2000. Compiled from news accounts, it lists 713 arrests total for a league average of 22 arrests per team. The Texans’ record is half that, tying with the Arizona Cardinals and St. Louis Rams for the most squeaky clean team in the league, according to a New York Times analysis.
That accomplishment comes with the caveat that the Texans are the league’s youngest team, only having been in existence since 2002. Something else to consider is that USA Today data includes all arrests that made the news, regardless of whether the player is found not guilty. The most serious Texans charge on the list is the 2008 arrest of Jerome Mathis, accused of choking his pregnant wife. Charges were dropped.
The Minnesota Vikings have had the most arrests — 44 since 2000.
This article appears in Sep 11-17, 2014.