The Texans are making an effort to sign Vince Wilfork, Tania Ganguli of ESPN.com tweets. Houston is in need of a nose tackle and the veteran is very familiar with Romeo Crennel from their previous time together.
Wilfork, 33, spent all 11 years of his career with the Patriots, playing 158 regular season games for the club, and starting 148 of those. An anchor in the middle of the defensive line in New England for the last decade, Wilfork looked like he may be leaving the team a year ago, before the two sides worked out a new deal to keep him around for the club’s Super Bowl 2014 season.
By turning down their option on Wilfork and removing him from the roster, the Patriots avoided paying a $4MM roster bonus that was coming up, as well as his $3MM base salary for 2015. In total, the club cleared more than $8MM in cap room, reducing his cap hit from $8.933MM to about $867K in dead money.