HOUSTON -- Jadeveon Clowney had no interest in switching to defensive end when the Houston Texans first approached him with the idea just before the season.

"I did not want to do it at all," said Clowney, who has played outside linebacker for most of his career. "I still tell [defensive coordinator Romeo Crennel] to this day I hate it, but I play it. Whatever the team needs, I go out there and play."

Added Crennel: "I didn't say it would be the best for [him]. I said it would be the best for the team."

Through nine games, Clowney has played 431 of the Texans' defensive snaps; 331 have been as a defensive lineman and 100 have been at outside linebacker, according to ESPN Stats & Information. Clowney is now listed as a defensive end.

Although Clowney has been asked to play multiple positions, he finally has become the disruptive player the Texans expected and hoped for when they made him the No. 1 pick in 2014. And in the absence of three-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year J.J. Watt this season, Clowney's improvement has become even more important for the 6-3 Texans.

The 270-pound defensive end said his teammates have helped him embrace the new position.

"They laugh about it and I laugh with them, but they stay on me and say they need me to do it," Clowney said. "I fuss sometimes about it, but I go out there, do it and have a good time."

Hitting the buffet line

Clowney spent his offseason doing yoga and martial arts, working to lose weight to gain quickness off the edge for what he hoped would be his first healthy NFL season.

Then the Texans asked him to play defensive end. Suddenly, Clowney was underweight for his new position.

Although Clowney has said he eats whatever he wants, he's still working to bulk up. So his defensive line coach, Anthony Weaver, gave him something to help: an Old Country Buffet gift card.

"I get on him a lot," Weaver said with a laugh. "Because the weight only helps. It'll only help build that armor that he needs to sustain and stay healthy. ... I try to make him eat all the time."

Said Clowney: "[We] just laugh about it. ... I always pick at [Crennel], like, 'Hey, Romeo, I might have to go to the buffet this week so I can get some weight for you guys.'"

For comparison, Watt is listed at 295 pounds and defensive end Christian Covington is 305. Earlier this season, Clowney went up against Colts guard Denzelle Good, who is listed at 355 pounds.

When asked earlier in the season about Clowney going against guys much bigger, Texans coach Bill O'Brien noted that Clowney "plays big."

"He plays with a lot of explosiveness," O'Brien said. "He's a very tough player. He plays with good leverage a lot of the time."

Breakthrough starts with health

After losing 14 in a row to the end 2013 season, the Texans drafted Clowney with the first pick. It was O'Brien's first season in Houston and the Texans saw Clowney as a playmaker.

In Clowney's junior year at South Carolina, a narrative followed him that he was more focused on his NFL future than playing in his final season.

"You just look at what people had said about him coming in, 'The guy doesn't play hard. The guy does that.' We never felt that way," linebackers coach Mike Vrabel said.

Quarterback Brock Osweiler, who has a reputation for his thorough preparation for games, said he feels Clowney should get a lot of credit for how hard he works to get ready each week.

"He amazes me every single day," Osweiler said.

Weaver pointed to a day earlier in the season that showed how much Clowney has grown in his three years in Houston. The coach said that after the Texans came back in the fourth quarter to force overtime and beat the Indianapolis Colts in October, Clowney was eager to get ready for their next opponent, the Denver Broncos.

"We're in the locker room, everybody's excited, jumping around," Weaver said. "He comes up to me and he's like, 'Coach, we got to get on this Denver film. We got to start watching this Denver film.' Right after the game. If that doesn't show growth and maturity, I don't know what does."

The change in Clowney's attitude has not gone unnoticed by players in the locker room and people around the team. And it all starts with Clowney's health.

Before his rookie season, Clowney needed hernia surgery. He suffered a concussion during the preseason, and then in his first NFL game, he injured his left knee, which required two surgeries to repair the lateral meniscus tear.

Last season, Clowney missed time with a Lisfranc sprain in his right foot and an injured back.

And now, nine games into the 2016 season, Clowney has not missed a game due to injury. He has played 77 percent of the Texans' defensive snaps, according to ESPN Stats & Information.

"This is the first time he had an offseason," Crennel said. "He had a full offseason that he really wasn't rehabbing. He wasn't in the training room so he had time with us. He was in the meeting room, he was able to go through the coaching sessions, able to go through the OTAs, able to go through training camp. So I think all of that helped him be a disruptive player.

"We knew he had the ability. That's why we took him where we took him. If he had been healthy for the two years that he wasn't, I think that we would have probably seen a different guy and be talking about him in a different light. But now that he's healthy, he's making an impact on the game and on this defense."

Ability 'you just can't teach'

Aside from his health, Clowney also has been able to excel in the new position because of what Weaver calls Clowney's "football intelligence."

"He does things on the football field that you just can't teach," Weaver said. "Sometimes you see guys that have his talent, that have his speed, but they don't find the ball like he does.

"Sometimes you tell guys, 'All right, your job is to protect the C-gap.' Now you tell Jadeveon that, knowing that he may come out of the C-gap, but he's going to do it and he's going to make a play. I can't cite one specific example, because it happens so much and when you have those players, you have to let them do that. J.J.'s very much the same way. That's why you wish he was out there, too. When you have two of them, it's a lot of fun to watch."

"I think he's had an impact on every game that he has played in. It doesn't always look that way on the stat sheet, but when you put the tape on you can see where he is really impacting the game. That's good. That's really good." Bill O'Brien on Jadeveon Clowney

This season, opposing teams have been able to double-team Clowney, the way they used to do to Watt. O'Brien said he thinks having other guys playing well, such as outside linebacker Whitney Mercilus and inside linebacker Benardrick McKinney, has helped combat that, but said the Texans continue to work on a game plan to free Clowney up so he can make those disruptive plays.

"I do see some tendency toward trying to control him with different blocking schemes," O'Brien said. "That's why it's going to be important for us -- which says a lot about J.D. that he's at the stage now, how far he's come, where we're going to have to move him around and do things with him to help free him up. That's going to be an important part of the game plans -- all of them -- going forward."

In nine games, Clowney has 34 combined tackles -- by comparison, Watt had 42 through the same time period last season -- three sacks and seven tackles for a loss.

"I think he's had an impact on every game that he has played in," O'Brien said. "It doesn't always look that way on the stat sheet, but when you put the tape on you can see where he is really impacting the game. That's good. That's really good."

Added Crennel: "He has a lot of quickness. He's got some power. He can knock linemen back. He can avoid them and get into the backfield. And when he gets into the backfield, a lot of times it's on running plays. So now, the running play is designed to go a certain place, but now the ball carrier has to put on the brakes and has to run the hump or cut back because the run is not able to go where they want it to go. So he's been disruptive quite a bit that way."

Just the start for Clowney

When the Texans lost Watt for the season after he reaggravated his back injury in late September, there was talk about who would replace the impact he makes on the Texans' defense. And though there is not one player capable of replicating Watt's production, Houston's defense has held its own this season.

The Texans are allowing an average of 317.4 yards per game, which ranks fifth in the league through nine games. Though the run defense struggled to start the season, the unit has shown progress in the past two games, allowing 56 yards in Week 8 to the Detroit Lions and 80 to the Jacksonville Jaguars last week. In those two games, Clowney had seven combined tackles, one sack and a tackle for a loss.

"He has a will to go out there and be great," Weaver said. "He knows he hasn't reached expectations yet, but as short as he's been of those expectations, the expectations he has for himself are even higher."

And what the league is seeing from Clowney right now is just the start, Weaver said.

"Every time he goes out there and has success, his confidence gets higher, and if I'm the rest of the league, that scares me," Weaver said. "A confident Jadeveon Clowney with his God-given ability could be frightening to the rest of the league."