I'm prepared to be wrong on Governor Abbott's ending of the state COVID restrictions. We still need to see what effect B.1.1.7 has, but so far, the March 2 end of the mask mandate and business restrictions have not led to a spike in cases. (Anecdotally, it's not clear that his decrees changed behavior in a major way, businesses and schools are still by and large continuing mask use and restaurant business is still low.)
The green arrows show the case trend, smoothing out the depression during the freeze week and the catch-up surge after it. March 2 changes should be visible in the weekly average by about March 15, and we seem to have a softening of the decline rather than a plateau or increase.
Deaths (gray areas, right scale) trail by about a month due to reporting delays, and you can see they also had a slowdown/rebound with the weather event. The current death level mostly reflects the state of vaccination around the start of February. (Given 7 days for vaccine impact, 22 days from infection to death on average, and several weeks of reporting delays.)
B.1.1.7 should impact the case curve over the next month, but deaths should continue to decline regardless because of the good progress on vaccinating the elderly and high risk.