It’d be hard to rank the things that have been most impressive about C.J. Stroud’s rookie year—but what comes first for me was on full display Saturday. And that is how nothing has seemed too big for the Houston Texans’ star in his first year as an NFL quarterback.
Here is a player who had a three-year college career.
No redshirt. No senior year.
He turned 22 after his first fourth NFL start.
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And he plays in a league that devoured players such as Peyton Manning (27 picks), John Elway (7–to–14 touchdown-interception ratio), Matthew Stafford (20 picks) and Josh Allen (67.9 passer rating) in their rookie seasons. And Stroud plays for a first-year coach and first-time coordinator, on a team that went 11-38-1 in the 50 games before drafting him.
Yet, somehow, someway, Stroud has landed on the NFL’s playoff stage with the poise of someone in his 30s, looking like he’s played in the postseason every year.
The numbers from the Texans’ 45–14 rout of the Cleveland Browns go a long way in telling the story. The stats were great, with Stroud throwing for 274 yards and three touchdowns on 16-of-21 passing, and his team averaging more than a point (45) per offensive play (38). But the numbers certainly don’t show the full picture of how cool, calm and collected Stroud was at just about every turn of his first postseason afternoon in the pros.
“I feel like God prepared me for everything that I’m doing now,” Stroud told me, from the bowels of NRG Stadium, a few minutes after the game. “Since the time I was a kid, I knew that I had a special talent, and I’ve been through a lot in my life. There’s been a lot of adversity. Even me going to Ohio State, all of it prepared me for moments like these, so that I’m blessed enough just to be living my dream.”
Call it a result of his faith. Call it a result of his experience. Call it a product of the scars he’s taken, both in life and football.
Whatever you want to call it, you have to call what we’re watching rare. Because it is.
The playoffs are here, and so we’ve got plenty to get in the MMQB. Over in the Takeaways, you’ll find …
• The Green Bay Packers’ bludgeoning of the Dallas Cowboys, and what it means for both teams.
• The Chiefs’ defense as the lead dog in Kansas City?
• The inside story of the first two hires off the carousel—in New England and Washington.
• The legend that could soon be joining the Las Vegas Raiders.
But we’re starting with Stroud, the Texans, and a pretty extraordinary Saturday in Houston.
Yes, Houston is benefiting from a lot of things working right now. The defense, buoyed by a gaggle of young, high-draft stars such as Will Anderson Jr. and Derek Stingley Jr., is playing with the same sort of relentless rage that DeMeco Ryans’s units with the San Francisco 49ers did. The overall team speed is blinding. Years of offensive line investments are paying off, and a deep, balanced group of skill talent, even without burgeoning star Tank Dell, is improving by the week. Ryans, in his own right, looks every bit the coaching star so many thought he’d be.
But having a quarterback like Stroud is what takes this to the level it’s at now, where the Texans look like they’re on the precipice of something much bigger than a single playoff run. Which takes me back two months, to something Ryans said to me then: “To be a quarterback in this league, you have to have the talent. I knew he had the talent. But you also have to have the locker room. That’s what he has, and that’s what sets him apart.”
Ryans then paused, and added, “All the guys in that locker room believe in him.”
That belief was obvious Saturday afternoon, in how confidently a Texans team full of players hitting the postseason stage for the first time performed. And Stroud gave his team even more reason to believe that evening, and not just by setting a billion-yard pace over the first few series of the game, but also in how Stroud was just as level against the Browns as he would be at a minicamp practice in mid-June. That poise showed up over and over, so I figured we would have Stroud himself take you through the moments that illustrated it best.
• The game’s first swing play came on third-and-6 from Cleveland’s 41-yard line after a shanked Browns punt. The visitors sent their blur of a linebacker, Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah on a delayed blitz, and he came free as Stroud hitched, getting a free run right at the QB. Stroud saw Nico Collins as Owusu-Koramoah arrived, kept his eyes up and let it fly. He had the presence of mind to know the receiver had space, and that he just had to get it close.
“Just players making plays,” Stroud says. “Tried to get as much as I could on it. I really couldn’t step into it very much. But when you give [No.] 12 a chance, he’s gonna come up with the ball.”
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And 38 yards later, the Texans were in position to draw first blood at 3–0.
• The team’s first touchdown came on its next possession, set up by a 29-yard run from Devin Singletary and an off-balance seed down the right sideline to John Metchie III. Stroud went back to Collins for the score, carrying out his run fake and flicking the ball off a back-pedal, right to where a screen was set up perfectly for the receiver.
“When 12 touches the ball, he’s special with it,” Stroud says. “So we designed that play in practice and we executed at a high level. LT [Laremy Tunsil] got out there with juice, they all got the blocks that we needed and we scored.”
• The Texans’ next offensive snap was off a bootleg. Stroud held the ball long enough to pull linebackers Ogbo Okoronkwo and Owusu-Koramoah up toward him before popping the ball over their heads to Brevin Jordan. From there, the tight end did the rest, breaking angles and ankles on the way to a 76-yard touchdown that put Houston up 17–14.
“That’s just where we’re running the ball good, and, I mean, hitting them with everything,” Stroud says. “I don’t think they knew what was coming next. [Coordinator] Bobby [Slowik] did a good job of mixing it up, going play-action, going straight drop back, going and running the ball. So those plays happen when players make plays, and Bobby did a good job of calling a great play.”
• Two possessions later came perhaps the biggest play of the game, another bootleg with Stroud rolling right—only this time designed for Dalton Schultz to leak out back through the Browns’ coverage.
“We knew that they weren’t always super disciplined with their eyes,” Stroud says. “We were just waiting for the right moment to call it, and Dalton did a good job selling it. We were selling boot and the backside corner collapsed. It was his ball, and he made the play.”
And from there, the game got a bit out of hand.
Still, there was one other play I wanted to get to with Stroud—one you may not remember. It was Stroud’s second throw of the second half. On it, linebacker Sione Takitaki burst through the line untouched on a blitz, as the quarterback faded back. Stroud was lined up in a way defensive players only dream about, with the quarterback completely exposed. The rookie could’ve panicked. He could’ve conceded the sack.
Instead, Stroud stood in, absorbed the contact, and feathered a ball to the flat out to Xavier Hutchinson, showcasing his ability to block out what was around him and his awareness to know where his outlets were.
“It’s really just having trust in my linemen,” Stroud says. “I’m not really looking down. So I really trust them, and even when guys come in, I know that it’s my job to be tough for my brothers and just stick in there and try to deliver the ball as best I can for the betterment of the team. So my mindset is, Whatever I got to do to win is whatever we have to do to win. If that’s taking hits, if that’s doing whatever, good.”
Stroud pauses and adds, “I’m blessed enough just to be able to be playing this game.”
It’s safe to say the Texans feel awfully blessed to have him. And Houston can go ahead and feel pretty good about the future, too—because Stroud has for a while now.
“We knew what kind of team we had, man,” he says. “We knew that we can do whatever we put our minds to, with hard work and dedication. And I’m just blessed enough to be able to be with a great coach, with great teammates. And we’re putting it together, man. So it’s on to the next one, gotta go 1–0 this week and move on from there.
“We know we can do it.”
The rest of us are figuring that out, too.
