Hurts had Steichen for years 2 & 3 and an offensive line that will produce at least one HoF, maybe 2, and several All-Pros. Goff's best seasons have been with McVay or Ben Johnson. Last year - which was Goff's best season - the Lions were LOADED, offensively. Herbert didn't make the leap until year 5 - and Stroud thoroughly outplayed him in their playoff game. Burrow's ascendent season ('21) came with Mixon, Chase and Higgins, and he's had Zac Taylor - an offensive coach - for every season of his career. And while those players have shuffled OCs - it's almost universally because the OC was hired to be a HC; not fired after 2 seasons. A ramshackle offensive line and two first-time coordinators - one of which was fired - have been obstacles. I'm not sure how you could argue otherwise? And those two conditions became major obstacles because of too many injuries. You're giving him one game?? I'm not sure what CJ's shortcomings are - but I'd wager a lot of them - if not all of them - are firmly rooted in a bad coordinator/offensive line and having to throw to practice squad players for too many snaps.
Not judging on one game, seems like a bunch of excuses to me. I'll give you an example, CJ tends to backup, fade when under pressure instead of stepping up in the pocket and this leads to sacks. He had the same tendencies in college. Once a player has these tendencies very few have been able to overcome this bad habit. Keenum had the same issues. I'm hoping CJ can be one to overcome his issues.
You can judge the *one* game, I guess? But to declare anything definitive came from that one game is silly. No one is claiming CJ Stroud doesn't have issues and flaws. But if you're evaluating his first 33 games in the NFL, and your first two points aren't the offensive line and offensive coordinator, then you're doing it wrong.
1st thing he needs to learn to do is not drift backwards when under pressure. Also this is what it looks like when you give CJ the freedom he wanted. Hopefully things get better. Somewhere probably on South Beach Slowik is laughing is butt off.
If you're starting this evaluation with how CJ needs to better handle pressure rather than the team needs to find a way to reduce the amount of pressure CJ's facing, I'd argue you're doing this all wrong. How CJ handles pressure would not be an issue if he wasn't seeing pressure on ~40% of his drop backs. In fact, it might not even be an issue at all if he hadn't spent the last ~18 games running for his life.
How do you know what pass protections he called at the line? Because he called the ones that didn't work?
You ultimately don't know, but it's his responsibility so when you see just a ton of pressure that he seems oblivious to, it's a bad sign. He should know when pressure is coming and where it's coming from more often than not and that simply wasn't the case. If he doesn't seem to know, for example, that an overload blitz is coming... how could he possibly have adjusted protections to attempt to account for it?
