His pressure number is so terrible because he's taken alot of bad sacks instead of throwing the ball away, plus the two fumbles lost. It's encouraging that he's so great with a clean pocket, and I expect that he can continue to work on performance under pressure which he didn't get alot of experience with at Ohio State.
I don't watch college football, but I looked up his stats for this year. 4 TD/ 4 INT in 3 games, elite plays or not. CJ had 44 TD / 6 INT last year in college, and so far as a pro he's not throwing a lot of interceptions against pros. In fact, he hasn't thrown any. I'm happy with that. You can't change our QB pick now, so you might as well just hope for the best, and cheer him on as a Texans fan.
Numbers will be there at the end of the year. Stroud played with the best talent in the country. Maye is carrying a UNC team to a top 20 ranking. But yes, I agree, Stroud is the QB we chose. I’m going to support him and hope for the best while he’s here
The problem is that was the same scenarios in college. He literally had the worst splits from clean to pressured in college football. Handling pressure is not a strong suit
So after two games, my general thoughts: What I Don't Love: Takes too long and let's pocket collapse. Some of the sacks he's taken are on him. But I feel like he did better at that in game 2 than game 1, so that is encouraging. Doesn't always manage the pocket well. There was one sack yesterday that he sort of created by trying to roll out away from his protection when had he just stayed put he would have had another second or so. It was a weird decision, but hopefully one he gets better at. Mobility in general isn't great and he definitely doesn't move quickly. That's not anything we didn't know but you do see it when the pocket collapses on occasion. He's not going to be the guy that creates time for himself. What I Love: The accuracy. Similar to the 3rd bullet above in that it was as advertised, but it's HUGE. As fans of this team it's been easy to forget how big of a deal it can be to hit receivers in stride and give them a chance to make plays after the catch. I never even thought of Nico Collins as a guy that would be able to break tackles because it seems he hasn't had much chance to do that. Stroud gave him multiple chances yesterday. The confidence. He doesn't look scared. He doesn't look overwhelmed. He has shown improvement even over a small portion of the season and preseason we've seen of him. That's huge and makes me so pumped for the future because he already looks pretty good and could potentially end up being great. The leadership skills. He's being getting hammered pretty consistently (as mentioned above, some of that is his fault) and he keeps getting back up and staying positive. Sure he's a rookie and not many rookies would start yelling at their Oline like a Tom Brady might, but it says something about his ability to inspire people, and I think that's important. The unexpected dearth of mistakes. There have been a few bad decisions but he doesn't have zero interceptions for no reason. He really hasn't given defenses many opportunities to pick him off. If Demeco can get the defense straight and we can get the Oline healthy with a running game, that will be very critical for winning games. The defense has been frustrating to watch, but my biggest unknown going into this season was how CJ would perform, and that has gone as well as I could have hoped. Here's a fun thought to leave you with: Imagine for a moment that CJ continues to improve and turns into the pro-bowl QB that he seems to have the potential for based on what we've seen so far. Now imagine that Bryce Young never amounts to much and ends up not having much of a career either because he can't process NFL defenses or he is too injury prone due to his size. Neither of those are out of the realm of possibility. In that scenario, Lovie Smith winning that last game of 2022 may be his best gift to us fans of all, because I'm convinced if the Texans had the first pick in the draft they would have taken Bryce Young. Hell, I wanted them to. But it would be hilarious to me if Lovie ends up saving us from ourselves and we solve our QB problem because of his stubbornness in the face of what he surely knew was going to lose him his job. EDIT: Also, y'all need to stop feeding the trolls.
I haven't seen any of this so called support. I wouldn't wish this kind of "support" on my worst enemies. I don't see pressure as a problem yet. It's only been 2 games and the pressure rate is one of the worst in the league so far, so its just too soon to write him off as not being to handle pressure because if you stick most QBs behind this line they wouldn't perform well.
What's interesting is that is one of the things that attracted so many to Richardson was his physical size, yet he left his first two games for injury reasons. You just never know.
Maye has 4 INTs in 3 games, against week competition. Yes, he had a great game yardage-wise Saturday...but threw 2 picks. Stroud had 6 INTs in each of the entire 2021 and 2022 seasons total.
What I have noticed is CJ's touch and placement. Even under pressure, he has put the ball exactly where it needs to be.
If CJ Stroud wins a Super Bowl for the Texans, they better put up a Lovie Smith statue outside the stadium.
I literally haven’t denigrated his play at all so far, I’m actually very pleased with it given the situation. I just haven’t ate it up like some of you. He’s had some very good moments and some not so good moments. Blindly claiming he’s the greatest ever isn’t support btw
He hasn’t played weak competition. Stop it. Not even mentioning he’s all they have talent wise. The picks need cleaned up, 2 were his fault and two weren’t, he’s also made some plays few can make. You would know that if you didn’t just boxscore watch.
I've never seen any QB who hasn't had any not so good moments. Nobody. Nobody said he's the greatest ever that I've seen in here. Now, he has definitely done better than any previous Texans rookies in the first two games. There will always be ups and downs with rookie quarterbacks, so you never know. Some of the greats had really bad first year rookie starts. Nothing wrong with Texans fans being optimistic and excited about CJ, and it certainly isn't unrealistic to think he could do great with a healthier team, experience, and more protection.
