The Story You Missed About C.J. Stroud’s Amazing Performance
Lots to clean up from Week 9. So let’s jump into it …
• C.J. Stroud was impressive to anyone watching Sunday. And now that some coaches and scouts have had a chance to look at the tape, they’re even more impressed.
The numbers do tell a nice story. Stroud finished with a rookie-record 470 yards and five touchdowns on 30-of-42 passing. In the second half alone—in leading the once-moribund Texans back from 10 points down—the second pick in the NFL draft was 16-of-20 for 325 yards and four touchdowns.
The story you may have missed? How quickly and decisively he’s playing, and how he gets to the line, finds what he wants and gets to it quickly. And in a very specific way, and Sunday in particular, he’s taking things he’s learning in-game and applying them immediately.
The Texans are suddenly in a very good position moving forward with C.J. Stroud at quarterback.
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A great example came on perhaps the biggest and best throw of Stroud’s magical day—on second-and-10 from the Buccaneers’ 41-yard line with 16 seconds left in the game. Stroud and his coaches had noticed Tampa Bay’s coverage looking a little lazy on the backside. When the ball was snapped, he looked left and saw second-year corner Zyon McCollum playing too far up in Cover 2. The poor positioning allowed Tank Dell to run right past him, and Stroud saw a hole bigger than it should have been between the corner and the safety.
Not only did Stroud see the opening, but he was able to absolutely rope the ball into the hole created between McCollum and safety Dee Delaney before those two could get close to the ball for a 26-yard gain. The coach I spoke to said McCollum should’ve given up the throw underneath to Dalton Schultz, and had Schultz caught that ball, it would have forced the Texans to score from the 30-yard line.
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Instead, Stroud wound up throwing, and scoring, with another dart to Dell from the 15 with six seconds left.
It’s a good example of offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik’s offense giving Stroud answers, but moreso, it’s about Stroud aggressively taking the right ones. It’s safe to say that the Texans are suddenly in a very good position going forward at the most important position.
• While we’re here, I did talk to Dell postgame, and I had to ask him about the weird circumstance of not having a kicker after Ka’imi Fairbairn got hurt.
He gave me a pretty funny—and honest—answer.
“That was for sure weird,” he says. “I didn’t even know Ka’imi was out. I didn’t know anything about it. When we got into the red zone and we were going for the fourth, I was like, What’s going on? Then we kept going for the two, so I was like, Oh, he’s hurt. Then Dare [Ogunbowale] stepped in. I didn’t even know Dare could kick the ball. He did a hell of a job. Dare stepped in, kicked some touchbacks on kickoffs, kicked three points that we needed at that moment, for sure to help us win this game. He definitely stepped up.
“That was great for him.”
That stopped me in my tracks … You didn’t know Dare could kick?
“No,” he says, laughing. “I had no idea. I asked him after the game like, ‘Yo, when did you learn how to kick?’ He was a kicker in high school; that’s what he told me. He used to kick in high school. That surprised me right there.”
And a lot of the rest of us, too.
• The Giants are in a really tricky spot after Daniel Jones tore his ACL against the Raiders.
Why? He had signed a four-year, $160 million deal with the Giants during the offseason, and now they’re going to go into the 2024 offseason without much more information than they had when the contract was signed.
Jones started six games this year, going 108-of-160 for 909 yards, two touchdowns and six picks (career-low 70.6 passer rating). He played on an injury-ravaged offense, with left tackle Andrew Thomas missing eight games, star tailback Saquon Barkley missing four and the group as a whole looking lost in coach Brian Daboll’s second year.
The reality of Jones’s contract is that it is, more or less, a two-year, $82 million deal, with team options for 2025 and ’26. That leaves the Giants, who could have a very high draft pick, to decide whether to select a quarterback in the first round in April with, again, the same information about Jones they had when they extended him in March. Which, to me, should have the Giants digging hard into guys such as Caleb Williams and Drake Maye.
Jones's play of late has created a lot of doubt about his future with the Patriots.
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• I’m not sure whether the Patriots will consider benching Mac Jones—in part because it’s not like there’s another great option on the depth chart—but his play of late has created a lot of doubt about his future with the team.
Maybe the biggest issue that Jones has now, as I’ve heard it, is that for a player with a rep for playing smart, efficient, game-managing football and being accurate, he’s simply had way too many head-scratching plays and missed throws. Which leaves a player that doesn’t have the physical gifts that most first-round quarterbacks have without much to hang his hat on.
One example came in the loss to Washington on Sunday. Jones checked to a pass play designed to go to tight end Mike Gesicki, who was wide open down the seam. Jones didn’t pull the trigger, instead tucking the ball and scrambling. In other spots, he’s checked to screens that have been blown up upon arrival.
That, of course, would indicate Jones losing confidence in what’s around him, not getting to his answers fast enough or both. Neither is good at a point when Jones is fighting for his place as the franchise quarterback—and maybe his future as a starting quarterback in the NFL, too.
• Speaking of the Patriots, in light of another shining effort from Chiefs CB Trent McDuffie, it’s fascinating to consider New England’s place in how McDuffie got to Kansas City.
Going into the 2022 draft, the Chiefs coveted the Washington prospect and had looked at the idea of trading up for him. They figured there was no way he would get to where they were picking, at 29. So as Kansas City watched McDuffie slide through the teens, that doubt was maintained, mostly because GM Brett Veach and his staff felt like McDuffie checked about every box for Bill Belichick’s program and, accordingly, would get past where the Patriots were picking, at 21.
So imagine their surprise when McDuffie fell out of the teens, Kansas City started calling around, McDuffie dropped into the Patriots’ laps at 21 and the Chiefs found a willing trade partner in New England.
Kansas City wound up trading the 94th and 121st picks to move up eight spots; got a corner who was probably the team’s best player in Sunday’s win in Frankfurt, Germany; and may well be on his way to All-Pro honors in his second year. For what it’s worth, the Patriots wound up taking Cole Strange at 29, flipping the 94th pick to Carolina for the 137th pick (QB Bailey Zappe) and a 2023 third-rounder (LB/S Marte Mapu), and taking Jack Jones at 121.
Safe to say, the Chiefs are very comfortable with that deal.
• It’s no secret what sort of spot the Jets’ offense is in—the quarterback is hurt; much of the offensive line is, too; and the results haven’t been pretty.
But I do think, if there was a good thing that came out of Monday night’s postgame, it wasn’t just that the offensive players were accountable. It’s that they were specifically accountable to a defense that’s played really well this year. It’s a decent sign that the Jets’ locker room isn’t fractured yet, when such a divide in production would threaten to do that.
For his part, Zach Wilson made a point of addressing that when he was asked whether the offense could find a way to turn things around after taking the 27–6 haymaker from the Chargers.
“Yeah, we got to,” Wilson said during his postgame press conference. “Defense is playing lights out, man. We gotta get something going. We gotta find a way. And we all gotta stick together, and I think we will. I think the guys 100% have each other’s back, 100% trust. And that’s all we can do, trust in each other, keep working, keep getting better. This league will do this to you sometimes. So you gotta find a way.”
Star receiver Garrett Wilson added, “It’s inexcusable, man, and it’s getting to the point where it’s disappointing. I hate coming off the field, looking our defense in the eyes and knowing that we have to send them back out there after a three-and-out. Them boys are my dogs, and they come out and ball. They put us in a great position. It’s time for us to start returning the favor, man. It’s time. We got to figure it out.”
It doesn’t mean the Jets’ offense will figure it out. But as far as the team’s day-to-day approach from here, that sort of accountability is important.
Murray would have to be really good during the second half of the season to prevent the Cardinals from taking a hard look at drafting a quarterback in the first round.
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• Cardinals QB Kyler Murray is trending toward playing Sunday against the Falcons, and the hope is that’ll give the new brass a good two months to gather as much information as they can on him before making a decision about his future after the season. And it’s fair to say that Murray faces an uphill climb to remain in Arizona, even with a hefty financial penalty to be paid if the Cardinals bail on the contract after this year.
If Arizona winds up with the first or second pick, it’d be Murray and his massive deal vs. Caleb Williams or Drake Maye on a rookie deal. Murray would have to be really good to tip the scales on that one.
• It’s good to see Joshua Dobbs getting another shot at starting—with it official that he’ll be in the lineup Sunday against the Saints—after his time in Arizona. And I do have a leftover from my conversation with Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell. This one, specifically, is about how the coach and quarterback used the headset communication to get to where they needed to be on the game-winning throw.
“The beauty of that scenario was I was able to call a timeout and get the guys to the line pretty quick out of the huddle,” O’Connell says. “So there was still 25 seconds when we got to the line of scrimmage, and I was able to talk him through what I felt the coverage was going to be, ‘Hey, what to do with your eyes?’ And then, ‘What’s on your left? What’s on your right? Here’s how I want to play it.’
“It was like probably the most time throughout that whole drive that I could talk to him just because of how the sequence played out, and, I mean, he did it. It was his best rep of the day. Couldn’t have run it any better.”
• Hard not to agree with John Harbaugh’s assessment that the AFC North is the league’s best division. And the amazing thing to me is how capable each team is of winning games on defense, which is something you don’t see as much in today’s NFL.
• Line of the week—Mike Tomlin calling George Pickens’s complaints a “pebble in my shoe.” The shot reminds me a little of Tomlin’s second year in Pittsburgh. Early on that season, Willie Parker wasn’t getting the ball a lot, and he complained, at one point, that the team needed to get back to playing “Steeler football.” That week Tomlin responded, with something along the lines of, Every day I walk by five Lombardi Trophies, not five rushing titles. Willie's comments could be construed as selfish, which he is not..
The Steelers would put a sixth in that trophy case months later.
