C.J. Stroud’s College Coach on the Secret to the Houston QB’s Success
Before last year’s NFL draft there was a common refrain among NFL evaluators—if the C.J. Stroud we saw in the Peach Bowl is the guy some team is getting, look out.
Against the eventual national champion Georgia Bulldogs, and without all-planet receiver Marvin Harrison Jr. piloting an offense without its star tight end, tailback and first-round slot receiver, Stroud was brilliant. He threw for 348 yards and four touchdowns, and ran for another 34 yards. He was aggressive in every sense of the word, seemingly putting together all the pieces in the College Football Playoff.
Ohio State lost the game, but Stroud won over NFL fans that night.
Day on Stroud: "I think every game he plays in the NFL, you’re going to see a better product next week.”
Troy Taormina/USA TODAY Sports
Then, there was that caveat.
Was it just a special night? Or was it more than that?
“I think that game was definitely a culmination of his development at Ohio State,” Buckeyes coach Ryan Day told me this week. “We saw things during the season that you saw during that game. But I also think that the stage was set, and he responded and competed his tail off. I think that’s probably a better question for him on how he felt in that game. I think, especially when you play the quarterback position, you’re a collection of your experiences. It leads you to where you are as a player and how you respond to different things.
“The more experience you get, the more you can draw upon that and learn from your mistakes and enhance the things you do well. He embraced that part of it. That was his last game as a Buckeye, but I think game after game he continued to develop and get better. Now you’re seeing it translate to the NFL. So I think every game he plays in the NFL, you’re going to see a better product next week.”
Twelve months later, the Texans are the beneficiaries.
Houston heads into Saturday’s divisional round game against the Baltimore Ravens as a decided underdog, a team that is still on the way up, but not seen as being on the level of the established Ravens. But the wild card is Stroud, who early in his time as a pro has been good enough to level the playing field, even when he’s playing a little shorthanded.
And maybe that’s what is most exciting for Day as he watches Stroud—he knows this is just the beginning, and that Stroud has a chance to keep lifting expectations like he did at Ohio State.
Which is what Stroud did in his first start for Day, who suffered his regular-season loss in his third year as coach, 35–28 to Oregon. The Ohio State defense crumbled that day, leaving an offense that was young in key spots playing from behind. But Stroud kept swinging, and wound up throwing for 484 yards and three touchdowns, giving the Buckeyes a chance at the very end to pull off the furious comeback.
“He threw for over 400 yards and made some really good throws,” Day says. “When you lose a game at Ohio State, it’s tough to come back from. He took a lot of heat, undeservingly so in my opinion. I said to myself after watching that game, This kid’s going to be special.”
There were other games between that one and the Peach Bowl (Day gave special mention to the comeback win against Utah in the 2022 Rose Bowl) where the explosion of talent was obvious to even those not wearing a helmet or headset.
But more impressive to Day was how a kid who brought a special level of anticipation and what the coach calls “spatial intelligence”— the ability, in his words, to “read people’s body language, see the field, which all obviously has to do with your brain”—was continually ascending with each week, and each experience, he got.
Watching Stroud on tape now, Day says it’s pretty clear that hasn’t stopped.
“His footwork, his eyes, his timing, all of it looks very clean,” the coach says. “He’s operating to me like a veteran out there. I can tell, his preparation for each game, he spent a lot of time on it. You can just tell by how confident he is out there and how well he’s moving and how efficiently he’s operating the offense. He’s always had a very good pocket presence. I think that started in high school.
“He kind of had to run for his life at times. He’s never looking at the rush, but he feels it, and he can slide when he needs to. He can get that ball out just a second before he gets hit. That’s something you can’t teach. I think that you’re seeing that translate to the field even as a rookie. That’s significant.”
As a result, what Stroud’s putting on the field is, too. Which gives his Texans a puncher’s chance on the AFC’s top seed’s turf.
• The Kyle Shanahan–Matt LaFleur dynamic Saturday night will be worth keeping an eye on. Their San Francisco 49ers and Green Bay Packers have played twice in the playoffs. The first time, in the NFC title game after the 2019 season, San Francisco manhandled Green Bay in about every way possible. The second half, in a divisional playoff two years later, the Niners came into a frigid Lambeau Field and upended the top-seeded Packers.
Shanahan, for whatever reason, has had a little bit of a hex on the young coaches he came up with. It took a while for Sean McVay’s Rams to clear that hurdle (and they did in a big way). And while LaFleur has gotten Shanahan a couple of times in the regular season, the playoffs have been a different animal.
That said, the Packers’ coach brought a loose, free-playing team to Dallas last week, and it’ll be interesting to see whether his young group can duplicate that kind of house-money energy.
• Speaking of having a house-money approach, seeing things that way has really helped the Tampa Bay Buccaneers thus far—and it’s a result, in a lot of ways, of how last year ended.
Star receiver Chris Godwin explained, after Tampa routed the Eagles on Monday night, that the 2022 Bucs felt the weight of every game. Maybe it was due to Tom Brady’s last act as a football player. Maybe it was the expectations of the previous two years. Whatever it was, it was there, and so the players have worked this year to address that. Which, somehow, has led to better results in their first year without the greatest of all time.
“Yeah, I feel like there was pressure from outside to be something or …who knows?” Godwin says. “It was a tension; not everyone was playing free. Now, it’s just different. Different year, different expectations. Different things happen. I feel like [against Philly], we were just playing. Everyone was enjoying what we’re doing. We’re having fun playing football. That’s going to be important for us moving forward.”
And it will be Sunday in what should be a wild environment at Ford Field.
• As we said in Monday’s Ten Takeaways, the Patriots’ plan all along was to conduct a full search for a new offensive coordinator. And I think, in the end, that’s why Bill O’Brien chose to bolt for the OC job at Ohio State. There, he’ll get a chance to call plays, and work with a full stable of future NFL players, and make good money doing it. It also was a hard offer of a new job, rather than just a chance to hold on to the job he already had.
Here’s the other thing: The Patriots’ staff was a bit of a mess last year. So I do think you’ll see a number of guys who worked there simply looking for a new start. I also believe it’s why Jerod Mayo’s tone in his introductory press conference suggested there would be lots of fractures in the foundation in Foxborough that he’d have to go about fixing.
• While we’re there, Bill Belichick’s second interview with the Falcons should be an interesting one. The first was with owner Arthur Blank. The second will include more of the staff. I’d be interested to see what interaction there is between Belichick and team president Rich McKay. My sense is Belichick will have to reach a comfort level with McKay if he’s going to take the job.
• Ditto for Jim Harbaugh as the Chargers’ search heads for the wire. Along those lines, I don’t think it’s any coincidence that no fewer than four of the candidates who have interviewed for the team’s GM job have ties to the Harbaugh family. Baltimore’s Joe Hortiz and Chicago’s Ian Cunningham both worked with John Harbaugh with the Ravens, Indianapolis’s Ed Dodds has known Jim Harbaugh going back to their time together in Oakland, and the Giants’ Brandon Brown has formed a relationship with Jim as well.
Another factor, based on his past NFL experience, and where things went wrong there, would be the involvement of ownership in the organization, and the plans for setting that up under Jim Harbaugh. Dean Spanos’s sons, A.G. and John, oversee the business and football sides, respectively.
• Texans OC Bobby Slowik received requests from the Titans, Seahawks, Commanders, Falcons and Panthers, and already has interviewed with Carolina. He couldn’t fit all of them in with Houston playing Saturday, so whether the Texans advance might throw a wrinkle into his candidacy. If Houston beats Baltimore, he can’t talk to anyone for another week. If the Texans lose, he’s free to start interviewing in-person on Monday.
