C.J. Stroud's Discouraging Ranking Could Spell Bad News for Texans

Houston Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud was viewed as an MVP candidate heading into last season after a brilliant rookie campaign, but Stroud did not exactly live up to those expectations.

Stroud wasn't terrible in 2024, but he wasn't great, either, throwing for 3,727 yards, 20 touchdowns and 12 interceptions while completing 63.2 percent of his passes and posting a passer rating of 87.

Yes, some of that was a direct result of poor offensive line play (Stroud was sacked 52 times) and injuries to the Texans' receiving corps, but it's hard to get around the fact that the former No. 2 overall pick simply wasn't all that good during his sophomore year.

As a result, Stroud's stock has taken a bit of a hit among fans and media pundits, and that was made pretty obvious in a new set of rankings posted by Jonathon Macri of Pro Football Focus.

Macri ranked the top 25 players under 25 years old going into next season, and he had Stroud 12th on the list.

"Stroud would likely be higher on this list if not for a Year 2 that didn’t quite live up to expectations based on his Offensive Rookie of the Year performance in 2023. But, with that said, Stroud was still very good, finishing as the 11th-highest-graded passer (tied) in 2024," Macri wrote.

Saying Stroud was "very good" is definitely a stretch (he wasn't), but yeah; he wasn't awful, and the Ohio State product still has potential moving forward.

Macri went on to say that he feels Stroud could be in for a much better year in 2025, which is entirely possible, but it should also be noted that Houston's offensive issues from last season are still largely prevalent. The offensive line isn't great, and the Texans' wide receiver room — which features a pair of rookies in Jayden Higgins and Jaylin Noel — is largely unproven.

Of course, the question is whether or not Stroud will be able to bounce back. Was his debut campaign a mirage? Is he closer to what he was in 2024? Is he somewhere in between? Or was what he did last season merely a case of the dreaded sophomore slump?

Typically, Year 3 is a big one for franchise quarterbacks. It's generally when they either take that next big step or plateau. In the case of Stroud, there is no doubt that there should be some concern regarding his future with 2025 on the horizon.

Why? Because the 24-year-old will be due for a contract extension after next year, and if Stroud labors again, the Texans will have an incredibly difficult decision to make, especially with the market for quarterbacks having already exploded.

Houston entered the offseason with very limited cap room, which severely inhibited what the Texans were able to do in free agency. Heck, they had to trade away five-time Pro Bowl tackle Laremy Tunsil, further complicating an offensive line situation that was already dicey as it was.

They also watched Stefon Diggs depart, and Tank Dell is slated to miss all of next season while recovering from a knee injury. That puts even more onus on Stroud to develop Higgins and Noel, and if either one of the two receivers flops, it could cause a rather significant problem in Houston.

Sure, the Texans did add Christian Kirk and Justin Watson, the former of whom racked up 1,100 receiving yards as recently as 2022. But Kirk has been hampered by injuries each of the last two years and is a major question mark.

The circumstances surrounding Stroud are far from ideal. Houston did all it could to shuffle the roster over the past couple of months, utilizing whatever flexibility it had. But will it be enough?

We would all like to think Stroud will be just fine. He is surely talented enough to make chicken salad out of chicken scratch. But we have seen young quarterbacks sabotaged by rough surrounding issues before, and you have to wonder if Stroud will suffer a similar fate.

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