DeMeco Ryans Backs C.J. Stroud After Texans Loss vs Patriots

The Houston Texans dropped their divisional round matchup against the New England Patriots 16-28 to officially end their 2025-26 NFL season and their resilient ten-game win streak, in a game that they certainly had some ups and downs to face offensively when focusing on third-year quarterback C.J. Stroud.

In all, Stroud had four total interceptions in the first half, completed under 50% of his passes throughout the game, and put together one of his most brutal outings of not only his 2025 season, but his three-year tenure with the Texans altogether.

However, despite the turbulence that Stroud had faced early on that had put the Texans in a 10-21 hole after the first half, head coach DeMeco Ryans made it clear that he never considered making a change at quarterback.

“No, C.J.’s our guy," Ryans said when asked whether he considered making a change at quarterback. "I believed that he could come back out in the 2nd half and flip it and I believed he could play better and he did that in the second half. He did play better. We had some positive drives there in the second half, because I believed that he would do that, and he did that."

"And as I always tell our guys at halftime, it really, it doesn't matter what happened in the first half: you have to flush it, remove it, and you just have to go out and finish the right way. We've been there before. We've been in situations much more dire than this, and we were able to bounce back. So, you know, in my mind, there was no doubt in my mind that we would be able to overcome that."

DeMeco Ryans Remains Confident in C.J. Stroud

The Texans' offense got off to a brutal start in the first half against the Patriots that really made their operation disjointed from the jump. Of Houston’s first nine drives that took place before halftime, seven of them ended in either a three-and-out or a turnover.

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Stroud would then follow that up with a couple of field goal drives in the third quarter, but without the ability to finish those drives and convert into seven points, combined with the disastrous first half, it makes for a day that the Texans quarterback will want to forget in short order.

Simply too many mistakes were made in a postseason matchup where margins are razor-thin, and those offensive lapses proved to be too much for Houston to overcome, even while boasting one of the league's top defenses in another performance where they had their flashes of dominance on the Patriots and Drake Maye.

Regardless of that off-day for Stroud, though, Ryan made sure to have his signal caller's back throughout those ups and downs.

"Keep your head up. I love you. Like, I got your back. And that's what I told him at halftime," Ryans said postgame. "This whole team has your back. Like, we're in this thing together, from day one. It doesn't change for me."

"Like, we have a really special group, a tight-knit group. When things don't go your way, you have bad performances, it's not a time to point fingers or say it's on one person. It all starts with me. For me, as the head coach of this team, we didn't perform well. Obviously, I didn't have our guys ready to go in this moment. So that starts with me. We stick together."

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