The Texans Have Found a New Identity With C.J. Stroud

C.J. Stroud said something to me, walking through NRG Stadium towards his postgame press conference, that might contradict what you think of him, if you just look at the stats.

The Texans quarterback came into Week 6 with zero interceptions, going his first 186 NFL attempts without one, the longest such streak to start a career in NFL history. He’s a rookie. He’s playing for a Year 1 head coach and working with a first-time offensive coordinator. All of it might make you assume this is some sort of Checkdown Charlie operation.

And yet, when I asked him about playing for DeMeco Ryans, it was exactly the opposite.

“DeMeco has come in with a strong mindset, which is just do as best as you can with details and demeanor and flying around,” Stroud says, over the phone. “We do that on the offense and the defensive side of the ball, trying to make plays as best we can. Being aggressive, not ever trying to let them bring it to us. Bring it to them every time, that’s kind of been the mindset in what we’ve been doing.”

What the Texans have been doing has been working, for the first time in a long time.

Houston is 3–3 heading into its bye this week, and Ryans has flipped the trajectory of a franchise that seemed to be stumbling around the last three years on its head. The Texans have won three of their last four games, and more than just that, as Houston reached .500 with Sunday’s 20–13 win over the Saints, it has found an identity—one Stroud described perfectly, with young players playing fast, together and with purpose, the same way Ryans’s 49er defenses did.

The Texans also seem to have found the perfect quarterback for the ascribed program, and that may have been best illustrated Sunday when the No. 2 draft pick finally did throw his first NFL pick.

The miscue came on Stroud’s 192nd throw of his pro career, after he’d run that interception-less streak to 191 on the first possession of the game. The score was tied at zero, and Houston was at second-and-8 from its own 44-yard line with 6:05 left in the first quarter. And what Stroud was trying to accomplish on the throw—intended for tight end Dalton Schultz—was actually pretty high level stuff for a rookie.

It’s just that what Stroud was trying to do to linebacker Zack Baun didn’t work.

“He made a good play,” Stroud says. “People are fond of our in-breakers. They know we like to run in-breakers. I tried to move him with my eyes. He didn’t move and made a good play. Guys in the NFL are good.”

Lucky for Stroud, his teammates and their relentless style would erase the mistake for him: Nico Collins stuck with the play, running up behind Baun, ripping the ball loose, and then jumping on it to give Houston a new set of downs. “I appreciate Nico,” Stroud says, “for getting that turnover right back.”

And Stroud responded by, well, doing exactly what Ryans and OC Bobby Slowik have taught him to do: He kept swinging. Just four plays later, he attacked downfield, finding Noah Brown over the middle, and in the teeth of the Saints defense, for 34 yards. Two plays after that, the Texans led 7–0 thanks to a 1-yard touchdown throw to Schultz, one Stroud gave full credit to his tight end for. “Threw it up to him,” he says. “Good job by him on a good route.”

Stroud had to do a little more than throw the ball up on his second touchdown pass, one that wound up being critical in the seven-point win. The Texans were in third-and-goal from the Saints’ 6-yard line with 2:59 left in the first half and, down in that area, with space at a premium, a young quarterback can’t guess wrong. Stroud, in this circumstance, wouldn’t.

“It was a 2-Tampa look,” he says. “We knew that in their zone look, that they were going to be in that look. The first read went to Nico and then [running back Mike] Boone on an out. I got to my third read pretty fast to beat the zone. Pete Werner, my former teammate, almost made a play on the ball. Just had to squeeze it in there.”

And Stroud did, on his third progression, sneaking the ball into a short window to reliable vet Robert Woods on what amounted to a four-point throw. It, again, flashed how Stroud is already working at a proficient NFL level at the toughest position on the field.

As for how he got here, and what people might’ve missed on him in the spring, the truth is he and the coaches tried to spend the summer creating as many difficult situations as possible for him—which is probably why, at points, he looked a little lost in preseason games. It was part of a process to have him ready to play when the action around him was live and at a real NFL speed, and, six games in, it has at least had its benefits.

“It’s people around me helping me get better every day,” Stroud says. “Just learning from my mistakes, having a hard training camp, being hard on myself, doing a lot of prep work. For me, it’s just having an idea before I get out there of how hard I want to play and just executing. The guys around me are playing really well. It’s been a blessing to be able to play well and start quick, but it’s all about the next game.”

This time around, his next game isn’t for two weeks: After Houston’s bye, Stroud goes head-to-head with his good friend, and the only player taken ahead of him in April, Bryce Young. The winless Panthers are set to host the Texans on Oct. 29, in a game that’ll give Stroud a chance to look back at what the rest of us would view as a really strong start to his NFL career.

Want a window into how he’ll approach it?

If you ask him about that streak that just got broken, you’ll probably be able to figure it out.

“I really didn’t think much about it,” he says. “I didn’t really think it held any significance. I was trying to build trust from my coaches, take shots. They know that if it’s not there, I’ll be smart with the football. That’s all I was doing throughout these last couple games. I think that showed that I’m resilient. That even though I made a mistake, I can come back.”

Which is another reason why it sure looks like he’s been around Houston for a while.