The Texans have Tremendous Bowl aspirations. C.J. Stroud is the rationale: ‘He’s acquired some canine in him’

At first, his screams have been met with silence. Shocked silence, actually.

This rookie was standing there, two weeks into his NFL profession, moments after a humiliating loss at residence, and he was calling out … your entire group?

“The place my leaders at?!?” C.J. Stroud shouted, grabbing the eye of everybody inside the house locker room at NRG Stadium. “I would like some leaders! Proper now! The place they at? Communicate up!”

The Texans have been 0-2. They’d simply been routed at residence by the Colts. They hadn’t received greater than 4 video games in three years. “We acquired waxed that day,” remembers tight finish Brevin Jordan, “and all of us had the identical query, like, ‘Are we gonna have one these seasons once more?’”

Stroud was furious, not merely on the loss however at the truth that he was the one one keen to step up and say one thing about it.

This was final September, six weeks earlier than Stroud would throw for extra passing yards in a recreation than any rookie ever, 4 months earlier than he’d turn out to be the youngest quarterback in NFL historical past to win a playoff recreation. This was earlier than perception in Houston actually began to construct, earlier than the remainder of the league began to understand this group wasn’t simply coming — it was coming quick.

Few contained in the constructing noticed a turnaround occurring this rapidly or this dramatically. However the margins are painfully small within the NFL, and generally seasons come right down to little moments, like when a rookie punctures the silence of a somber locker room and adjustments how his teammates see him — and themselves.

“Some individuals wanted to be referred to as out. The captains wanted to be referred to as out,” says defensive finish Will Anderson Jr., like Stroud a rookie captain on the time.

Jimmie Ward, a veteran security who’d come over from San Francisco that spring, sat at his stall that afternoon and watched from throughout the room. He was injured and didn’t play within the loss; in his thoughts, it didn’t really feel proper to tear into his new teammates, not with him in avenue garments and them in shoulder pads.

When Stroud was completed, Ward walked as much as him.

“You’re a rookie,” he advised him, “and that took some balls.”

The Texans have been studying the child who oozed California cool additionally had what Ward calls “this asshole facet to him.” They received their subsequent two video games by 44 factors.

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It’s early August. On a highschool area exterior of Cleveland, a half hour after a coaching camp apply has wrapped and two days earlier than the Texans face the Steelers in a preseason recreation, Nico Collins is sporting out the JUGS machine. Most of his teammates have boarded the bus and headed again to the resort. A number of linger on the sideline. Collins works alone.

The fourth-year wideout is eight toes from the machine, jogging in place, ready for a soccer to be fired. Snap. He snares it with one hand. These are popping out sizzling. Snap. He grabs one other, then faucets his toes down, like he’s inches from the sideline. He provides to the entire in his head. He’s nearing 20 with out a drop. Snap.

What seems ridiculously troublesome — what is ridiculously troublesome — Collins desires to show into second nature.

“Man,” he says a number of moments later, shaking his head, “C.J. was on us in the present day.”

It was a sloppy apply. The offense appeared terrible. Stroud missed throws and threw picks. Receivers broke off some routes early, others too late. The protection dominated, then gloated. At one level, after he was intercepted alongside the sideline, Stroud slammed his towel to the bottom in disgust. Then he referred to as his unit collectively.

“Gradual it down!” Collins remembers Stroud screaming within the huddle. “What number of occasions have we run this play? What number of occasions?

“Now lock in.”

That’s the facet to the younger quarterback teammates hadn’t seen till his eruption after the early-season loss to the Colts final 12 months. Stroud’s soft-spoken, laid-back persona belies an edge he’s at all times performed with — and now leads with. He doesn’t unleash it usually, preferring to select his spots. However when he does, teammates really feel the hearth. Quarterbacks don’t get far on this league being well mannered.

“Oh, he’ll snap at us,” Collins says. “Far more than you suppose.”

Stroud made it a degree final summer time to work quietly and earn the locker room’s respect. He was a rookie. He knew his place. Then the Texans stumbled to 0-2, and what irritated Stroud most throughout that loss to the Colts was how quiet the huddles have been. When the group gathered earlier than kickoff, he was the one one who mentioned something. After they did so once more after halftime, identical factor. So after coach DeMeco Ryans completed within the locker room, Stroud unloaded on them.

He knew he couldn’t be the one voice.

“Look, C.J.’s an awesome dude, all the fellows like him, however there’s simply sufficient prick to him, you already know what I imply? He’s acquired some canine in him,” says Texans defensive coordinator Matt Burke. “We’ve all been on groups the place the quarterback is separate from the remainder of the group — he sorta does his personal factor, and when he will get on guys, nobody actually listens, proper? However whenever you’ve acquired a man who’s acquired some s— about him, the group responds.”

Wideout Stefon Diggs, the group’s marquee offseason acquisition, felt it throughout Sunday’s season opener in Indianapolis. “At apply you see glimpses of it,” Diggs mentioned after catching two touchdowns. “He’ll sprinkle a little bit emotion on you, he’ll get on you a little bit bit. However come recreation time, he’s the true deal.”

That depth, Diggs mentioned, is important. Everybody on the offense is aware of what the expectation is, full cease. Stroud calls for it.

“He makes it simple to be a receiver,” Diggs added.

Diggs’ arrival this spring by way of commerce with the Payments, plus the additions of working again Joe Mixon and defensive finish Danielle Hunter, made it clear: the Texans are going for it. Final season’s 10-7 common season and shock run to the divisional spherical of the playoffs was sufficient to scrap the slog of a protracted rebuild.

The window had opened. They weren’t going to attend. With Stroud nonetheless on his rookie contract, Houston desires to take its shot within the crowded AFC.

The QB opened coaching camp in late July welcoming the hype, aware that the highlight shines most on the groups that matter. “Stress is a privilege,” Stroud likes to say, and it’s one thing he realized from his time at Ohio State. The Buckeyes would get each group’s finest shot each single week. He is aware of Houston isn’t sneaking up on anybody in 2024.

And with that comes the burden of expectation, one thing that’s buried groups earlier than them, groups that thought they have been able to contend solely to search out out the exhausting approach they weren’t even shut. “We’ve that massive purple goal on our again,” Stroud says. “That’s one thing we didn’t have final 12 months.”

Final season, Houston didn’t have a single regular-season recreation scheduled for a nationwide tv window; this 12 months the Texans are slated for 5, together with a marquee Christmas Day matchup with the Ravens, the group that bounced them from the playoffs in January. Season tickets bought out by July, a primary for the franchise in 5 years. Getting into Week 1, solely 5 groups had higher Tremendous Bowl odds. Stroud presently has the fourth-shortest odds for MVP.

A lot has modified for this metropolis, this franchise and this quarterback in 12 quick months.

“It’s not going to be simple. It’s going to be more durable,” Stroud says. “That’s how it is best to need it.”

It began Sunday in Indianapolis. The Colts have been determined to steal this one — they haven’t received a Week 1 recreation since 2013 and haven’t received an AFC South title since 2014. In the mean time, Houston stays Indy’s largest roadblock.

Within the first quarter, the Colts’ Anthony Richardson made the throw of the sport, possibly the 12 months.

With two minutes left within the fourth, Stroud made the throw that received it.

A false begin turned a third-and-6 right into a third-and-11. Main by two, the Texans wanted a conversion to forestall Richardson from getting one other probability. After the snap, Collins peeled towards the sideline, blanketed by Colts’ nook Jaylon Jones.

If there was a window, Stroud would possibly’ve been the one individual inside Lucas Oil Stadium to see it. The protection was very good.

Stroud fired. Jones acquired a finger on it. Collins saved his focus — the byproduct of all these reps on the JUGS machine — and someway snagged it. Then he acquired a foot down. Then a knee. The ridiculously troublesome had turn out to be second nature.

One Mixon run later, it was over. After the 29-27 win, Stroud was requested in regards to the completion to Collins. How on the earth did he match it in there?

He smiled. Then he repeated an previous quote Peyton Manning used to say on a regular basis.

“There’s no protection for the right throw.”

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9 months in the past, after their divisional playoff recreation in Baltimore, Stroud stood earlier than a lectern on the underside flooring of M&T Financial institution Stadium, sporting a sweatsuit, beanie and Asics trainers. It was his first lesson about how punishing postseason soccer may be. A tie recreation on the half had ballooned right into a 34-10 Ravens’ triumph.

One minute, the sport’s tight. The subsequent, you’re getting steamrolled out of the stadium.

“It’s robust getting embarrassed like that,” Stroud mentioned.

His face advised the story. He was drained.

“I’ve been going exhausting since I used to be like 12 years previous,” he mentioned. “AAU tournaments. Baseball. Soccer. 7-on-7. Highschool. It’s been a blessing. It’s been a ball. I’m 22 years previous, and that is my first time ever having freedom away from faculty, away from school.”

The climb was so fast, so consuming, that he’d by no means taken a minute to breathe. That cramped residence 40 miles east of Los Angeles that Stroud lived in along with his mother and siblings, the place he cried after getting his first Division 1 provide, nonetheless seems like yesterday. Then got here Ohio State. The draft. The S2 drama. Coaching camp. The season. And now, at simply 22 years previous, he was already one of many younger faces of the league, the quarterback some have been beginning to suppose may be ok to do what Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson up to now haven’t. That’s, beat Patrick Mahomes within the playoffs.

However first, earlier than the remainder of his profession might begin, Stroud wanted to get away. So he did. He performed within the Professional Bowl. He swung by media row on the Tremendous Bowl and broke down his personal movie. He hopped on podcasts. He taught soccer to excessive schoolers in China as a part of an Asian tour with Cowboys edge rusher Micah Parsons, threw out the primary pitch earlier than a baseball recreation in Japan, then educated with — effectively, kind of educated with — sumo wrestlers.

By the spring, Stroud couldn’t assist himself: he was lighting up the textual content thread once more, the identical one he used to ship teammates movie clips final season. Fairly quickly, the Texans’ ability place gamers, together with Diggs, have been assembly up for throwing periods. In Los Angeles. In Miami. Lastly, in Houston.

“Come on, you already know who deliberate these,” says receiver Tank Dell. “In fact 7 did.”

Burke, the Texans’ DC, felt Stroud’s urgency and inquisitiveness in any case of 1 apply final 12 months. After Stroud threw his first decide, he hunted down Burke after the exercise and requested him to clarify how he’d disguised the protection. The QB didn’t wanna get beat on that play once more. Burke was floored. “I used to be like, ‘Are you kidding?’” he says. “You’re keen on that. That piece of it, that want to be taught that stuff, that’s so vital.”

Hunter, the veteran defensive finish who arrived by way of free company this spring, has spent 9 seasons chasing quarterbacks on this league. What struck him throughout coaching camp was Stroud’s unflappability within the pocket. He’d tick by way of his reads with out hurrying, with out letting panic — a weak point game-wreckers like Hunter prey on — set in.

“He simply doesn’t fold underneath stress, when guys are coming,” Hunter says. “If it’s not there, he doesn’t attempt to do Superman stuff. You understand how massive that’s for a man his age?”

Factor is: Stroud can do Superman stuff. He received Offensive Rookie of the 12 months doing Superman stuff. Richardson’s beautiful 60-yard bomb on Sunday overshadowed a 55-yard second-quarter magnificence from Stroud to Collins that, per Subsequent Gen Stats, was essentially the most inconceivable completion of Stroud’s younger profession. Two Colts defenders have been inside a yard of Collins when the ball arrived.

CJ STROUD DEEP TO NICO COLLINS FOR 55 YARDS.

📺: #HOUvsIND on CBS/Paramount+
📱: https://t.co/waVpO909ge pic.twitter.com/pIG9hzf0CD

— NFL (@NFL) September 8, 2024

Stroud discovered the window. One way or the other. In terms of deep balls, few QBs within the league are higher.

“It simply appears so pure, really easy for him,” Collins says of his quarterback.

“It might appear simple, however it’s not,” Stroud says.

And it received’t be anytime quickly. Stroud is aware of the innocence of his rookie season is gone. Now he wants to win. The Texans’ first primetime recreation of 2024 arrives Sunday night time towards the Bears, and with it, one other take a look at to see in the event that they’re prepared to fulfill the second. The quarterback, too.

Stroud appears to relish it, at all times returning to that phrase of his: stress. He refuses to see it as a unfavourable. His story tells us he by no means has.

“We love that stress, and we need that stress,” he says. “There’s no actual reward if there’s no stress.”

(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; photograph: Tim Warner / Getty Pictures)