- 1 day ago
There’s no more defending C.J. Stroud after yesterday. The path was clear, the defense was great, and the opportunity was there — so what did that performance actually tell us about him? ITL digs into whether this was just a bad game or something more revealing, and asks the hard question: will Stroud ultimately be the guy?
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00:00And I'm in mourning, although that might not even be the emotion
00:03that a majority of our listenership feels.
00:05I think it might be.
00:06I think it's anger.
00:07If I'm going to be honest, I think it's anger out there in Texan land.
00:11It's anger, and it's anger at one person, and I don't think it's even unfair.
00:16I really don't.
00:18This was a championship-level defense that performed at a championship level again.
00:24The story now and for the next several months,
00:28really into next season going into the postseason next season
00:31if they go to the postseason again.
00:33It's still going to be C.J. Stroud.
00:36C.J. Stroud, there's no more defending him.
00:41No more, yeah, but he does have these throws in him,
00:45and he has made these plays.
00:47For the first time ever, I'm not sure C.J. Stroud has it in him
00:53or ever will have it in him to be a championship-level quarterback.
00:58That's how bad yesterday was.
01:00And I'm not trying.
01:02It's not like just the anger of the moment and the one and two
01:05and three and four interceptions gets you in a certain place
01:09where you're just mad.
01:10No, I think it was loud and clear, man.
01:13I think it was very vivid.
01:15There is something about C.J. Stroud that just isn't it.
01:20It just isn't it.
01:21I mean, maybe it'll change, but that alone, hoping for change,
01:25is just hope at this point.
01:27Yeah, hope isn't a game plan.
01:30Hope isn't a strategy.
01:32But let's dig into it.
01:33And I have to start by also saying,
01:36happy Martin Luther King Day as we go ahead
01:38and eviscerate the black quarterback here.
01:40But no, I think the thing I will implore you,
01:44actually that's not fair because it's a reaction Monday.
01:46It's the day in which everybody wants to have their emotions.
01:48I'll say we will try and have more level conversation.
01:52And we'll try and have a level conversation here amongst ourselves inherently.
01:55We got a whole week.
01:57We got a whole offseason to have like the larger conversations.
02:00I kind of want to stick to how you felt about this game,
02:02where you feel about C.J. in this moment.
02:04And so I want to allow room for everybody to be a little bit reactionary.
02:07But you know me.
02:09I try and fight being reactionary.
02:12I hear and I very much felt viscerally everybody who goes,
02:16C.J. isn't it, I don't need to see him ever again.
02:19I feel that.
02:21It was an abysmal game.
02:22I don't even know.
02:23I need to break out the thesaurus, there we go,
02:27to find the right word that captures just how bad of a performance that was
02:33without having to do the, you know,
02:35but there were some good things in there.
02:36No, no, no, no.
02:37If you wanted to find a single solitary reason why this game was lost,
02:41you have to look no further than C.J. Stroud wearing number seven there.
02:43The thing that is tough for me, though,
02:45is I end up being susceptible to the thought of,
02:50all right, the pieces are there, you got to put it all together.
02:54Except this was a game in which we thought you could only,
02:58he would only do this once.
02:59Just this is so anomalous, the type of play from who he has been,
03:03that it makes me, it makes me ponder like everything I know
03:07and everything I hold to be dear, right?
03:09Like he, this is a quarterback that we've seen protect the football
03:12relatively recently.
03:13This is a quarterback that we've seen make the throws that he was
03:15constantly missing, throwing behind people.
03:17A dude that at one point had been talked about as a, you know,
03:21incredibly accurate, what is it, ball placement specialist type quarterback.
03:25You couldn't get anywhere close to calling him that in that game
03:28to the point where he got dudes injured with how poorly he was throwing
03:31the football in this game.
03:33He got dudes injured.
03:34He's going to get people fired.
03:36That's the double whammy right there.
03:37I mean, there are going to be, there will be firings over there.
03:40We'll get to that at some point, but let me just tell you why I think,
03:43you know, it's, it's one thing for you and me and Figgy and our listeners
03:46to say, yeah, I don't think he's the guy.
03:49They're, they're thinking about that in there.
03:51They're, no matter what they say post game, no matter, you know,
03:54how they, you know, diligent and, you know, sort of just straightforward
03:59and try to be, they're wondering in NRG, is he the guy?
04:04If they're not, they're not doing their job.
04:06So the fact that we can, we can say he was that bad, we can say, I'm not sure
04:12he has it in to be a championship level quarterback, that we can say there's
04:16no defending him.
04:17That's one thing, but how are they going to defend him in there?
04:21Not just, not just the front office, not just coaches, but his teammates.
04:25I know Will Anderson said his thing.
04:27We'll hear from that later, but, but in their heart of hearts collectively,
04:30I don't see how they can feel he's the guy.
04:35It's, it's funny you say that.
04:36Cause this was D'Amico Ryan's after the game.
04:38And I was very curious to listen to post game because D'Amico Ryan's tends to be
04:44who he is.
04:45And D'Amico Ryan's a very positive, very rah, rah, like that's in, I don't say
04:49rah, rah in a, you know, pejorative way or to try and like demean him.
04:53Cause I do think that he believes in, he's very much a, I need to uplift type of
04:56guy, but I was intrigued to hear the way that he would talk about his
04:59quarterback in what was a terrible, awful, no good game afterwards that this
05:04is what he said about, you know, what he said to CJ after the game,
05:07keep your head up.
05:08I love you.
05:09Like I got your back.
05:11And that's what I told him at halftime.
05:12This whole team has your back.
05:13Like we were in this thing together from day one.
05:17Like it, it doesn't change for me.
05:20Like we have a really special group, a tight knit group.
05:24You know, when things don't go your way, you have bad performances.
05:28It's not a, a time to point fingers or say it's on one person.
05:33If anybody is all, it all starts with me for me as the head coach of this team, we
05:38didn't perform well, obviously I didn't have a ready to go in this moment.
05:42So that starts with me, that we stick together.
05:45That can't be true.
05:48It shouldn't be true.
05:49It should not be true.
05:51You're the head coach and your quarterback, by the way, it wasn't a performance.
05:53It was performances.
05:55Plural.
05:56Yeah.
05:56You got the benefit of in spite of his performance last week.
06:00Yeah.
06:01Or maybe you could say that there was some, he at least made someplace to redeem at
06:05least some portions of it in Pittsburgh.
06:07There was none of that in this game.
06:09It got worse in a way that was weird.
06:10And the reason why this frustrated me to so, to no end one is because I don't like being
06:15wrong.
06:16And we spent all of last week talking about that felt like an anomaly.
06:20He should bounce back.
06:21He did not bounce back.
06:22And I know that some people, very small portion of people will say, well, there was the snow.
06:27Maybe that affected it.
06:28It was one of the questions I asked, like, how much was the cold?
06:30I don't think any of those things are there.
06:32We've seen him make those throws before.
06:33We've seen him protect the football in this system before.
06:36It feels like it's between the ears.
06:38It is.
06:38John Lopez.
06:39And between the ears gets tough because that's not something you could see.
06:43That's not something you can MRI.
06:44That's not something that you can, you know, do some imaging on to get a figure of.
06:48This is something that's really hard to diagnose.
06:50The thing that I felt most comfortable being able to say about C.J.
06:53Stroud's between the ears is all his play felt very much like a lack of trust.
06:58It's something that it's kind of been an undercurrent of things that we've talked about
07:00in this season with C.J.
07:03Stroud is, is he going to buy into what this offense is asking?
07:06And after times of feeling like he had done that, this felt like a
07:09complete rejection of what this offense was.
07:11It felt like he was trying so hard to make things happen.
07:14And with this, we could track this back to last week as well.
07:17It's Pittsburgh.
07:18Some of these things where he's allowing the pressure to get to him, hitting him so hard
07:22to make a play.
07:23It almost felt like to me, and correct me if you think I'm wrong here.
07:25He did not believe that the opportunities for explosives would be created in this offense
07:30that he had to make it himself.
07:31It felt like he went hero mode in a way where the constant, constant refrain from this coaching
07:36staff has been, you don't got to be a hero.
07:38You just got to do enough.
07:39Well, here's the thing, though.
07:41That's also on him.
07:42Sure.
07:43Because it's one of two things at this point with C.J. Stroud.
07:46And this is why, for the first time, even when there were bad moments, this is the first
07:51time I am looking at C.J. Stroud, and I don't know.
07:53I don't know if he has it in him to be a championship-level quarterback.
07:56It's one of two things.
07:57He's either emotionally fragile, and we saw it.
08:01We saw the look on his face in Pittsburgh and in New England.
08:05We saw the confusion, the lost look, the lack of confidence.
08:08We saw all of that.
08:09He's either emotionally fragile, or he's not the teammate that he and others say he is.
08:15Because if he were, even though this may not be the best offense, the best approach philosophy
08:21for him, he'd have not done the stupid-ass things he did.
08:24I'm sorry, they were freaking stupid.
08:28Everything that he should have done, take the sack, man.
08:31Throw it in the dirt, man.
08:32Okay, do this or do that.
08:35He wouldn't have done that if he were the teammate that they say he is, and he says he is.
08:40No, and I'm with you.
08:42I think that that's what makes this more complex.
08:43It's not as simple as C.J. is bad, because that would be wrong.
08:46We've seen C.J. be a good quarterback.
08:49We've seen C.J. at the very least, if you don't want to agree with that statement,
08:52we've seen C.J. demonstrate a lot of, if not all, of the pieces that would be necessary
08:56to be a good quarterback.
08:57When it's time for you to put it together, especially with the mental aspect of this,
09:01and I think that is the complexity that this organization has to contend with right now
09:06as people are immediately jumping to the fifth-year option,
09:10the how do you handle the possibility of negotiation contracts and all that.
09:15I think that that is much more difficult than being able to go cut and dry this guy isn't good.
09:20The idea is he has the pieces, but how do you pull it all together?
09:23And what's deeply frustrating is in a year where you've tried to make it as easy for him,
09:28it felt like he wouldn't have made it more difficult for himself.
09:30Well, and then to make matters worse, you know, he has that performance yesterday.
09:35The whole NFL football world is watching, and so you start to think,
09:40okay, well, how does he bounce back?
09:41You know, how does he come back?
09:43Well, I just said he's emotionally fragile or he's not a good teammate.
09:45Are either of those two things going to change after something like yesterday,
09:51which if you are emotionally fragile, is going to leave the kind of scar that lingers,
09:56is going to leave the kind of scar mentally and emotionally that is going to make you not rally,
10:01but maybe wither, you know?
10:03You know what threw me off about this, though,
10:06because you said maybe he's not the guy that people think he is.
10:10I forgot how you phrased it a little bit.
10:12He's not the championship level.
10:13For the first time, I'm wondering if he is.
10:15The thing that really threw me off, and I don't think we talked about it as much,
10:19but after the Pittsburgh game, remember he was going in the tunnel,
10:23and the fan was heckling him, and he said,
10:26ah-ha, you mad?
10:27Yeah.
10:28I thought that was kind of weird to me, man,
10:31because to me, he didn't have a type of game where I could be like, ah-ha, you know?
10:36Yeah.
10:37You're not alone.
10:38He followed, and he followed that game, man.
10:43Something don't seem right, man.
10:45It's one thing if you had your head down and you just ignore all of that stuff
10:49and you had some personal things going on.
10:50Yeah.
10:51But you got time to sit there and heckle a fan like that?
10:54If he is going to come back from this, Reggie,
10:56he has to have it in him to be emotionally strong,
11:00able to get over it, build on it, buy back in, and be strong mentally.
11:06Has he shown us any of that?
11:11That's tough because there's been small moments,
11:14but now I'm trying to hold on to flashes, small flashes,
11:18and make them into the whole cloth,
11:20and I don't think that's a reasonable thing to do in this moment.
11:22Yeah, you can't do that, man.
11:23That's not a reasonable thing to do in this moment.
11:24A lot of quarterbacks have flashes.
11:26Yeah.
11:26And that's the tough part about this, and just the general mentality.
11:31I think that there's ways that you can talk and make it sound good of, you know.
11:35In fact, let's hear from C.J. Stroud here,
11:37and maybe this will make you more mad, but you know what?
11:39It's a day to be mad, I guess.
11:40This is C.J. Stroud when he was asked what was the cause
11:44for the uncharacteristic turnovers in this game.
11:46I mean, I think just trying to make plays, you know,
11:48trying to push the ball down the field and, you know,
11:51put our team in a position to score.
11:54So my intention is never to get to do that, you know,
11:57and sometimes it just doesn't go your way, and, you know,
12:00that happened today, and I take full responsibility.
12:02You know, something I'm going to learn from is just, you know,
12:06ball security is everything, especially, you know,
12:08the way our defense has played all year.
12:10And it's something that I've done a pretty good job of, you know,
12:13up to this point.
12:13So I'm going to continue to, you know, get better in that area.
12:16And, you know, I'm not happy with myself when it comes to that
12:19because, I mean, I'm giving from our team.
12:22And we have so many great players on our team, great, you know,
12:26you know, offense, defense, special teams.
12:28And the way our defense played all year, just, I'm just very, you know,
12:32I'm not happy with, you know, with that.
12:34Lopez, you know, one of the things for me that I absolutely despise
12:38is the, almost the office-esque, I will, I accept responsibility,
12:44but it only really happens in lip service.
12:47Because you brought up the, you know, Figgy, the Pittsburgh Steelers
12:50after the game, pointing and laughing at the crowd, saying,
12:53aha, you mad after a game in which you did not do enough
12:56to help that result be positive.
12:58That feels like, and then going in in the postgame and saying,
13:01you know, it was, you know, there were some bad plays,
13:03but I also still did some good things.
13:05This is where the feeling of accepting responsibility doesn't land.
13:09Especially not outside that building, but also, like, I know in the building,
13:12they're like, hey, you know, we defend our guy CJ or what have you.
13:15But that breaks at a point.
13:17I asked you guys in a text, do you feel like we might be reaching 2017 Jaguars?
13:22And if you remember, 2017 Jaguars were a team that went to the actual
13:25AFC Championship game.
13:26Goodness.
13:27They almost cussed on air.
13:28They went to the AFC Championship game.
13:29They had a good defense.
13:30They had a great defense, and Blake Bortles was out there messing stuff up.
13:33And that broke, their defense broke themselves apart
13:36because they were tired of carrying the quarterback.
13:39And they're saying the right things, and this is a lot of saying the right things,
13:42whether it's CJ Stroud saying, oh, man, I learned from this.
13:45I can't need to be.
13:46But this is a second game in a row when your team needs you to be right,
13:49where you did not, where you were not right,
13:51and your defense put on a show in this game.
13:54I think they did all that you could possibly expect in this game.
13:57You mentioned one of the two things that jumps out from what we just heard.
14:02I'm just trying to make big plays, take my shots.
14:05It's not what you're supposed to do right now.
14:07You're only supposed to do that when it's there,
14:09not throw the balls dead ass straight up in the air so somebody can take it.
14:12He was throwing a punt.
14:13He was throwing a punt.
14:14You know, that is basic stuff.
14:18That was an insult to good football.
14:20And then the other thing that he said there is, I'm going to learn from it.
14:24When?
14:26When?
14:26How?
14:27I think the issue I had with this answer right here,
14:30this answer would have been fine last week after the win.
14:34Or week six or something.
14:35He could have gave this answer last week after the win, but he didn't.
14:41He pretty much said he had a few mistakes, but, you know, we won the game pretty much.
14:46I want to hear it now.
14:48You had four interceptions in this game.
14:49Exactly.
14:50You had four interceptions in this game.
14:52Could have been five or six.
14:53Could have been a lot more,
14:54and I'll give you the leeway on Xavier Hutchinson letting the ball bounce off his hands.
14:59I don't know what was going on with them two.
15:01They weren't on the same page at all.
15:03Well, I mean, this is where you can talk about the fact that your two best receivers are out in this game.
15:07Your two best, maybe best, or at least most veteran offensive linemen end up being out at points in this game.
15:15And you can talk about all those other things.
15:17And we will talk about all those other things,
15:19because it's not a singular circumstance that lost you this football game.
15:22But the big one that carries a lot of the weight is that C.J. Stroud was awful in this game.
15:26And that's going to be a hard thing to contend with,
15:28because C.J. Stroud has been questionable at other points in the season,
15:32and he has not been able to get anywhere near or recapture the same heat that you were able to get in his rookie season.
15:37And that's problematic in this league.
15:39You can't have a quarterback long in his tenure.
15:43It's supposed to be, even if the development isn't linear, it's supposed to be a general upward trend.
15:47And I can't say that a C.J. right now.
15:48And you talk about regressing, and we're going to get into more of this,
15:50but just the biggest thing for me with how emotionally broken and emotionally fragile he has become
15:57and is in this system and this offense and with this team is the easy throws he made look the hardest.
16:05The easy throws that he normally, you know, quote-unquote ball placement specialist,
16:09which let's put that in the basement for a while.
16:13Yeah, you've got to earn that one back.
16:14You've got to win that one back from me.
16:16This is like when your mama took away your game boy, when you're being bad.
16:20No, you've got to be good to get that one back, big dog.
16:22He was the easiest throws he was making look different.
16:25That's the sign of a guy that is just shook completely, mentally broken.
16:29And I think that the reason why I know that it's easy to go, C.J. is soft.
16:33And maybe that's true at this point.
16:35Like, what do I have to be able to put against you if you want to say that?
16:38The thing that I think is more difficult is C.J. is stubborn and unwilling to go with the plan.
16:45Like, because again, the ideas of I'm out here making plays,
16:48not really what we're being asked of you in those moments.
16:51The plays that were there to be made, cool, not manufacturing them out of whole cloth.
16:56And that is the thing that is most frustrating because a quarterback that is operating out of like almost descent
17:02is one that's not going to be able to work with the larger construct of the team.
17:07And that's the thing that's more complex.
17:09Like, bad is one thing.
17:11And it's not going to be a good thing to deal with.
17:13It's not going to be anything that anybody is happy about.
17:15A quarterback that was almost insubordinate, which is not quite the word that I want.
17:19No, I think you're right.
17:20But just the game plan is the thing that is most complex because what causes you to get there?
17:27Because it doesn't feel like C.J. Stroud is normally that.
17:30But here you are dealing with that on the larger stage in front of the hoes, right?
17:35And on the biggest stage that the Texans had and an opportunity to reach new ground,
17:39he particularly, he particularly soiled himself.
17:42And that's tough to deal with.
17:43Do you think Davis Mills could have possibly, if he was playing, could have won this game?
17:48That is a question that we'll have to deal with.
17:49And we'll have to talk about because D'Amico Ryan's never considered it.
17:54But there was a real possibility that that was the right answer to make at points in this game.
17:59A lot of things to still talk about in what was a very, very frustrating.
18:02I feel myself yelling.
18:03I apologize.
18:04Let me walk this down.
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