00:00Well, you brought this to my attention yesterday.
00:02I ended up seeing it on Twitter a few times
00:04after you'd put it in the rundown yesterday afternoon.
00:07I was shocked by this.
00:09ESPN's telecast, and this may explain some things
00:12as to why CJ has become a national punchline.
00:15Yeah.
00:16CJ Stroud.
00:18ESPN's telecast of Sunday's Texans-Patriots matchup,
00:22which, by the way, was at 2 o'clock in the afternoon on a Sunday.
00:25So what?
00:26Imprimed Monday night, 2 o'clock on a Sunday.
00:30The most watched event in ESPN history,
00:34dating back to the network's launch in 1979,
00:38with 38 million viewers.
00:40That's damn near a Super Bowl audience.
00:42I mean, it's in the neighborhood.
00:43The game also ranks as Disney's most watched sporting event
00:47outside of a Super Bowl across nearly three decades
00:50of live sports coverage.
00:52We're bigger than Snow White, baby.
00:53We are.
00:54Yes.
00:56We are bigger than Beauty and the Beast.
00:58We're bigger than anything Disney's ever seen up in here.
01:01We are bigger than Mickey Mouse.
01:03Hell yeah.
01:04It's going to be named the Texans Corporation.
01:07There was.
01:07Well, no, this is the thing about CJ Stroud,
01:08because now we've gotten to that point where, all right,
01:11the initial backlash was incredible and strong,
01:14including by yours truly.
01:15There is also that dynamic where we know is that, okay,
01:20CJ did all these things in the playoffs that were so sloppy
01:23and so reckless, really.
01:26I think reckless is a fair word to use.
01:28The pick six was 100% reckless.
01:30Some of the chances he was taking with the football.
01:32What's especially frustrating for us in Houston is that we saw CJ learn how to
01:39manage risk and be so much smarter about all of that stuff
01:43and really became more of a veteran quarterback during the regular season this
01:47year.
01:48And it didn't make for glittering offensive numbers,
01:50but it was the winning recipe for this specific football team.
01:53So the really shocking thing for me was to see all of that go out the window
01:57in the playoffs.
01:58I genuinely did not think that was going to happen.
02:01Even after the Pittsburgh game,
02:02I didn't think it was possible for him to be as reckless with the football
02:05as he went on double down on it.
02:09People outside of Houston largely are looking at it.
02:13They'll look at CJ's regular season numbers,
02:15and then they see this performance in the Patriots game,
02:17and they think that this is what he is and has been all year.
02:20And that's unfair.
02:22So two things can be true.
02:24I am personally really disappointed in CJ's performance in the playoffs.
02:28But also I don't think it's as extreme as what a lot of the Dan Orlovsky's
02:35or Ryan Clark's or anybody else has kind of been framing it on television
02:39over the course of the last week.
02:41Okay.
02:41So where is your confidence level that CJ gets his mojo back in 2026 right now?
02:47It's not high.
02:47It's not high.
02:49Partly just because I feel like it's tied to the concussion this year.
02:53And that's the big question is what is this hurdle that he has to overcome
02:57with recognizing and understanding when to run, et cetera, et cetera.
03:02It's almost like back to square one when he was coming out of college
03:05and he had to be encouraged to run.
03:07Yeah.
03:07But then the other side of it, too, is simply that he needs to overcome
03:12tough circumstances on the road.
03:15Yeah.
03:15And that's something before or after the concussion, anything else,
03:19the offense just – like no offense operates as well on the road in bad weather
03:25as it is going to be at home underneath the roof.
03:28But there's just too big of a gap with CJ right now.
03:31He's got to get more – he's got to be able to be the same guy
03:34whether it's on the road or at home.
03:35I don't think you nerd out over ratings and viewership as much as I do.
03:38In fact, I know that you don't.
03:40But were you shocked that that was the most watched event in ESPN?
03:45I mean, we're talking nearly 10.
03:48The only part that holds me back a little bit is I know over the last few years
03:51they've done a – I don't know if better is the right word.
03:54They've done a better job of monitoring the streaming numbers and everything
03:58and adding all that to it.
03:59I think there was a gap there for a while where there were a lot of people
04:02watching via different means, but it was the old school Nielsen ratings
04:05and things of – they've just gotten better at tabulating things.
04:08I'm just saying if you had told me – like if you had asked me before the weekend
04:12what do you think would get more – what do you think will have a bigger viewership,
04:16the Texans Monday night game against the Steelers
04:18or a Sunday afternoon game against the Patriots?
04:21I would have said the Monday night game just based on the primetime dynamics of it.
04:24Yeah.
04:24You know?
04:25That's just crazy to me.
04:2638 million viewers watch that game.
04:29I have zero clue about what percentage of this is people streaming
04:32or watching on their computers or anything.
04:34I know it's always lower than you expect.
04:35Yeah.
04:36It's still the vast majority of people are watching on their televisions,
04:38but I wonder if now that people can watch it from so many different places
04:43that on a weekend afternoon it's easier to – like, okay, great,
04:47I've got this volleyball tournament, but I'm going to be able to watch most of the game.
04:52Yeah, and you're not staying up until all hours of the night watching it either.
04:56Yeah, and so it's easier to work it in.
04:59I mean, there's so many times where I've watched slash consumed a game
05:03by three different mediums where, okay, I'm going to watch the first hour at home
05:07and then I'm going to be able to listen on the radio or on an app
05:11as I'm driving to wherever I'm going, and then I'll watch on my phone when I get there.
05:15Yep, yep.
05:16All right, you pulled these three bits of audio.
05:18We probably won't get to all three of them here in the open,
05:21so I'm going to let you put the quarter in the jukebox
05:23and pick which of these you want to play.
05:24Well, let's go with Greg Cassell from NFL.
05:27Let's know him.
05:28He's been at NFL Films forever, and he's on Ross Tucker,
05:31our dear friend's podcast every week.
05:33This is just a little snippet of what Cassell said about C.J. Stroud
05:37on the Ross Tucker Show.
05:38I mean, C.J. – I can only go by watching tape.
05:41I don't know what's in his head, but C.J. Stroud has become a quarterback
05:44that plays incredibly fast.
05:46His mental and physical processes become speeded up way too soon.
05:52He perceives pressure that's often not there.
05:55When he can't play in rhythm, you can almost see his body language in the pocket.
05:59Everything becomes faster.
06:00I thought Troy Aikman spoke about it really well during the telecast.
06:04The last two years have been difficult.
06:06They've got to figure out what it is.
06:08You know, if he's the guy, you know, he's going into his fourth year.
06:11But the last two years, for the most part, with few exceptions,
06:17he's not been a comfortable player.
06:19Everything's happening too fast for him.
06:22And I think I see, going back to what I said earlier,
06:26I don't think that's necessarily fair to frame it as the version of C.J.
06:31in the playoffs is the same guy that he's been this season.
06:34Because I do think that C.J. did a really good job this year.
06:38When Cassell says playing fast as a quarterback, that's not a compliment.
06:42You know, that's it.
06:42You're like, okay, you're trying, you're hurrying to get through your reads.
06:45You're not letting the kind of the game come to you and really read the defense.
06:50I think in some respects, he got faster in a good way.
06:53And he was more willing to take the first, you know, the first read
06:57or to check it down and do all those things.
07:00I do think that there have been times, though, when,
07:02especially when the pass protection is struggling,
07:04where he doesn't show the same level of composure that he has at times.
07:09And that part is still finding that balance.
07:12And that's where I try to remind myself that, okay, he's 24 years old.
07:15It's his third year in the league.
07:16It's his second offensive coordinator.
07:18He did make progress this year.
07:20Yeah, he did.
07:21It's just that some of the times in these last couple playoff games
07:25where he drops his eyes and he's staring at the rush,
07:28those are the things that look like a frazzled quarterback.
07:31Yeah.
07:31You know, a quarterback that just doesn't quite,
07:34isn't quite confident in knowing what he's going to do next.
07:37That's the part that was a surprise to me.
07:39My, the biggest chunk of schedule where I had the most massive concern for C.J. Stroud
07:47in his time in the NFL, and I've said this many times, but I'll say it again,
07:51was the week seven, eight, and nine of year two when they played Green Bay
07:56and he had like 80 yards passing and got his ass kicked in that game.
07:59They played Indianapolis the next week here.
08:01He got his ass kicked in that game.
08:02And then the Halloween night game against the Jets.
08:05And he got his ass handed to him in that game.
08:08Just, I'm talking purely pressure and hits and all these things.
08:12And those were the three games where it started to look different than,
08:17in terms of comfort in the pocket, than rookie year C.J.
08:19and early, early 2024 C.J.
08:22And my, my fears at that time were, man, I, I hope, I hope that this offensive line
08:28doesn't turn C.J. into this jumpy, jittery version that we're seeing these three games.
08:35And it ebbed and flowed at times, but that jumpy, jittery version always came back at some point.
08:40And it came back at the worst possible time in the playoffs this year.
08:44It's interesting, because when C.J. has tried to force things when things aren't going well,
08:51as, as everybody knows, it's really, really tough for quarterbacks when you get pressure up the middle,
08:56including not just free rushers, but just guys in your lap.
09:00And you watch some guys like Phillip Rivers through the years.
09:03It was amazing at just kind of being able to throw darts from a compressed phone booth.
09:10It wasn't even a phone booth.
09:12It was a tiny little phone booth.
09:14And he was able to kind of pick people apart over the middle,
09:17even though there were people surrounding him all over the place.
09:21And I don't think that that's, I don't think most quarterbacks can do that, even the great ones.
09:25And it felt like in the Steelers game and in the Patriots game,
09:28there were times where C.J. thought he could be that guy.
09:31And I don't think that's the guy he needs to try to be.
09:34He needs to be the guy, kind of like Lamar Jackson developed into,
09:38that is really good at just using subtle pocket movement.
09:41All right, there's pressure.
09:43Because we've seen this out of C.J.
09:45It's not about scrambling.
09:47And it's not about standing tall in the pocket when you have people in your lap.
09:51It's about taking that one and a half steps to your left.
09:53It's about just micro movement in the pocket to find that lane to get it.
09:58And I think he's really good at that when, or he has been really good at that in moments.
10:02And I think that's what he needs to continue to develop to do.
10:04But you look at that Steelers game, and he's kind of trying to throw darts with commotion all around him.
10:10And that's where it's just, it's too loose and reckless right now.
Comments