- 2 hours ago
Seth and Sean discuss Sean's Penderpoll he put up on how fans feel about CJ Stroud, their personal thoughts on it, and what DeMeco had to say about CJ Stroud reaching out to new teammates and expectations for Nick Caley in year 2.
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00:00Well, yesterday, by way of a Sean Pendergast poll, we may have discovered that there's actually more bubbling optimism about
00:08C.J. Stroud amongst the fan base than we have previously thought.
00:10Yeah, yeah, or maybe, I would say, or maybe a lack of pessimism, you know?
00:14There you go.
00:15Yeah, like it's, uh, yeah.
00:16In this cruel world, that passes for optimism.
00:19Yeah, well, the, uh, and I'm talking about the middle ground.
00:22Oh, I know what you're talking about because, yeah, I put up a poll yesterday about C.J.
00:27Let's pull that up right now, as long as you're bringing it up.
00:30Um, I put up a poll that had four choices on it yesterday for the people about where they're at
00:35with C.J.
00:36Stroud.
00:36And when we, when we, uh, I put it up like seven o'clock or something.
00:40There's an hour left to vote in it if you want to.
00:42So, yeah, about 7 a.m.
00:43yesterday.
00:44And the four choices to the question, which choice best describes how you feel about C.J.
00:50Stroud and his future as a Texans franchise QB, all in.
00:56I'm in, but cautiously so.
00:58So, very much wait and see, and then I'm out on C.J.
01:02Stroud.
01:02So, a decreasing level of optimism with each choice.
01:05Um, most of the world lives in that middle ground of I'm in, but I'm cautiously in, very
01:12much wait and see.
01:12Seventy-four percent of the people voted either one of those two.
01:17Yeah.
01:17Um, the, the thing, and I think this is what you're referring to because I texted you about
01:21this yesterday.
01:21When we, when we looked at the results early on in the nine o'clock hour yesterday, only
01:2712% of the people were in, all in on C.J.
01:30Stroud and 9% of the people were out.
01:32Yeah.
01:33Since our show ended, he's all the way up over 20% of people being all in.
01:39That's a lot.
01:40That's a big jump for, uh, you know, an afternoon of people voting on a Twitter poll.
01:44The cable news networks told me it was in the bag.
01:46Yeah.
01:47Is it?
01:47And then all of a sudden.
01:488% is a big move.
01:51Big move.
01:52So, you're right.
01:52The optimism was flowing.
01:54These pollsters.
01:55Yeah.
01:55I think that if you, if you really look at it, I would say that 94% of the people
02:01that
02:01responded to this poll are somewhere on the spectrum between realism or maybe a, a, a certain
02:10skepticism, but not negativity all the way up into diehard.
02:15We're into it.
02:1620% of people are all in on C.J.
02:18Stroud.
02:18Yeah.
02:19And I think you could say 62% of the people are optimistic.
02:23Yeah.
02:23Might be cautiously, more cautiously optimistic than optimistic, but 62% optimism.
02:29That's exactly the numbers.
02:30The rest, uh, either, either realism or pessimism.
02:32Yeah.
02:32And where, again, I think the people who weren't listening yesterday are wondering where do we
02:37fall on this.
02:38If you were to vote, if you were to vote in this Pender poll, where would you have put
02:42your chips?
02:42I'm right at very much wait and see, which I think the optimists would classify that as
02:47pessimism because it's further over to the left than where they are.
02:51But, uh, but I, I feel like that's a more, for me, the, the fact that the Texans don't
02:58want, well, I don't know this.
03:00I'm, I'm guessing the Texans aren't all that eager about to give C.J.
03:03Stroud an extension this year.
03:05That is a reflection of the way I feel.
03:08I feel like I still need one more year to really figure out exactly who C.J.
03:13is as a quarterback and how does he operate with, uh, in the second year of this offense
03:17with better pieces around him.
03:19Yeah.
03:19If we were to categorize, I would say, cause I would vote I'm in, but cautiously.
03:23So, so I think I'm a, I'm probably a tick above you maybe on this scale.
03:27I think like the, I'm all in, those are optimists.
03:30I think the, I'm out, those are pessimists.
03:32And then I think everything in between that 74% or whatever is realists.
03:37You know, it's, it's, it's, we don't know there's, there was enough, there's been enough
03:42evidence on both sides to, to take either, to take either end of it and make a decent
03:47argument that he's the guy or he's not the guy.
03:49So yeah, I, I'm, I am optimistic that he's the guy, but I'm not all in right now on.
03:56I think the, the two guys that I always try to remind myself with, with quarterbacks and
04:01to remember that, look, everybody's got a different runway for how well they advance in the NFL.
04:06And I think Eli Manning and Alex Smith might be a couple of the best example of guys where
04:14it was a long burn in period and they did it with the same team.
04:18There's other guys like Sam Darnold or, you know, Baker Mayfield or whomever else where
04:22you can say, wow, it took however long for those guys to really emerge.
04:26Geno Smith.
04:26But they also, they kind of had their best football with a team that was different than
04:31who drafted them.
04:32That's right.
04:33Alex Smith and Eli Manning went through what was more typical back in the day, which is,
04:39all right, this is our guy.
04:40We might have to try a couple different offensive coordinators, my different head coach in the
04:45case of Alex Smith and over the course of their first few years in the NFL, they, they
04:50figured out a way to get it together.
04:52And I think you want CJ Stroud ceiling to be higher than Alex Smith, but I, that's where
04:59I am with CJ right now.
05:00He's shown a lot of really good stuff.
05:01He's shown a lot of questionable stuff, but he's also still a young quarterback.
05:05Yeah, no question.
05:06Well, and all those guys you just named other than Geno are guys who were tippy top picks
05:11in the draft too.
05:12I mean, these are guys who had a similar pedigree to CJ Stroud, Alex Smith, Baker Mayfield.
05:18Who are you named?
05:20Eli Manning.
05:20Eli Manning.
05:21Those are all number one picks in the draft.
05:23Sam Darnold is number three pick in the draft.
05:25So these are all guys who, other than Geno Smith, who are guys that were thought to be
05:30franchise quarterbacks for the teams that selected them.
05:33I think if you, if you look at Eli Manning, for instance, and we'll just go by QBR cause
05:39it's easy and I know don't read too much into it, but the general trend with him in his
05:45third year in the NFL, he had a 48.6 Q bar QBR, which is like a little bit below
05:50average
05:51fourth year, 52, fifth year, 66, sixth year, 71.7.
05:58And the, like, so that's, that's one of the closest, which one, which one is that again?
06:03Which quarterback?
06:03Eli Manning.
06:04Eli Manning.
06:04Okay.
06:04Yeah.
06:05Yeah.
06:06Um, sorry.
06:06Uh, yeah.
06:07So like it was a, it was a slow burn in for him and we don't have the patience for
06:11that.
06:12I mean, I would say in this day and age, it's not like giants fans had a whole bunch of
06:16patients back in 2006 either, but they did or 1986 or 1966.
06:22Yeah.
06:22They did manage to win a Superbowl in 2007.
06:24They did.
06:25So I, that's where I am with CJ right now.
06:28I'm trying to remind myself that man, it's, it's not always so simple and you don't want
06:32to be the team like where with the jets.
06:35Okay.
06:36You got to look at yourself if you're the jets right now and say, the problem is that the
06:39us, not Sam Darnold.
06:41That's right.
06:41This is an us thing.
06:42Yep.
06:43This isn't a Sam Darnold thing.
06:44Yeah.
06:45The Browns.
06:45This is an us thing.
06:46Not a Baker Mayfield thing.
06:48Yep.
06:49The Raiders.
06:50The Jets again.
06:51This was an us thing.
06:51Not a Geno Smith thing.
06:53Yeah.
06:53Yeah.
06:53Yeah.
06:53I think the Raiders I would put into that category, which would terrify me if I was Fernando
06:58Mendoza.
06:59So we'll see.
06:59Maybe Clint Kubiak gets that going.
07:02Speaking of CJ, D'Amico Ryans.
07:03This is a, we've still got some breadcrumbs of audio left over from the owners meeting
07:08this week that we haven't played on this show yet.
07:10But as long as we're talking about CJ, D'Amico talking about CJ's off season and how much
07:14he loves it.
07:15CJ is reaching out to his new teammates.
07:17He's the first guy.
07:18Like, can I get a guy number?
07:20Can I reach out?
07:20He wants to reach out to those guys and really welcome them, you know, to the Texas family.
07:25And it means so much to him.
07:27And it means so much to us.
07:28And I know from a free agent perspective or a new guy going into a new situation, when
07:33you hear from the starting quarterback from that team, it carries a lot of weight.
07:37So I'm really thankful for him and his mindset of having, you know, that on his mind while
07:41he's working.
07:42I want to make sure I welcome all of our new teammates here in the right way.
07:46And this is where I kind of, yeah, it was yesterday, the day before Seth, I mean, we've been kind
07:50of playing smattering of audio really over the last week or so talking about CJ reaching
07:55out to guys, you know, more so from the guys he's reaching out to like Braden Smith, like
08:01Wyatt Teller, who's he, Wyatt Teller's had a connection with CJ that literally goes back
08:05years at this point.
08:07That's the connection I made yesterday because we got talking about the contract and is he
08:11going to get a contract this off season?
08:13You and I are both of mine that he's not going to get a contract this off season.
08:16We have no idea if there's talks going on.
08:18If there were a number that maybe is a little less than what the tippy top of the market is,
08:23who knows?
08:23I don't think there'll be a contract extension for CJ Stroud.
08:27That CJ Stroud is reaching out to his new teammates is a really good sign.
08:32I think that it's not going to be an issue that there's not a contract this off season.
08:36And we had talked yesterday about how, you know, I at least try not to read too much into
08:42comments when the owner, like Cal McNair, says something nice about CJ Stroud.
08:47Your immediate tendency to say, okay, well, he's giving him this compliment now.
08:51Does that mean that he wasn't doing this in the past?
08:54I think with D'Amico and some of the other various reports about CJ reaching out to Braden
09:00Smith or Wyatt Teller or anybody else like that, the way that D'Amico has framed it there,
09:04it does feel like maybe he is more proactive now in things like that than he used to be
09:09and maybe taking over entire ownership of the offense.
09:13And that's a good sign.
09:14And it's also, it doesn't have to be perceived as a negative necessarily.
09:17It's, I think, part of the natural growth of a quarterback over the course of his first
09:22few years in the NFL, where he really grows into that role of being the guy.
09:27With CJ, there's always been that dynamic.
09:29And CJ has talked about this of, man, he was a late bloomer.
09:33He wasn't a top recruit coming out of high school, had to wait and buy this time at Ohio
09:38State.
09:40And it's not like, it's not necessarily that same natural fit or feel of a kid who's been
09:45the golden child his entire life and almost just steps into that role of, yep, this is
09:51my team and here we go.
09:52And there's a great, there's a great part of that where the humility can serve a guy
09:57well, but growing into that role of almost just being the guy that doesn't even ever
10:03question whether he's the guy or not or whether guys are going to listen to him.
10:07It's a, it's a fine balance between how much of that, how much of that confidence is a good
10:12thing versus taking it over the top when you're just a young guy.
10:15And I think CJ's undergone a gradual process of becoming that guy.
10:20I totally agree.
10:20You got to take the reins at some point.
10:22And, and, and even if you're not getting the 60 million this year, if you are on the cusp
10:27of getting it, which if he has a good season this year, he is for sure on the cusp of
10:31getting
10:31it.
10:32Then you've got to demonstrate that you've got to show that type of leadership.
10:35So I love it.
10:36I mean, I've been saying that I've been saying that since Brayden Smith two weeks ago, told
10:41the anecdote of a strange number popping up on his phone.
10:44And it was CJ Stroud.
10:45I love this type of stuff.
10:46I love hearing about it.
10:47And I love that D'Amico is enthusiastic about it.
10:50More from D'Amico Ryans from the owners meetings.
10:53This was D'Amico on Nick Cayley, the offensive coordinator heading into year two.
10:58First time calling plays.
11:00I like how he was able to morph and transition into, you know, kind of what we needed to work
11:06for us to win games.
11:07So, and that's what I knew about him going in, his flexibility of being able to go in
11:14any manner we needed to go to help us win games.
11:16He was able to do that.
11:17I think we did a better job from a protection standpoint than the years, previous years,
11:23just when it came to not getting the quarterback hit as much.
11:27I thought we did a better job there and still looking to enhance and improve that.
11:30But I thought Nick did a really good job of setting the protections where our protection
11:35schemes were sound and our players up front, they did a, for the most part, did a really
11:40good job of being sound and where they were going and how we were keeping things up.
11:45All right.
11:45So there you go.
11:46Nick Cayley.
11:46Yeah, there are a couple of things that happened during the course of the season that I think
11:52Nick Cayley did a good job of.
11:54And part of it is in diagnosing and figuring out what can this team do?
11:58What are we bad at?
12:00And all of those that are, some involve the quarterback, some don't.
12:04I think they wanted to be a smash mouth football team.
12:07And early on, you saw that they tried to be a smash mouth football team.
12:10I just don't know if they had the players to do it.
12:12Right.
12:13So how do you, how do you account for that?
12:15One thing they did was they added an extra offensive lineman more than any other team
12:20in the league.
12:20They played with that jumbo package and it wasn't brilliant or anything, but a lot, it
12:25allowed them to function.
12:27It wasn't like it was a menacing threat.
12:29Remember back in the day when this, uh, you know, there've been various times when either
12:33the Raiders over a decade ago, the Patriots, uh, for a stretch of time, they would go with
12:38that jumbo package and they were marauders with it.
12:41They were, they would just steamroll people.
12:44And that's not what the Texans were last year, but it was an imperfect solution to a bad
12:49problem.
12:50In terms of the past protection, first half of the season, we saw a lot of the same old
12:54issues of not picking up blitzes, not picking up simple games, being flummoxed by unbalanced
13:00defensive lines and things like that.
13:02They studied that in the second half of the season, they figured out when they could use
13:07max protection and when they had to maybe spread things out a little bit more.
13:11So none of it, none of it turned into a really menacing threat, but they did figure out what
13:19can we do with the guys we have?
13:21Yes.
13:21The other part of it is, okay, there's, there's more you want to do.
13:26What's the limiting factor here?
13:28Is it CJ not being able to adopt a lot of the things Kaylee wants to do, or is it
13:36that Nick
13:36Kaylee isn't installing it and, you know, coaching it and teaching it all?
13:40Well, that's, that's hopefully what we'll find out this year.
13:44Yep.
13:44Yeah.
13:44Year two is big for both of these guys in this system.
13:47No doubt.
13:48Um, text, people texting in early here on the base power text line, uh, shout out Patrick
13:53Creighton listening to you guys on the app as I drive back to Houston from New York city.
13:59PC driving all the way from New York city to Houston.
14:02You've made that drive.
14:03It might take less time than the TSA weight.
14:05If I think that's a, it's true.
14:08I'm making a long trip here in a few weeks and I'm kind of considering, do I, uh, do I
14:14fly or do I, do I just rent a car?
14:17Well, you're, you're, you're, you're from up that same direction.
14:19And obviously, you know, in here in Houston too, you've, you've made that trip back and
14:24forth.
14:25Do you, do you, how do you chop that trip up?
14:27Do you just go straight through or do you chop it up by podcast and audio books?
14:32So I'll go, okay, I'm going to drive for five chapters in this audio book.
14:36Oh, that's an interesting, take a break.
14:37That's an interesting answer.
14:38That's not why I'm saying, do you stop somewhere along the way?
14:41Cause it's like a 19 hour drive.
14:42Usually it's a, it's a 24 hour drive for me to my wife's hometown.
14:46Yeah.
14:47And, uh, it's like 25 hours to my hometown.
14:49Yeah.
14:49I, I usually try to do it in two chunks.
14:52I make it a two day trip.
14:54I'll drive, uh, you know, 12 hours one day and then 12.
14:56Go to like, uh, Kentucky or something like that.
14:59Uh, usually Nashville is, it depends.
15:01I, you know, I try to stay away from Indiana as you know, um, but sometimes I have to,
15:07but usually I think it works out.
15:09Uh, I ended up going through Nashville and Nashville's about midway.
15:13Yeah.
15:13I'll say some, another one in my place.
15:15Yeah.
15:16Yeah.
15:16That's a fun stop.
15:18I remember we stopped in marriage.
15:20We'll probably be illegal soon in Tennessee.
15:22Yeah.
15:23That went through, by the way, they outlawed first cousin marriage, but despite strong opposition
15:28in Tennessee.
15:29Welcome to the 21st century.
15:31It's amazing that people that the amazing that the people who are proponents of first
15:35cousin marriage couldn't figure out a way to block it in the legislature.
15:38That's beautiful.
15:38Beautiful.
15:39Ha, Ha.
15:39Ha.
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