- 1 day ago
Seth and Luke listen back to Greg Cosell explaining a big part of the scheme change CJ Stroud was dealing with last season, and assess if a big defense of CJ (the bad O-Line) was actually in part his fault.
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00:00I heard a piece of audio here on these airwaves last week,
00:04and I'm curious if one of Stroud's biggest defenses is actually his fault.
00:09We'll get to that here on Payne and Pendergast.
00:11I'm Luke Morrow in for Sean alongside Seth Payne.
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00:34Seth, you guys got into this last week,
00:37this Greg Cassell audio of him talking about C.J. Stroud.
00:43As I heard, I'm curious if it almost reflects worse on C.J. Stroud
00:50based off of something we keep defending him on.
00:53Now, you obviously know you have forgotten more about football this morning alone
00:58than I'll ever know, so I do want to get your opinion
01:00or your thoughts on my takeaway from this.
01:03But first, let's just go back to the Cassell audio, the first cut,
01:06talking about C.J. Stroud and this new scheme that he's running here in Houston.
01:12C.J. Stroud, the last couple of years, has been up and down.
01:16Now, keep in mind his first year in the league,
01:18he was in a Kyle Shanahan-type offense with Bobby Sloan.
01:23Now, in that offense, the quarterback has nothing to do with calling protections.
01:28And then they got off to a slow start his second year, and they fired Sloan,
01:32and they made a fairly significant change in approach, which has now continued.
01:37And they went more with a New England Patriots style of offense.
01:41And in the New England style of offense, the quarterback is responsible for setting protections.
01:46That's a major, major adjustment for a quarterback.
01:49It adds to the mental part of playing the position.
01:53And I've met C.J. Stroud.
01:54He's a very intelligent young man.
01:56But when you have to make that change, it's a process.
02:00And he'll get better and better at it, but I think it slowed down just his whole processing.
02:07And I think there were times where I thought he was indecisive playing the position
02:11and, therefore, was not as anticipatory as we saw him in his rookie season.
02:17So, Seth, tell me if I'm being unfair or if I'm just straight-up wrong.
02:20But we always say so often, like, the offensive line wasn't good enough, which I agree.
02:25But if Stroud is also the one handling the protections, and as Greg Cosell said, like,
02:30yeah, didn't really do a great job of it, then doesn't the fault of the offensive line
02:34kind of fall into the responsibility of Stroud?
02:36Like, we excuse some of his play because, wow, the offensive line is very good.
02:39But isn't that also on the quarterback's shoulders to try to figure some of that stuff out along the way?
02:45No, no, no.
02:45I think it's 100% it is.
02:48I think that what Cosell's point would be is that that's it, but it's a lot for a young quarterback.
02:53And even though, you know, Stroud had said he had more command at the line of scrimmage
02:56when he was at Ohio State than he did in the first couple years of the offense,
02:59it's just different doing it in college, especially when you have a dominant offensive line.
03:03I think the part about it, though, too, that you can't lose sight of is that it's not just Stroud
03:10that has to make a bunch of decisions based on the fronts he's seeing and the coverages he's seeing.
03:15It's the receivers themselves and all the skill position players.
03:19And when I went back a couple weeks ago, I was looking at the Texans versus the Blitz,
03:24and there was a clip from that first Jaguars game where Woody Marks was in protection,
03:31was supposed to chip the defensive end and then seep out.
03:33I'm guessing he was supposed to seep out as an outlet for CJ.
03:37And you can see CJ kind of, like, looking, waiting for Woody Marks to be there
03:42for what would have been an easy dump-off.
03:43But Woody Marks stayed in pass protection.
03:46Then you fast-forward a few weeks later, and I was watching the Titans,
03:49and it was when Davis Mills was in there.
03:51Woody Marks was in the exact same situation, very similar Blitz.
03:54He seeped out, and Davis Mills dumped it to Woody Marks for, like, a 12-yard gain.
04:00And that's a, okay, a rookie running back had a better feeling in the offense.
04:06Guys like Jaden Higgins got better at where they were supposed to be in the offense over time.
04:10Some of the offensive linemen got better at understanding their role.
04:14So, yes, I think CJ, you know, needs to be better at that whole process than he was last year.
04:20But it's him being in command of all 10 other guys on the offense
04:26and having them in the right spots.
04:28And some of it last year might have been youth.
04:30Some of it, how much of it was CJ needs to be a better orchestra leader in all of that.
04:35It's the kind of stuff that you're going to get.
04:38Like, going into last season, we had so many people say,
04:40all right, listen, if they're going to be running more of a New England style of offense,
04:44there's going to be some hiccups along the way.
04:46The quarterback, no matter how smart he is, is just not going to pick up all this stuff immediately
04:51and make it look good, especially when he missed all of OTAs.
04:56That part of it, it's one of those things that if this season just sucks offensively,
05:03then, all right, none of this discourse right now matters at all.
05:07If the offense takes a step forward, I think then it becomes a reasonable explanation for why it took,
05:12why did it take a full season for all of this to come together?
05:16Oh, okay, because you're putting a lot of different moving parts together.
05:20Yeah, and so with that said, and it makes total sense,
05:23like how much do you expect it to be better this year,
05:26whether it's because some of those guys are older or just Stroud has another year?
05:29Should we expect a big leap there?
05:31Yeah, I think, well, just to go back to Woody Marks,
05:34you know, another situation later in the year that I don't think they could have pulled off
05:38in the first half of the season was in the Chiefs game, where down in the red zone,
05:43CJ adjusted Woody Marks over to the left side of the formation,
05:48and then Woody Marks seeps out for a wide-open touchdown.
05:52Like, that's the kind of stuff that I don't think you would have seen,
05:55like you wouldn't have seen the whole operation look like that on any given play
06:01in the first part of the season.
06:02I think they were figuring it out as the year went along.
06:05I mean, the big thing, again, just to make more excuses and or explanation,
06:10whatever you want to say, is that you get into that final game of the year
06:14and they had to reshuffle their offensive line.
06:16They didn't have Nico Collins.
06:17They still couldn't run the ball effectively, really, at any.
06:20They got better at running the ball in the second half of the season.
06:24But the offensive line figured things out, but it still wasn't as good as it needed to be,
06:28especially when they lost their left guard or when they had to move Titus back to right tackle.
06:33The other thing that I think people kind of forget or lose in the shuffle of everything
06:40was that the Texans' offensive line in CJ's rookie year was actually,
06:45they were ranked like 16th or 17th on PFF's final O-line rankings.
06:50It wasn't a good offensive line, but it was a more functioning offensive line
06:55than he's had the last couple years.
06:56Like, so where it just gets too easy to always go back to the offensive line,
07:00always go back to the offensive line.
07:02I think it's important to put it into context that the offensive line did operate better
07:07as a unit in that first year of Stroud, and in the last couple years he just hasn't had
07:12that type of performance.
07:14Let me ask you this because I am curious.
07:16You know, this year we're assuming that the center very well will be a rookie
07:20who's making a change to that center position.
07:23So when we talk about Stroud having defense at the line and trying to improve
07:27and do better in year two, how big of an impact do you think that would have
07:31if his center's a rookie who hasn't necessarily played a ton of center before,
07:34certainly not in the NFL, you know, how big of a role could that play?
07:38That's where I think that's one of the biggest tests for CJ being the genuine leader
07:43of the offense and really just, you know, being more Peyton Manning-like, really.
07:48And just, even more so than Tom Brady, just because I was on the field with Peyton Manning
07:53and I used to get embarrassed for offensive linemen when he would reprimand them.
07:58Not that CJ has to do it in the same style or fashion or anything,
08:03but, like, just being a completely psychotic, you know, control freak,
08:09there needs to be a little bit of that in you if you're going to be,
08:12if you want to operate in this offense, the way that, like, Tom Brady or Peyton Manning
08:17are the ultimate control freaks.
08:19Did you hear the story that Sean told about Peyton Manning?
08:22Oh, no, we played the audio of Eli saying that basically at Eli's own birthday,
08:28Peyton Manning gave him what he was supposed to talk about.
08:31Yes.
08:31Like, Peyton gave Eli notes for it.
08:33That's the kind of control freak you need to be when you're leading an offense like this.
08:37Well, I heard the story where didn't you, like, emcee an event with them?
08:40And they made sure they gave you, like, strict talking points, right?
08:43Yeah, Peyton had very strict things about what I was and was not supposed to talk about.
08:49And I veered from it, and I got that look.
08:52I got that look from Peyton Manning when I asked, when I was basically, like,
08:56they gave me this, they basically wanted me to ask, like, a list of pre-canned,
09:01like, canned questions.
09:02And I'm like, I can't do that.
09:05I'll use it as a guide.
09:07Right.
09:07But we're going to free flow a little bit.
09:10Yeah, and he gave me the look that he used to give Jeff Saturday
09:12when Jeff Saturday screwed up the snap.
09:14But he didn't have any power over me.
09:17I'm doing this event for free, Peyton.
09:19Yeah, you're like, sit down, nerd.
09:20Yeah, that's funny.
09:22I'm doing this for charity.
09:23Are you?
09:23Yeah.
09:23Are you doing it for the kids, or are you accepting a fee for this, Peyton?
09:26I should have asked them that.
09:27How much was your fee for this event?
09:29Yeah, exactly.
09:31How much would you, since you were on the other side there,
09:33like, what percentage would you say Peyton was actually calling the offense during those games?
09:38Was he doing, like, all of it?
09:39He was, well, okay.
09:41So, I mean, like, usually what'll happen, because when you can talk of different types of systems
09:48and everything, the Colts did something that was different in a lot of ways than what the
09:52Patriots were doing.
09:53But I think that, think about Peyton going to Kubiak in his system.
09:58Like, by the time a guy's a veteran quarterback, it doesn't matter what system you're in.
10:03Like, guys are going to tweak things, and they're going to modify routes,
10:06and they're going to make their calls at the line of scrimmage to where it becomes more of a matter
10:12of,
10:12all right, depending on whatever the nomenclature is and everything,
10:15like, the quarterback is calling the shots.
10:17The thing about the Colts, I'd say, compared to maybe Tom Brady is their offense was simpler
10:26in a lot of ways, but a lot of it was predicated on Peyton just kind of understanding the look
10:31and knowing the tendencies and getting into a different pre-checked call or whatever.
10:37Like, he was doing a lot.
10:38That was why the, you know, one of the things I got excited about them talking about this preseason
10:44was about the snap count and the hard counts and how much that matters.
10:49Because what Peyton would do is he'd come up to the line of scrimmage,
10:52and he'd have 15 seconds left on the play clock.
10:54And then he would get everybody lined up.
10:57He would make an audible.
10:58It was probably a dummy call.
10:59And then he would have a hard count where he'd try to get a safety or somebody to just show
11:06a little bit of something.
11:07And then that's when he would step back, and he would make his real audible
11:11and his real change based on what he thought the defense was going to be.
11:14And that was the worst feeling as, like, a defensive lineman.
11:17Because, for one, you get tired, like, being in your stance for that long.
11:21But then when you know you got a safety blitz called, and he gives a hard count
11:25and then steps back out from under center and changes the call, you're like,
11:28oh, we're screwed.
11:29We're screwed on this play.
11:30He knows exactly what we're doing because I know the safety,
11:32the safety, like, took a little stutter step forward or something.
11:35And, like, that's the part where, regardless of whether you're running more of a McVay system
11:42or a Belichick system or whatever it might be,
11:44it's the quarterback just diagnosing pre-snap what the look –
11:48diagnosing what the defense is trying to do.
11:51And then however you get into the right call, getting into the right call.
11:54And it was just impossible for the Texans to operate that way in a lot of ways last year
11:58because they just didn't – they didn't have enough –
12:00they didn't have enough real estate on the play clock to do it.
12:03They were just still – they were just trying to get the snap off more so
12:05than really diagnose things.
12:07I got a follow-up question I'll ask you on the other side about all that.
12:09By the way, on the Tex line, a couple Tex came in saying they blew up the offensive line.
12:14They must think that's a big part of their struggle.
12:16Someone else said they couldn't run the ball.
12:18That is not on CJ.
12:21So I get the – I acknowledge it.
12:23The offensive line was – it's almost like I never understood in baseball where
12:27if a pitcher commits an error, the runs become unearned, where it's like,
12:32well, it was still your responsibility as a pitcher and somewhat similar.
12:36What it is is – I mean, it's almost like – to make a rough pitching analogy,
12:43it's like if a reliever comes in and there's guys on base, those aren't his runs
12:49if he gives them up, that there's a dynamic when you're in second and long all the time
12:55or third and long all the time.
12:56It's just a harder environment in which to operate.
12:59No matter who you are as a quarterback, nobody's actually really good at third and ten.
13:03They're better than others at converting third and ten,
13:06but the overall numbers don't look great compared to their other numbers,
13:10their overall third down conversion percentage.
13:12So the lack of a run game where it really hurts the quarterback is just that it puts
13:16him in tougher and tougher situations more often.
13:19Yeah, yeah, which is fair.
13:21I want you to figure it out.
13:21I don't know.
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