What We Learned From C.J. Stroud’s Brief Preseason Debut

It’s not yet time to panic, even though the Texans’ No. 2 pick was shaky in a small sample size.

C.J. Stroud began his professional football career against the Patriots on a night when their defense wasn’t exactly taking it easy. Seventh-year veteran safety Jalen Mills was flying into dogpiles and stuffing runs. First-round pick Christian Gonzalez was also grinding out reps on the punt team. There were plenty of regular Patriots starters who received a night off, but the stalwarts and rotational players who remained in the lineup showcased the depth and skill of one of the league’s best defenses.

The Patriots were also manufacturing pressure without much difficulty, especially against a newly vulnerable and quickly collapsing right side of the line. The Texans recently lost right tackle Tytus Howard for a little more than a month with a broken hand. More than half of Stroud’s drop-backs were under duress.

This is a long way of saying there are far easier circumstances by which to make your first appearance as the possible franchise quarterback of a team still very much in its growth stage. Stroud went 2-of-4 for 13 yards and an interception. He was sacked once for a loss of 15 yards. His passer rating was 17.7.

Anecdotally, every time he dropped back, there seemed to be a bit of a tug-of-war between the decision his brain wanted to make and the corresponding motion executed by his body. Even on his first pass, a completion to Nico Collins just in front of the Patriots’ sideline, there was a (relative) eternity between the moment Collins flashed open and could have been thrown open while his defender (Gonzalez) had his back turned, and the time when Stroud released the ball.

Stroud was feeling the pressure from the New England defense in his first professional outing :: Steven Senne/AP

On the interception by Mills a few plays later, we saw the same thing. A broader view of the field showed what looked like the moment Stroud wanted to pull the trigger, and, indeed, there was a large swath of throwable space he could have led receiver Tank Dell into. Instead, he paused long enough for Mills to jump the route. He waited roughly three seconds per drop-back, which would put him among the slowest quarterback release times last year in the NFL (again, with a very small sample size).

What can we extrapolate from something like this? Not much. The Texans didn’t keep him in long which shows some degree of confidence (if they thought he needed more work or weren’t worried about a senseless preseason injury with Davis Mills available for starter’s snaps). There are a lot of rookies who look absolutely awful in their preseason debut, and while Stroud played poorly, he did compose himself to complete another pass despite stumbling off a bootleg.

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It is not yet time to panic or wonder about the scope of Houston’s rebuild, even if the draft left us with some serious unease. This was a rebuild already long in the making, with coaches who had interviewed for the job in previous years being told the franchise was in a three-year rebuild timeline. Instead, they fired Lovie Smith after one of those years and had to offer a six-year contract to new head coach DeMeco Ryans (on top of some aggressive recruiting to fill out the rest of the staff), signaling that the road ahead may be a little longer than expected.

There is a version of this story that, a year from now, raises eyebrows about what a franchise did with a trove of draft picks amid a complete executive and cultural overhaul.

Heck, if Stroud looks like this in Week 6 and if his supporting cast struggles alongside him, we could inch our way toward the panic button.

For one night, though, he is allowed to be shrouded in the veil of preseason volatility. For one night, Stroud has the leeway to be a little shaky, a little hesitant, a little bit like a player who came from one of the best offensive schemes in college with the best receivers in the country, who has never had to sweat quite like this before.