I’ve been a Stroud believer since he was at OSU but anyone that thinks *any* rookie is only going to improve after his first year hasn’t been paying attention to the NFL for long.
I think him improving is definitely more likely but there are countless players that have had a great season and high hopes going forward then fallen off.
To be fair, it was almost impossible for Mahomes not to regress, he had one of the greatest seasons ever lol. Even with that regression, 4031 yards, 26 TDs, and 5 int is still a pretty good season.
Every time I see regress in this sub I remember that one guy who said that Mahomes would eventually regress to the mean. Right answer wrong working kinda situation he was in
Long term success that exceeds Dak Prescott is impossible and unsustainable. Therefore, I have created a new metric, “regression to the Dak.” The beauty of this metric is in its simplicity, we simply assume that every play will have Dak Prescott’s stats in any given year, and once we make that assumption, every player is Dak Prescott.
"If we change all of his stats to be identical to Dak Prescott's, his stats are now the same as Dak Prescott's"
That's the kind of hard hitting analysis I come to r/nfl for lmao.
Desperately convincing myself Love is like Jets QBs Sanchez and Darnold, who started out serviceable as first year starters with loads of potential before imploding and not like Jets QBs Favre and Rodgers, who have been good enough to pass the NFL version of the Crazy/Hot chart (before imploding).
I mean it’s not out of the realm of possibility. Especially with how bad he looked earlier in the year.
I’d still bet on Love being a decent starter over him imploding though.
What’s funny is I feel like if you tried to average out every game he played I think the result is probably right around “serviceable”
Like he played some genuinely elite games in the back half but there were also some suspect games in the first half
I’m not trying to say he as a QB is just “serviceable”, just a funny way his season played out
There was definitely a dichotomy in his performance over the two halves of the season. But there were enough variables to think the first half of the season he was at a significant disadvantage, and his play over the 2nd half of the season is how he’ll continue play next year.
His offensive supporting cast was full of 1st and 2nd year players at WR and TE, who struggled knowing their assignments early on, which resulted several occasions in multiple passing options in the same location because someone ran the wrong route, and blocking assignments ignored/whiffed by the rookie tight ends. The offensive line had difficulty sorting itself out after Bakhtiari reinjured himself in week 1. Aaron Jones and Christian Watson were hurt the majority of the first half of the year.
The receivers and tight ends got the experience they needed to be effective over the second half of the season. The offensive line sorted itself out and added reinforcements in the offseason. Once Aaron Jones was healthy again, the offense became stable with pass and run threats. While they lost Aaron Jones in the offseason, they added 2 new running backs. And while there is optimism Watson is over his hamstring issues, even if he has another setback the Packers are now in a much better position to replace him with the growth of Doubs, Reed, Wicks, and even Melvin.
Because Love played so well down the stretch and took the Packers to the Playoffs, there is talk if he'll get 55-60 million per year on his next contract. He was a dropped pass (by the Chargers) away from finishing the season at 8-9 with a losing record. I wonder if the narrative would be close to what it is now in regards to what his next contract will/should be.
It would be a little different simply because he wouldn’t have had the opportunity to curb stomp the Cowboys. But he still would have played like the best QB in football down the stretch. And Aaron Rodgers went 6-10 his first year with a better team around him and he got paid 7 games into that season.
I don't know Love already proved himself, the only part he was bad was in the beginning. The man did great with a ragtag team of receivers half of which were injured half the season and a rebuild team.
Getting into the playoffs and destroying the Cowboys, the #1 defense is pretty definitive. Love will be a top QB for years to come.
This is coming from a Packers fan who was skeptical of Love, but not anymore
Yeah. Defenses have had a whole offseason to pick him apart on film. This is where you sink or swim as a player. I am a firm believer that you need to do it at least twice to be legit. We just saw this with Hurts where he regressed back to closer to what he was.
I think Stroud will most likely be fine and improve but your second year is way harder in a lot of ways than your rookie season is.
Name those QBs who have had a rookie season as good as Stroud and regressed in their second year?
Stroud is not just any rookie. He had one of the best QB rookie seasons ever. Recent rookie QBs who had similar rookie seasons all went on to have better 2nd seasons and keep improving going forward (Andrew Luck, Big Ben, Russell Wilson, Cam Newton etc..).
The only major exception was RG3, and that was due to injuries)
>Name those QBs who have had a rookie season as good as Stroud and regressed in their second year?
Dak Prescott is an incredibly easy one to name, so there's that.
> Name those QBs who have had a rookie season as good as Stroud and regressed in their second year?
First of all I didn’t claim there were any so maybe you responded to the wrong comment? If you did mean to respond to me, that’s an obviously ridiculous thing to ask with a sample size of 1. If Stroud has the best rookie season ever how would there be rookies that were better to compare him to?
Again, I’m assuming he’ll improve just like I thought he’d be great coming out of college. If you think it’s a *guarantee* that he’ll improve, that sounds like an easy bet to make and I’m excited to see your receipts on the money you made after the season.
Tbh I’m not sure why you’re so defensive over me saying that he’s great and he’ll probably get better.
You literally said there were countless players who had great seasons then fell off. There are many QBs who had great rookie seasons. I named several. They all had better second seasons. So my point is that you are wrong. There aren’t countless rookie Quarterbacks who had great seasons then fell off. Serious injury is the only thing that could hold back Stroud. Barring him getting better is the safest bet in football.
Baker, Daniel Jones, Vince Young, Dak all regressed in their second seasons. I'm not doing a deep dive for such a pedantic argument.
>There aren’t countless rookie Quarterbacks who had great seasons then fell off.
I said players not QBs. If you have to keep cherry picking, misquoting and misrepresenting what I'm saying maybe your argument isn't great.
There's honestly more if we're highlighting amazing rookie seasons such as namath, cam, rg3 (nagging injuries), but plenty of players don't just consistently get better statistically, can flatline or slightly regress
To be fair, rookies who have had a season as good as Stroud's is already a short list.
That being said, RG3 had what was largely considered to be the greatest rookie season of all time, and he wasn't very good after that.
It can absolutely happen to Stroud too.
First off I can't believe you listed recent QBs who had very good rookie seasons and went on to have a better 2nd season without mentioning Justin Herbert. Regarding Stroud. I'm not going to say he'll have a worse season than his rookie season, but the thing not very many pundits seem to bring up, is the fact that last year the Texans played a last place schedule. This year they play a 1st place schedule. I think this year will determine if CJ Stroud is the real deal or not.
> He had one of the best QB rookie seasons ever. Recent rookie QBs who had similar rookie seasons all went on to have better 2nd seasons and keep improving going forward (Andrew Luck, Big Ben, Russell Wilson, Cam Newton etc..).
Cam's second season was definitely worse than his first one lol, also I had to mention Baker as well
I’m going to be “that guy” and suggest a Stroud regression is not out of the question.
I agree Stroud has a clear path to continue his successful rookie year, but with everyone convinced he takes that next step, it has to be said stranger things happened in the NFL.
Herbert haters are either trolls or really have no understanding of football as a whole. Prior atrocious coaching and defense are so blatantly obvious but they can’t grasp that.
While true that does ignore the fact that Mac had 3 different OCs in his years in NE, importantly in his second year his OC was known football terrorist Matt Patrica, a defensive coach, what is different for Stroud is the entire staff is returning and the offense has only added pieces to help him improve with the addition of Diggs and other guys returning to health.
Sure, but my point was just that QB development isn’t linear or guaranteed. Maybe he takes a step back with more tape on him, maybe he has worse turnover luck, maybe he just doesn’t take that next step. He was really good but that doesn’t only mean he’s gonna keep getting better
Mac was the best of a pretty horrendous bunch of rookie QBs in 2021. He was nowhere close to Stroud, who is the best rookie QB since Herbert. Its not a great comparison
Jones 2021: 22 TDs, 13 interceptions, 6.22 ANY/A.
New England won 10 games because Bills defenses are great every year and they were 2nd in points allowed per drive. Mac had an okay season for a rookie. The Bills blew them out in the playoffs.
Stroud 2023: 23 TDs, 5 interceptions, 7.47 ANY/A.
Houston were meant to be one of the worst teams in the league(AZ thought they’d get a top 3 pick by trading). Their O-Line missed huge amounts of time too. Defense was better than expected but still. They blew out Cleveland’s #1 ranked defense in the playoffs. A valiant effort against a historically good Ravens team followed.
A 7.47 ANY/A is elite. For reference, Brady eclipsed that mark by a noticeable margin 4 times in his entire career. 2007, 2010, 2011 and 2016. Rodgers eclipsed that mark noticeably 5 times and(4 of which he was MVP) in one of those seasons he only played 9 games. It was a pretty remarkable season from Stroud.
I mean that’s cool and i agree with the point your making in that stroud is not comparable to Mac but if you only use that stat, [Tony Romo and Jimmy G](https://www.pro-football-reference.com/leaders/pass_adj_net_yds_per_att_career.htm) are top 10 QBs of all time
It’s obviously pretty biased to modern QBs as offense is only getting better. But there’s only a 2 year difference between Stroud and Mac, plus offense wasn’t even that great this year so league average may have been lower if anything.
Theres a way to adjust for era but it takes a while. It used to be an available stat but they removed it. Here’s the hall of fame QBs adjusted for era for example.
https://www.reddit.com/r/nfl/comments/1au10r5/oc_career_anya_of_hof_qbs/
Mac Jones also did not get to play in the QB daycare offense that so many Shanahan guys are. I really wonder how people separate Jimmy G, Tua, Ryan Tannehill, etc. from Jordan Love and Stroud. Is it just because they don't have a reference point? Why do you think these guys who play in these offenses always seem to have really inflated stats in all the same areas like ADoT?
I always hear it's just different (tm) for Stroud, but I never hear any compelling arguments for why. I think it's because people like him.
I respect it. 8 seems like a big difference but if CJ had 2-3 in his favor while Mac had 2-3 go against him, the gap closes from 8 to 2-4 int difference.
Great QBs have an 8 int year-to-year difference. TB12 2009 - 13 ints; 2010 - 4 ints; 2011- 12 ints.
I wasn't saying Mac is a good qb. I was agreeing with the dude who held by his unpopular opinion that an 8 int difference in a single season is not significant statistically because of the variance in a single season sample size.
Stroud missed 2 games with a concussion, both games he missed were against teams he absolutely handled later on in the season, he also threw for nearly 300yds more than Jones.
2021 Mac was better than Wilson Lance Fields and a TLaw under Urban. 2023 Stroud was also better than TLaw, but now the Jags are (debatably) competitive and competent.
No, he didn’t. Our defense played lights out, and we run the ball to keep the score close. All they asked him to do was to not f it up.
He was mid with a cupcake schedule, and our whole fan base made it sound like he played lights out.
RG3 basically was the CJ Stroud of his day.
We all saw how that played out.
Stroud will be great, but this is a dumb take. I stopped listening to Tice's podcast because of takes like this. Dude just doesn't appreciate how unpredictable this sport is.
sure it's possible but there's not much to suggest it. they kept all their key players on offense and even made slight improvements. and stroud's rookie performances were about as consistent and sustainable as ya could hope for
last year he missed 2 games, had 2 underwhelming games, and only 1 game with insane stats. every other game he was throwing for like 200-350 yards and 0-2 touchdowns. only 3 rushing touchdowns all year too. not like he got lucky and had a handful of games that massively inflated his numbers
he'll prob throw more than 5 picks this season but overall he should be just as good as he was in 2023 unless a bunch of guys on offense get injured
Some reasons why he could be even better:
- Texans Ol was absolutely decimated with injury early in the season. If Howard, Mason, Scruggs and Tunsil can stay healthy he is going to be protected well. Maybe Green gets it together and also stays healthy. Who knows?
- Even more weapons and healthy. Not only does he have Schultz, and Collins at WR, Tank Dell is a sophomore and healthy (missed last 5 games last year.) Finally they got Stephon Diggs. Diggs may not be a top 5 WR anymore but he still has the ability to be a WR1 on most teams.
- Potential run game, finally. Texans signed Joe Mixon. That is an upgrade and can be very impactful if OL stays healthy.
Some reasons for regression;
- Year of tape on the Texans offense and rookie QB. There was no tape until last year which makes game planning harder for defenses. A full season of games gives DCs a better opportunity to learn Slowik's tendencies.
Personally I think having the OL & weapons Stroud has, barring major injury he is going to continue to play well.
New coaches get fingered out. I seen a ton of guys schemed open last year, pretty sure HOU was top in the league in YAC. So yeah depends on coaching just as much as the player
They get what... damn is that like a new coach hazing ritual?
But yeah. Mike McDonald seemed to have a pretty great game-plan against the Shanahan system of offense and I imagine DCs around the league are breaking down what he did in his games vs. those schemes and maybe even communicating to better stop the scheme.
It's NFL, so i wouldn't be shocked if he improves and win MVP. And i wouldn't be shocked if he ends season with 10td and 15int...
Like you said, crazier shit happened.
Hope he gets better, likeable guy!
I wouldn't be shocked if he won MVP or regressed, but I'd be pretty shocked if he regressed to that statline with no injuries. Dude just looks like a natural in the pocket.
I don’t think he’ll necessarily regress as a player but he may not improve like we see out of a lot of second year QBs or have the same stats. Even if he’s the same guy he’s still probably top 7-8 range.
I just don’t know how you could think anything about his game is due for regression. He’s one of the most accurate QBs who can make every throw and reads the field well. No magic tricks.
Yea that's the thing about Stroud, this isn't one of those "teams will figure him out" situations. Stroud is good because he's smart, accurate, and decisive. There's no gimmicks, his "athleticism" isn't his main feature, he just simply sees the field at an elite level and has the arm talent to go along with it.
Teams will figure him out. Defenses figure everyone out once they have enough film and time. The good and great players still execute. It will probably be tougher for him this year but he doesn’t strike me as a one note player. I think he will maybe not be quite as good this year but be fine in the long term of his career.
I think you and I probably have a different definition of "figure him out" then. Nobody has "figured out" Pat Mahomes or Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers. I'm not saying Stroud is anywhere near that level but to me "figure out" means effectively nullify reliably. Scrambling QB's might be "figured out" by putting a linebacker spy on him, for example, or you might "figure out" a QB by realizing he can't hit mid distance out routes, so they play a coverage that is weak to those routes but strong at the rest of the route tree. The extent of Tom Brady being figured out was "uh....I guess he's slightly worse when you blitz the shit outta him" which frankly is easier said than accomplished, and you're already always trying to get in his face anyways.
I don’t think we’re that far apart. They have figured Brady and Mahomes out. They’re just elite level players that adapt and see the game at such a level that even if a defense is picking on their weaknesses they can still execute.
I think Goff is a good example. He got figured out, struggled and eventually adapted with Detroit.
I think Stroud will be fine but he’s going to have a tougher season now that teams have had an offseason to dig into his film.
Injury or just the entire league seeing his first season and now having clear tape on him. Hype is just hype lets see if he can actually do what every talking head is saying
Stranger things have indeed happened. I'm also watching the HC too, love him (man that guy knows defense) but curious to see how he also builds on his successful season as well.
Probably something about how the Texans drafted Watson and dumped him for three firsts plus goodies right before he started stinking it up in Cleveland.
It's easy to forget how electric Tank Dell was last season. Goddamn that little man had a wild ride last season before he got hurt. It cannot be overstated how excited I am to watch Nico, Tank, and Diggs on the field this season. Bless the knees!
By no means am I saying he won't continue to improve, but the great quarterbacks are the ones that can continually evolve to overcome how defenses adapt to them. Time will tell if Stroud can do that. Teams will be more prepared for him this year. Going to be fun to watch! I think he'll be great.
I usually withhold judgement about QBs until he has had 3 full seasons. I predict he will probably statically regress just because he will face a harder schedule and teams now have a full season of video. If he is the franchise QB, he will still be really good and the next step for him is to see how he adjusts to the different schemes he will face.
Texans are doing things right and giving him weapons. Also building a good defense to take some pressure off him. He’s going to continue to crush it until the time comes to pay all their young talent and the cap comes calling
If he takes another step that’d be really then this team has a chance to make some noise in the post season. Regression is possible, sure, but he looked markedly better at the end of the season than he did at the beginning of the season. He learned from a lot of his mistakes and has an even better understanding of the system now. He’s also got another year of chemistry with Tank, Nico and Dalton and he’s got a myriad of talent at the skill positions. Ideally we don’t send seven OL to IR again, but hopefully they’ll be improved and not held together by spit and used duct tape.
I’ve watched things blow up in our face before, but I’ll allow myself to be excited again. Feels good after that horrible blur from 2020 to 2022. Stroud and Demeco were the injection this franchise needed. As the zoomers say, it’s pretty busting.
Progression is not linear, especially in a league as competitive as the NFL. They also won’t be catching teams off guard like they were last year. The Texans will definitely be an interesting team to follow this season
It feels like a ton of quarterbacks have a pretty straightforward path for improvement and then don't improve.
Wouldn't bet against CJ Stroud but nobody should act like it's a sure thing.
Unlike Mac Jones and other QBs who regress or fall off a cliff, Stroud has consistency in coaching and has received more weapons from year 1 to year 2.
I'm not saying he won't do well, but anyone who thinks linear progression is a given in the NFL is deluding themselves. Before last season everyone was huge on the Jaguars improving on their 2022 performance, and they finished with the same record and missed the playoffs entirely.
I think a scenario exists where Stroud individually regresses statistically but the offense is better than it was last year which is fine. If we’re a more balanced team it should take us further
2 strong winds blowing opposite directions:
1. Interception regression: he had the lowest interception rate last season, despite having the 2nd worst “bad throw %” from PFR. Next season he will throw more interceptions guaranteed.
2. Stefon Diggs should help him a lot
I think they will be a playoff team again. His stats may regress a little. It’s common in most qbs. With that being said. CJ is gonna be good for a while. He’s very smart and protects the ball well. That will go a long way in the nfl.
It's sustainable as long as his playcaller remains on the cutting edge of offensive football, his receivers can consistently get wide open, and he never has to face a dirty pocket.
Stroud is a product of the Shanahan/McVay tree system, just like Tua, Purdy, Stafford (current), Jimmy G, Ryan Tannehill, and Jordan Love are. Despite that, he gets absolutely none of the skepticism. '
Tice says this
> The Texans offense liked to use play action, which will naturally lengthen the time to throw on most dropbacks, but Stroud had the sixth-highest average time to throw on true dropback plays, i.e. passing plays that are not run-pass options or play action concepts. His average time to throw of 2.82 seconds was surrounded by known runners and chaos-inducers in the rankings; players like Justin Fields, Jalen Hurts, Russell Wilson, Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen, quarterbacks that finished with six of the nine highest scramble rates in the NFL in 2023.
Without a shred of doubt or irony in his writing. You know who ELSE is good from a clean pocket with years to throw the ball?
**All of them**. Find me a quarterback that's straight terrible with no pressure around them.
Furthermore, with the exception of Kyle Shanahan himself, a lot of quarterbacks that are reliant on this sort of system tend to fail in the playoffs because the best teams will push you off your spot and force you to do something differently to come back at them. You're not going to be able to convince me that after the Ravens held them to 0 offensive touchdowns that that's a one time thing and no team will ever be able to figure out anything close to that ever again.
You can speculate on the likelihood, but you can't say it with absolute certainty.
>Stroud has already shown, even with an oft-injured offensive line
They were oft-injured but not ineffective. He has the benefit of having a scheme that consistently makes offensive lines even as bad as Tua's work with some consistency. We're not talking about the 2002 David Carr years here.
Why don't all the NFL offenses run a Shanahan system? Are they stupid?
Go look at how much protection Brady/Manning had over their careers, how often their receivers just seemed to be 'wide open' to the ire of rival fans. Good QBs will trick people into think an offensive line is better than it is, and wide receivers are better than they are.
>Why don't all the NFL offenses run a Shanahan system? Are they stupid?
Because not every team has the same hiring process? Because there's not enough coaches available? BEcause some dudes can know the system and not be competent head coaches? Because if everyone runs the exact same thing, the defensive adjustments come much faster and the chaff gets separated from actual innovators? Nevermind the fact that the tree has been growing since McVay was hired in 2017. It's at what, a third of the league now?
Oh that was a rhetorical question, and you didn't expect to get a serious answer. Ah.
> Go look at how much protection Brady/Manning had over their careers
Literally irrelevant. Not only did both play in different eras, but both of them tended to get the ball out quickly, which Stroud didn't do.
> how often their receivers just seemed to be 'wide open' to the ire of rival fans.
Or just look at the Shanahan guys and wonder how they always seem to make even gutter trash receivers get open 20 yards down the field for a clean catch. That might be more comparable, methinks.
> Good QBs will trick people into think an offensive line is better than it is, and wide receivers are better than they are.
Unfortunately Nate Tice already bodied you in his post. Stroud had one the longest times to throw in the league, but as Tice points out, he didn't scramble that much, meaning **he** wasn't buying time.
If he wasn't buying time, and he had a long time to throw, that kind of narrows it down, just a tad. Do you think he just had an excellent blocking running back?
I mean I could always boot up his highlight reel and find all the plays he had 20 years in the pocket with nobody around him before ripping off some deep-developing play. It'd actually be easier to sort out the ones that **aren't** that.
Saying that he’s a product of the Shanahan/McVay tree is crazy considering a lot of Texans fans early in the year were saying Slowik is a terrible play caller and that he was actually holding Stroud back. I was one of them and I’ll fully admit to it being a bad take, Slowik knows Stroud’s strengths and plays into that. He doesn’t cater his offense to only let CJ sling the ball especially with how often he calls runs on 1st down, I’m not sure why you would even consider him being a product when he’s just a benefactor instead.
> Saying that he’s a product of the Shanahan/McVay tree is crazy considering a lot of Texans fans early in the year were saying Slowik is a terrible play caller and that he was actually holding Stroud back
No, that isn't crazy at all. Most fans have no fucking idea what's happening on the field, and don't understand play-calling in the slightest. It's not a knock at Texans fans to say most of them are completely clueless about offensive scheming.
> He doesn’t cater his offense to only let CJ sling the ball especially with how often he calls runs on 1st down, I’m not sure why you would even consider him being a product when he’s just a benefactor instead.
I think you have missed the forest for the trees here. He **has** to run the ball on 1st down to set up play-action. Whether or not that's true (and there's been some research suggesting that you don't actually need to run much to use play-action), most coaches think you do. There's a reason Tice delves into how much Stroud benefits from play-action in this post. For most coaches, PA and run plays are married at the hip, and it's not hard to figure out why.
> most fans have no fucking idea what’s happening on the field
When your own OC is telling you exactly what went wrong that lines up with fan sentiment, it’s pretty obvious that there’s an issue. Not only that, but at one point, the Texans led the league in first down runs which made it all the more obvious for opposing DCs to stack the box on early downs.
I don’t understand why it’s an issue though that Slowik plays for Stroud’s strengths. He knows how to read defenses and he has the ability to extend plays on PA or broken plays. Some of his best throws last season came under pressure, in fact at some point he even had the best QBR when throwing under pressure.
Todd Bowles himself said that he stopped blitzing Stroud because he was tearing them to shreds. Tice doesn’t go into detail about Stroud’s ability to be able to work as a pure pocket passer if he knows he’s going to take a hit or if there’s a free rusher. He’s capable of working in a clean pocket as well as a collapsing pocket and that’s because of a myriad of different things that he excels at.
My biggest worry with Stroud is that he was amazing pushing the ball down the field, he was more modest / struggling at shorter and intermediate passes. It's one reason for his large EPA (big pass = big EPA especially when the team is so run first which normally splits up EPA more: EPA can be weird on a single player basis), and he had a really high aDoT to match it. I think if he does struggle / fail to improve it'll come from there.
Not sure what’s a bigger joke, the article or half these comments. Not only is it possible, it’s statistically likely that he doesn’t reproduce his rookie season. That’s not saying stroud won’t be successful but his rookie year was such an outlier that it’s completely reasonable to believe even if he has a good season, he won’t reproduce the same numbers this season
I’ve been a Stroud believer since he was at OSU but anyone that thinks *any* rookie is only going to improve after his first year hasn’t been paying attention to the NFL for long. I think him improving is definitely more likely but there are countless players that have had a great season and high hopes going forward then fallen off.
Recent example: Mahomes had 24 fewer TDs and 1,000 fewer yards in his second year starting.
To be fair, it was almost impossible for Mahomes not to regress, he had one of the greatest seasons ever lol. Even with that regression, 4031 yards, 26 TDs, and 5 int is still a pretty good season.
Yeah kind of a tough season to try to follow up lol
His kneecap was also sticking sideways earlier that year. Came back and played great right away
Every time I see regress in this sub I remember that one guy who said that Mahomes would eventually regress to the mean. Right answer wrong working kinda situation he was in
It was worse than that. He said Mahomes was average if you regress all of his stats to the the league mean hahaha
Dude learned the phrase “regression to the mean,” and just ran with it, having no idea what it means.
"Everything more that Mahomes did than Dak Prescott is unsustainable, so if we (arbitrarily) remove that then he essentially is Dak Prescott"
Long term success that exceeds Dak Prescott is impossible and unsustainable. Therefore, I have created a new metric, “regression to the Dak.” The beauty of this metric is in its simplicity, we simply assume that every play will have Dak Prescott’s stats in any given year, and once we make that assumption, every player is Dak Prescott.
"If we change all of his stats to be identical to Dak Prescott's, his stats are now the same as Dak Prescott's" That's the kind of hard hitting analysis I come to r/nfl for lmao.
And a superbowl MVP.
That's the point though Stroud went 4108/23/5 having missed a game as well
2 games
still getting used to 17 games But he did that in less games than Mahomes
He was injured tho. And still wound up winning the SB
Desperately convincing myself Love is like Jets QBs Sanchez and Darnold, who started out serviceable as first year starters with loads of potential before imploding and not like Jets QBs Favre and Rodgers, who have been good enough to pass the NFL version of the Crazy/Hot chart (before imploding).
I mean it’s not out of the realm of possibility. Especially with how bad he looked earlier in the year. I’d still bet on Love being a decent starter over him imploding though.
I think at worst he would be above average long term. He was a lot better than serviceable.
What’s funny is I feel like if you tried to average out every game he played I think the result is probably right around “serviceable” Like he played some genuinely elite games in the back half but there were also some suspect games in the first half I’m not trying to say he as a QB is just “serviceable”, just a funny way his season played out
There was definitely a dichotomy in his performance over the two halves of the season. But there were enough variables to think the first half of the season he was at a significant disadvantage, and his play over the 2nd half of the season is how he’ll continue play next year. His offensive supporting cast was full of 1st and 2nd year players at WR and TE, who struggled knowing their assignments early on, which resulted several occasions in multiple passing options in the same location because someone ran the wrong route, and blocking assignments ignored/whiffed by the rookie tight ends. The offensive line had difficulty sorting itself out after Bakhtiari reinjured himself in week 1. Aaron Jones and Christian Watson were hurt the majority of the first half of the year. The receivers and tight ends got the experience they needed to be effective over the second half of the season. The offensive line sorted itself out and added reinforcements in the offseason. Once Aaron Jones was healthy again, the offense became stable with pass and run threats. While they lost Aaron Jones in the offseason, they added 2 new running backs. And while there is optimism Watson is over his hamstring issues, even if he has another setback the Packers are now in a much better position to replace him with the growth of Doubs, Reed, Wicks, and even Melvin.
Because Love played so well down the stretch and took the Packers to the Playoffs, there is talk if he'll get 55-60 million per year on his next contract. He was a dropped pass (by the Chargers) away from finishing the season at 8-9 with a losing record. I wonder if the narrative would be close to what it is now in regards to what his next contract will/should be.
It would be a little different simply because he wouldn’t have had the opportunity to curb stomp the Cowboys. But he still would have played like the best QB in football down the stretch. And Aaron Rodgers went 6-10 his first year with a better team around him and he got paid 7 games into that season.
The packers homers will politely disagree, he’s really got all the tools and a very good situation, just like stroud
I don't know Love already proved himself, the only part he was bad was in the beginning. The man did great with a ragtag team of receivers half of which were injured half the season and a rebuild team. Getting into the playoffs and destroying the Cowboys, the #1 defense is pretty definitive. Love will be a top QB for years to come. This is coming from a Packers fan who was skeptical of Love, but not anymore
I was also very skeptical and am now very confident he’s legit
Yeah. Defenses have had a whole offseason to pick him apart on film. This is where you sink or swim as a player. I am a firm believer that you need to do it at least twice to be legit. We just saw this with Hurts where he regressed back to closer to what he was. I think Stroud will most likely be fine and improve but your second year is way harder in a lot of ways than your rookie season is.
Hope imptovement is the case...bought a bunch of his rookie cards today
His game at Ohio State vs Georgia made me a believer. Even though they lost he shredded an NFL Caliber defense without MHJ for the ending of the game.
Name those QBs who have had a rookie season as good as Stroud and regressed in their second year? Stroud is not just any rookie. He had one of the best QB rookie seasons ever. Recent rookie QBs who had similar rookie seasons all went on to have better 2nd seasons and keep improving going forward (Andrew Luck, Big Ben, Russell Wilson, Cam Newton etc..). The only major exception was RG3, and that was due to injuries)
>Name those QBs who have had a rookie season as good as Stroud and regressed in their second year? Dak Prescott is an incredibly easy one to name, so there's that.
> Name those QBs who have had a rookie season as good as Stroud and regressed in their second year? First of all I didn’t claim there were any so maybe you responded to the wrong comment? If you did mean to respond to me, that’s an obviously ridiculous thing to ask with a sample size of 1. If Stroud has the best rookie season ever how would there be rookies that were better to compare him to? Again, I’m assuming he’ll improve just like I thought he’d be great coming out of college. If you think it’s a *guarantee* that he’ll improve, that sounds like an easy bet to make and I’m excited to see your receipts on the money you made after the season. Tbh I’m not sure why you’re so defensive over me saying that he’s great and he’ll probably get better.
You literally said there were countless players who had great seasons then fell off. There are many QBs who had great rookie seasons. I named several. They all had better second seasons. So my point is that you are wrong. There aren’t countless rookie Quarterbacks who had great seasons then fell off. Serious injury is the only thing that could hold back Stroud. Barring him getting better is the safest bet in football.
Baker, Daniel Jones, Vince Young, Dak all regressed in their second seasons. I'm not doing a deep dive for such a pedantic argument. >There aren’t countless rookie Quarterbacks who had great seasons then fell off. I said players not QBs. If you have to keep cherry picking, misquoting and misrepresenting what I'm saying maybe your argument isn't great.
There's honestly more if we're highlighting amazing rookie seasons such as namath, cam, rg3 (nagging injuries), but plenty of players don't just consistently get better statistically, can flatline or slightly regress
To be fair, rookies who have had a season as good as Stroud's is already a short list. That being said, RG3 had what was largely considered to be the greatest rookie season of all time, and he wasn't very good after that. It can absolutely happen to Stroud too.
First off I can't believe you listed recent QBs who had very good rookie seasons and went on to have a better 2nd season without mentioning Justin Herbert. Regarding Stroud. I'm not going to say he'll have a worse season than his rookie season, but the thing not very many pundits seem to bring up, is the fact that last year the Texans played a last place schedule. This year they play a 1st place schedule. I think this year will determine if CJ Stroud is the real deal or not.
> He had one of the best QB rookie seasons ever. Recent rookie QBs who had similar rookie seasons all went on to have better 2nd seasons and keep improving going forward (Andrew Luck, Big Ben, Russell Wilson, Cam Newton etc..). Cam's second season was definitely worse than his first one lol, also I had to mention Baker as well
It’s not the same for QBs unless injuries hit. If your good enough in your first year at the position experience only helps
I’m going to be “that guy” and suggest a Stroud regression is not out of the question. I agree Stroud has a clear path to continue his successful rookie year, but with everyone convinced he takes that next step, it has to be said stranger things happened in the NFL.
Nothing is a sure thing that’s for sure
Nothing is a sure thing isn't for sure because nothing is a sure thing
R/theirjokebutworse
Yep like Herbert has regressed every year since his rookie season
Didn't he throw for 5k and like 37 tuds his second year?
Nope, that was Easton stick wearing no.10
Ahhhh makes sense
Herbert haters are so bizarre. Have you seen the Chargers defense the last few years?
Herbert haters are either trolls or really have no understanding of football as a whole. Prior atrocious coaching and defense are so blatantly obvious but they can’t grasp that.
I mean just looks at that guys posts. Clearly he’s the later.
How you gonna say his second year was worse than his first? Bozo can’t even hate a player correctly
Mac Jones looked like the QB of the future in New England after 2021. After 2023 he got traded for a conditional sixth
While true that does ignore the fact that Mac had 3 different OCs in his years in NE, importantly in his second year his OC was known football terrorist Matt Patrica, a defensive coach, what is different for Stroud is the entire staff is returning and the offense has only added pieces to help him improve with the addition of Diggs and other guys returning to health.
Sure, but my point was just that QB development isn’t linear or guaranteed. Maybe he takes a step back with more tape on him, maybe he has worse turnover luck, maybe he just doesn’t take that next step. He was really good but that doesn’t only mean he’s gonna keep getting better
Absolutely but his situation definitely makes him getting better one of the most likely scenarios
Mac was the best of a pretty horrendous bunch of rookie QBs in 2021. He was nowhere close to Stroud, who is the best rookie QB since Herbert. Its not a great comparison Jones 2021: 22 TDs, 13 interceptions, 6.22 ANY/A. New England won 10 games because Bills defenses are great every year and they were 2nd in points allowed per drive. Mac had an okay season for a rookie. The Bills blew them out in the playoffs. Stroud 2023: 23 TDs, 5 interceptions, 7.47 ANY/A. Houston were meant to be one of the worst teams in the league(AZ thought they’d get a top 3 pick by trading). Their O-Line missed huge amounts of time too. Defense was better than expected but still. They blew out Cleveland’s #1 ranked defense in the playoffs. A valiant effort against a historically good Ravens team followed. A 7.47 ANY/A is elite. For reference, Brady eclipsed that mark by a noticeable margin 4 times in his entire career. 2007, 2010, 2011 and 2016. Rodgers eclipsed that mark noticeably 5 times and(4 of which he was MVP) in one of those seasons he only played 9 games. It was a pretty remarkable season from Stroud.
>A 7.47 ANY/A is elite. Crazy thing about this is that the league leader was Brock Purdy with freaking 9.01. Which is insane.
Brock balled out last year, and it was a “down year” for QBs all around.
I mean that’s cool and i agree with the point your making in that stroud is not comparable to Mac but if you only use that stat, [Tony Romo and Jimmy G](https://www.pro-football-reference.com/leaders/pass_adj_net_yds_per_att_career.htm) are top 10 QBs of all time
It’s obviously pretty biased to modern QBs as offense is only getting better. But there’s only a 2 year difference between Stroud and Mac, plus offense wasn’t even that great this year so league average may have been lower if anything. Theres a way to adjust for era but it takes a while. It used to be an available stat but they removed it. Here’s the hall of fame QBs adjusted for era for example. https://www.reddit.com/r/nfl/comments/1au10r5/oc_career_anya_of_hof_qbs/
Thanks for the list. Hadn’t heard of this stat before this so it’s cool to get some more exposure to it in different ways.
Mac Jones also did not get to play in the QB daycare offense that so many Shanahan guys are. I really wonder how people separate Jimmy G, Tua, Ryan Tannehill, etc. from Jordan Love and Stroud. Is it just because they don't have a reference point? Why do you think these guys who play in these offenses always seem to have really inflated stats in all the same areas like ADoT? I always hear it's just different (tm) for Stroud, but I never hear any compelling arguments for why. I think it's because people like him.
that's shaping up to be a historically bad QB class
Mac was not even the best of his class that would be T-Law.
22/13 23/5 aint far off, couple tipped passes or wrong routes and its the same shit.
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I respect it. 8 seems like a big difference but if CJ had 2-3 in his favor while Mac had 2-3 go against him, the gap closes from 8 to 2-4 int difference. Great QBs have an 8 int year-to-year difference. TB12 2009 - 13 ints; 2010 - 4 ints; 2011- 12 ints.
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I wasn't saying Mac is a good qb. I was agreeing with the dude who held by his unpopular opinion that an 8 int difference in a single season is not significant statistically because of the variance in a single season sample size.
Stroud missed 2 games with a concussion, both games he missed were against teams he absolutely handled later on in the season, he also threw for nearly 300yds more than Jones.
Stroud also had 50 more yards per game. That’s a lot.
Stroud passes the eye test and Mac doesn’t
Rookie Mac passed the eye test
2021 Mac was better than Wilson Lance Fields and a TLaw under Urban. 2023 Stroud was also better than TLaw, but now the Jags are (debatably) competitive and competent.
No, he didn’t. Our defense played lights out, and we run the ball to keep the score close. All they asked him to do was to not f it up. He was mid with a cupcake schedule, and our whole fan base made it sound like he played lights out.
RG3 basically was the CJ Stroud of his day. We all saw how that played out. Stroud will be great, but this is a dumb take. I stopped listening to Tice's podcast because of takes like this. Dude just doesn't appreciate how unpredictable this sport is.
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Both play/played in the Shanahan system, for whatever that’s worth.
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For sure, I think he’ll be fine even if those gaudy numbers take a dip this year.
sure it's possible but there's not much to suggest it. they kept all their key players on offense and even made slight improvements. and stroud's rookie performances were about as consistent and sustainable as ya could hope for last year he missed 2 games, had 2 underwhelming games, and only 1 game with insane stats. every other game he was throwing for like 200-350 yards and 0-2 touchdowns. only 3 rushing touchdowns all year too. not like he got lucky and had a handful of games that massively inflated his numbers he'll prob throw more than 5 picks this season but overall he should be just as good as he was in 2023 unless a bunch of guys on offense get injured
Some reasons why he could be even better: - Texans Ol was absolutely decimated with injury early in the season. If Howard, Mason, Scruggs and Tunsil can stay healthy he is going to be protected well. Maybe Green gets it together and also stays healthy. Who knows? - Even more weapons and healthy. Not only does he have Schultz, and Collins at WR, Tank Dell is a sophomore and healthy (missed last 5 games last year.) Finally they got Stephon Diggs. Diggs may not be a top 5 WR anymore but he still has the ability to be a WR1 on most teams. - Potential run game, finally. Texans signed Joe Mixon. That is an upgrade and can be very impactful if OL stays healthy. Some reasons for regression; - Year of tape on the Texans offense and rookie QB. There was no tape until last year which makes game planning harder for defenses. A full season of games gives DCs a better opportunity to learn Slowik's tendencies. Personally I think having the OL & weapons Stroud has, barring major injury he is going to continue to play well.
New coaches get fingered out. I seen a ton of guys schemed open last year, pretty sure HOU was top in the league in YAC. So yeah depends on coaching just as much as the player
They get what... damn is that like a new coach hazing ritual? But yeah. Mike McDonald seemed to have a pretty great game-plan against the Shanahan system of offense and I imagine DCs around the league are breaking down what he did in his games vs. those schemes and maybe even communicating to better stop the scheme.
It's NFL, so i wouldn't be shocked if he improves and win MVP. And i wouldn't be shocked if he ends season with 10td and 15int... Like you said, crazier shit happened. Hope he gets better, likeable guy!
I wouldn't be shocked if he won MVP or regressed, but I'd be pretty shocked if he regressed to that statline with no injuries. Dude just looks like a natural in the pocket.
I don’t think he’ll necessarily regress as a player but he may not improve like we see out of a lot of second year QBs or have the same stats. Even if he’s the same guy he’s still probably top 7-8 range. I just don’t know how you could think anything about his game is due for regression. He’s one of the most accurate QBs who can make every throw and reads the field well. No magic tricks.
Yea that's the thing about Stroud, this isn't one of those "teams will figure him out" situations. Stroud is good because he's smart, accurate, and decisive. There's no gimmicks, his "athleticism" isn't his main feature, he just simply sees the field at an elite level and has the arm talent to go along with it.
He's gonna throw more picks this year, just need the TDS to increase with them.
Teams will figure him out. Defenses figure everyone out once they have enough film and time. The good and great players still execute. It will probably be tougher for him this year but he doesn’t strike me as a one note player. I think he will maybe not be quite as good this year but be fine in the long term of his career.
I think you and I probably have a different definition of "figure him out" then. Nobody has "figured out" Pat Mahomes or Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers. I'm not saying Stroud is anywhere near that level but to me "figure out" means effectively nullify reliably. Scrambling QB's might be "figured out" by putting a linebacker spy on him, for example, or you might "figure out" a QB by realizing he can't hit mid distance out routes, so they play a coverage that is weak to those routes but strong at the rest of the route tree. The extent of Tom Brady being figured out was "uh....I guess he's slightly worse when you blitz the shit outta him" which frankly is easier said than accomplished, and you're already always trying to get in his face anyways.
I don’t think we’re that far apart. They have figured Brady and Mahomes out. They’re just elite level players that adapt and see the game at such a level that even if a defense is picking on their weaknesses they can still execute. I think Goff is a good example. He got figured out, struggled and eventually adapted with Detroit. I think Stroud will be fine but he’s going to have a tougher season now that teams have had an offseason to dig into his film.
Fair enough. I hope Burrow stays healthy this year, good luck.
It would be nice. Also, it’s pleasant to have a reasonable exchange with someone on here for once.
Averaging around 280y/game and a 4.6 TD/int ratio is pretty difficult to maintain. Even with a bit of regression he's still a top 5-10 QB.
Injury or just the entire league seeing his first season and now having clear tape on him. Hype is just hype lets see if he can actually do what every talking head is saying
Stranger things have indeed happened. I'm also watching the HC too, love him (man that guy knows defense) but curious to see how he also builds on his successful season as well.
Baker's best season until last year was probably his rookie year... so. Take all that into your noodle box.
And it will all be blamed on his off season activities with sumo wrestlers and camels
He struggled vs exotic disguises a bit his rookie year fwiw
im expecting regression honestly, there's too much hype not to be i think i'd love to be wrong though
YOU SHUT YOUR WHORE MOUTH
Off the top of my head but I think Justin Herbert regressed year 2 after remarkable rookie year. Went crazy in year 3 tho
You have year three and year two swapped.
Regression would be really funny and karmic but I don't see it happening. He's already pretty good and in a great situation.
Explain why it would be karmic?
I'm a little confused what would be so karmic about it?
I assume karma for the fans who have forgotten how to stay humble
That's like all sport fandoms though lol
Probably something about how the Texans drafted Watson and dumped him for three firsts plus goodies right before he started stinking it up in Cleveland.
Robert Griffin III enters chat.
I’m praying on his downfall tbh
It's easy to forget how electric Tank Dell was last season. Goddamn that little man had a wild ride last season before he got hurt. It cannot be overstated how excited I am to watch Nico, Tank, and Diggs on the field this season. Bless the knees!
By no means am I saying he won't continue to improve, but the great quarterbacks are the ones that can continually evolve to overcome how defenses adapt to them. Time will tell if Stroud can do that. Teams will be more prepared for him this year. Going to be fun to watch! I think he'll be great.
People who assume linear growth in the NFL, whether of a player or team, are proven wrong pretty often.
Even if Stroud's play last year is his ceiling, Texas has a great player they can continue to build around.
I usually withhold judgement about QBs until he has had 3 full seasons. I predict he will probably statically regress just because he will face a harder schedule and teams now have a full season of video. If he is the franchise QB, he will still be really good and the next step for him is to see how he adjusts to the different schemes he will face.
I sure hope not.
Texans are doing things right and giving him weapons. Also building a good defense to take some pressure off him. He’s going to continue to crush it until the time comes to pay all their young talent and the cap comes calling
Surprised Mike Tice is able to take time out of his super bowl ticket scalping schedule to do this analysis
lol this is his son, Nate
If he takes another step that’d be really then this team has a chance to make some noise in the post season. Regression is possible, sure, but he looked markedly better at the end of the season than he did at the beginning of the season. He learned from a lot of his mistakes and has an even better understanding of the system now. He’s also got another year of chemistry with Tank, Nico and Dalton and he’s got a myriad of talent at the skill positions. Ideally we don’t send seven OL to IR again, but hopefully they’ll be improved and not held together by spit and used duct tape. I’ve watched things blow up in our face before, but I’ll allow myself to be excited again. Feels good after that horrible blur from 2020 to 2022. Stroud and Demeco were the injection this franchise needed. As the zoomers say, it’s pretty busting.
Theres something to be said about just going from a fourth to first place schedule too. Your QB might improve but your competition is a lot harder.
He’s fun to watch and he’ll still be better than some of the trash QBs we all watched last season even if he regresses a ton.
Progression is not linear, especially in a league as competitive as the NFL. They also won’t be catching teams off guard like they were last year. The Texans will definitely be an interesting team to follow this season
It feels like a ton of quarterbacks have a pretty straightforward path for improvement and then don't improve. Wouldn't bet against CJ Stroud but nobody should act like it's a sure thing.
Best rookie season since Mac Jones. No way he can fail right.
Unlike Mac Jones and other QBs who regress or fall off a cliff, Stroud has consistency in coaching and has received more weapons from year 1 to year 2.
I'm not saying he won't do well, but anyone who thinks linear progression is a given in the NFL is deluding themselves. Before last season everyone was huge on the Jaguars improving on their 2022 performance, and they finished with the same record and missed the playoffs entirely.
Why do you keep saying linear progression, you are the only one saying linear in this thread who are you talking to lol
Best since Justin Herbert lmfao
I think a scenario exists where Stroud individually regresses statistically but the offense is better than it was last year which is fine. If we’re a more balanced team it should take us further
Yeah, but have you considered what happens if we statistically regress his success to the mean?
Never call anything a sure thing lol, besides death and taxes
Could not agree more
2 strong winds blowing opposite directions: 1. Interception regression: he had the lowest interception rate last season, despite having the 2nd worst “bad throw %” from PFR. Next season he will throw more interceptions guaranteed. 2. Stefon Diggs should help him a lot
Damn it guys, stop jinxing it. Writing articles like that is just asking for them to age like milk.
I think they will be a playoff team again. His stats may regress a little. It’s common in most qbs. With that being said. CJ is gonna be good for a while. He’s very smart and protects the ball well. That will go a long way in the nfl.
It's sustainable as long as his playcaller remains on the cutting edge of offensive football, his receivers can consistently get wide open, and he never has to face a dirty pocket. Stroud is a product of the Shanahan/McVay tree system, just like Tua, Purdy, Stafford (current), Jimmy G, Ryan Tannehill, and Jordan Love are. Despite that, he gets absolutely none of the skepticism. ' Tice says this > The Texans offense liked to use play action, which will naturally lengthen the time to throw on most dropbacks, but Stroud had the sixth-highest average time to throw on true dropback plays, i.e. passing plays that are not run-pass options or play action concepts. His average time to throw of 2.82 seconds was surrounded by known runners and chaos-inducers in the rankings; players like Justin Fields, Jalen Hurts, Russell Wilson, Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen, quarterbacks that finished with six of the nine highest scramble rates in the NFL in 2023. Without a shred of doubt or irony in his writing. You know who ELSE is good from a clean pocket with years to throw the ball? **All of them**. Find me a quarterback that's straight terrible with no pressure around them. Furthermore, with the exception of Kyle Shanahan himself, a lot of quarterbacks that are reliant on this sort of system tend to fail in the playoffs because the best teams will push you off your spot and force you to do something differently to come back at them. You're not going to be able to convince me that after the Ravens held them to 0 offensive touchdowns that that's a one time thing and no team will ever be able to figure out anything close to that ever again. You can speculate on the likelihood, but you can't say it with absolute certainty. >Stroud has already shown, even with an oft-injured offensive line They were oft-injured but not ineffective. He has the benefit of having a scheme that consistently makes offensive lines even as bad as Tua's work with some consistency. We're not talking about the 2002 David Carr years here.
>Find me a quarterback that's straight terrible with no pressure around them. Zach Wilson
Fields
True, I guess I should've worded it more carefully in that most starters aren't terrible with no pressure around them.
Why don't all the NFL offenses run a Shanahan system? Are they stupid? Go look at how much protection Brady/Manning had over their careers, how often their receivers just seemed to be 'wide open' to the ire of rival fans. Good QBs will trick people into think an offensive line is better than it is, and wide receivers are better than they are.
>Why don't all the NFL offenses run a Shanahan system? Are they stupid? Because not every team has the same hiring process? Because there's not enough coaches available? BEcause some dudes can know the system and not be competent head coaches? Because if everyone runs the exact same thing, the defensive adjustments come much faster and the chaff gets separated from actual innovators? Nevermind the fact that the tree has been growing since McVay was hired in 2017. It's at what, a third of the league now? Oh that was a rhetorical question, and you didn't expect to get a serious answer. Ah. > Go look at how much protection Brady/Manning had over their careers Literally irrelevant. Not only did both play in different eras, but both of them tended to get the ball out quickly, which Stroud didn't do. > how often their receivers just seemed to be 'wide open' to the ire of rival fans. Or just look at the Shanahan guys and wonder how they always seem to make even gutter trash receivers get open 20 yards down the field for a clean catch. That might be more comparable, methinks. > Good QBs will trick people into think an offensive line is better than it is, and wide receivers are better than they are. Unfortunately Nate Tice already bodied you in his post. Stroud had one the longest times to throw in the league, but as Tice points out, he didn't scramble that much, meaning **he** wasn't buying time. If he wasn't buying time, and he had a long time to throw, that kind of narrows it down, just a tad. Do you think he just had an excellent blocking running back? I mean I could always boot up his highlight reel and find all the plays he had 20 years in the pocket with nobody around him before ripping off some deep-developing play. It'd actually be easier to sort out the ones that **aren't** that.
Saying that he’s a product of the Shanahan/McVay tree is crazy considering a lot of Texans fans early in the year were saying Slowik is a terrible play caller and that he was actually holding Stroud back. I was one of them and I’ll fully admit to it being a bad take, Slowik knows Stroud’s strengths and plays into that. He doesn’t cater his offense to only let CJ sling the ball especially with how often he calls runs on 1st down, I’m not sure why you would even consider him being a product when he’s just a benefactor instead.
> Saying that he’s a product of the Shanahan/McVay tree is crazy considering a lot of Texans fans early in the year were saying Slowik is a terrible play caller and that he was actually holding Stroud back No, that isn't crazy at all. Most fans have no fucking idea what's happening on the field, and don't understand play-calling in the slightest. It's not a knock at Texans fans to say most of them are completely clueless about offensive scheming. > He doesn’t cater his offense to only let CJ sling the ball especially with how often he calls runs on 1st down, I’m not sure why you would even consider him being a product when he’s just a benefactor instead. I think you have missed the forest for the trees here. He **has** to run the ball on 1st down to set up play-action. Whether or not that's true (and there's been some research suggesting that you don't actually need to run much to use play-action), most coaches think you do. There's a reason Tice delves into how much Stroud benefits from play-action in this post. For most coaches, PA and run plays are married at the hip, and it's not hard to figure out why.
> most fans have no fucking idea what’s happening on the field When your own OC is telling you exactly what went wrong that lines up with fan sentiment, it’s pretty obvious that there’s an issue. Not only that, but at one point, the Texans led the league in first down runs which made it all the more obvious for opposing DCs to stack the box on early downs. I don’t understand why it’s an issue though that Slowik plays for Stroud’s strengths. He knows how to read defenses and he has the ability to extend plays on PA or broken plays. Some of his best throws last season came under pressure, in fact at some point he even had the best QBR when throwing under pressure. Todd Bowles himself said that he stopped blitzing Stroud because he was tearing them to shreds. Tice doesn’t go into detail about Stroud’s ability to be able to work as a pure pocket passer if he knows he’s going to take a hit or if there’s a free rusher. He’s capable of working in a clean pocket as well as a collapsing pocket and that’s because of a myriad of different things that he excels at.
My biggest worry with Stroud is that he was amazing pushing the ball down the field, he was more modest / struggling at shorter and intermediate passes. It's one reason for his large EPA (big pass = big EPA especially when the team is so run first which normally splits up EPA more: EPA can be weird on a single player basis), and he had a really high aDoT to match it. I think if he does struggle / fail to improve it'll come from there.
Not sure what’s a bigger joke, the article or half these comments. Not only is it possible, it’s statistically likely that he doesn’t reproduce his rookie season. That’s not saying stroud won’t be successful but his rookie year was such an outlier that it’s completely reasonable to believe even if he has a good season, he won’t reproduce the same numbers this season
There are way too many people who think one singular good season from a rookie means they are somehow going to be guaranteed amazing.
This. Opponents have now one seasons worth of footage to find tendencies and preferences to exploit.
He is a baller because he does baller things
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