Battle Red Blog
Is the young Texans quarterback regressing
There is nothing more important in professional sports than the evaluation of a quarterback. Letting a good one go can set your franchise back several years if not a decade. However, committing to one that is not elite can also set your franchise back several years as well. You can look no further than what is happening with the Cleveland Browns and Jacksonville Jaguars right now.
You could potentially add the Dallas Cowboys and Denver Broncos to that group as well. C.J. Stroud was the darling of the NFL last season and was well deserving of the offensive rookie of the year award. Yet, that doesn’t necessarily mean he is a franchise quarterback. We think that he is, but the Washington (then) Redskins thought they had one when Robert Griffin III was a rookie sensation. They are seeing a repeat of that with Jaden Daniels.
Stroud is a likable guy. That’s what makes this hard. We saw a likable guy here before and that turned into a disaster. Luckily for the Texans, that mostly blew up in the Cleveland Browns face. Looks can be deceiving. I don’t think Stroud will be a scumbag on that level or anywhere near it, but all of this is to say that investing nearly 60 million per year in a franchise quarterback is easily the most important decision a franchise will make.
Everyone knows I love statistics. Statistics can tell us a lot of things, but it can’t necessarily answer all of the questions. However, it is a start. We have to acknowledge some hard truths about Stroud and the year he is putting up so far. We can get into the whys and what fors following that.
2023: 273.9 YPG, 63.9 PCT, 8.2 YPA, 100.8 Rating, 57.5 QBR, 4.6 TD%, 1.0 INT%
2024: 237.7 YPG, 63.5 PCT, 7.2 YPA, 91.9 Rating, 56.2 QBR, 3.7 TD%, 1.4 INT%
We start with the obvious. He has not been as good this season as he was last season. A part of that is always expected. The league gets tape on you and defensive coordinators get paid to make your life more difficult. Plus, more advanced stats showed he threw many more interceptable balls last season than ended up being picked. Simply put, regression is something normal to expect.
Now, if we take his numbers and project them out over a 17 game schedule then we can begin to get an idea of what kind of quarterback we are talking about. Those stats last year came in 15 games. Let’s assume the very best and assume that Stroud is 100 percent healthy for the whole season.
Projections: 4041 passing yards, 21 TD, 8 INT
I’ll be 100 percent honest. Those are not the kinds of numbers that franchise quarterbacks put up. Those are good numbers and certainly better than most of the Texans quarterbacks in franchise history, but we have also had a checkered history of quarterbacks. Fitzpatrick...
