Before last year’s NFL draft there was a common refrain among NFL evaluators—.
Against the eventual national champion Georgia Bulldogs, and without all-planet receiver Marvin Harrison Jr. piloting an offense without its star tight end, tailback and first-round slot receiver, Stroud was brilliant. He threw for 348 yards and four touchdowns, and ran for another 34 yards. He was aggressive in every sense of the word, seemingly putting together all the pieces in the College Football Playoff.
Ohio State lost the game, but Stroud won over NFL fans that night.
Then, there was that caveat.
Was it a special night? Or was it more than that?
“I think that game was definitely a culmination of his development at Ohio State,” Buckeyes coach Ryan Day told me this week. “We saw things during the season that you saw during that game. But I also think that the stage was set, and he responded and competed his tail off. I think that’s probably a better question for him on how he felt in that game. I think, especially when you play the quarterback position, you’re a collection of your experiences. It leads you to where you are as a player and how you respond to different things.
“The more experience you get, the more you can draw upon that and learn from your mistakes and enhance the things you do well. He embraced that part of it. That was his last game as a Buckeye, but I think game after game he continued to develop and get better. Now you’re seeing it translate to the NFL. So I think every game he plays in the NFL, you’re going to see a better product next week.”
Twelve months later, the Texans are the beneficiaries.
Houston heads into Saturday’s divisional round game against the Baltimore Ravens as a decided underdog, a team that is still on the way up, but not seen as being on the level of the established Ravens. But the wild card is Stroud, who early in his time as a pro has been good enough to level the playing field, even when he’s playing a little shorthanded.
And maybe that’s what is most exciting for Day as he watches Stroud—he knows this is just the beginning, and that Stroud has a chance to keep lifting expectations like he did at Ohio State.
Which is what Stroud did in his first start for Day, who suffered his regular-season loss in his third year as coach, 35–28 to Oregon. The Ohio State defense crumbled that day, leaving an offense that was young in key spots playing from behind. But Stroud kept swinging, and wound up throwing for 484 yards and three touchdowns, giving the Buckeyes a chance at the very end to pull off the furious comeback.
“He threw for over 400 yards and made some really good throws,” Day says. “When you lose a game at Ohio State, it’s tough to come back from. He took a lot of heat, undeservingly so in my opinion. I said to myself after watching that game, .”
There were other games between that one and the Peach Bowl (Day gave special mention to the comeback win against Utah in the 2022 Rose Bowl) where the explosion of talent was obvious to even those not wearing a helmet or headset.
But more impressive to Day was how a kid who brought a special level of anticipation and what the coach calls “spatial intelligence”— the ability, in his words, to “read people’s body language, see the field, which all obviously has to do with your brain”—was continually ascending with each week, and each experience, he got.
Watching Stroud on tape now, Day says it’s pretty clear that hasn’t stopped.
“His footwork, his eyes, his timing, all of it looks very clean,” the coach says. “He’s operating to me like a veteran out there. I can tell, his preparation for each game, he spent a lot of time on it. You can just tell by how confident he is out there and how well he’s moving and how efficiently he’s operating the offense. He’s always had a very good pocket presence. I think that started in high school.
“He kind of had to run for his life at times. He’s never looking at the rush, but he feels it, and he can slide when he needs to. He can get that ball out just a second before he gets hit. That’s something you can’t teach. I think that you’re seeing that translate to the field even as a rookie. That’s significant.”
As a result, what Stroud’s putting on the field is, too. Which gives his Texans a puncher’s chance on the AFC’s top seed’s turf.
