A winter of Stroud’s Content: The Fumblening

Playing an MNF playoff game as a Sun Belt team that rarely gets any national attention and has an obvious weak point is a little like someone stopping by unannounced for dinner. I can’t hide everything in time. We don’t normally eat in the dining room and also it’s covered in Christmas ornaments that need to go to the attic but haven’t yet. The patio needs to be cleaned pretty bad, please don’t go out there. The floor? Oh we haven’t vacuumed in a month. Those are my comfortable ruts that I have to live with, and now you get to live in them and make fun of them. It’s emotionally jarring! I’ll vacuum the floor for the Divisional Round, I swear! You just gave me no time!

But the funny part about this one, as I was ranting to my Normie Wife who mostly just stomachs football rather than outright enjoys it at this point, is that it was all turnovers. Through three quarters, the Texans had outgained the Steelers 310 to 128. They'd converted 2/3rds of their third downs. It was the underlying performance of a complete domination. It's just, you know, this stuff also happened:

Stroud became the first player ever to fumble five times and win in the playoffs.

Of the five fumbles, I don't really care about two of them. The flea flicker in the first quarter was hung up by Woody Marks long enough for Stroud to have to take a miniature leap to catch it. Trick plays can look very ugly when they go wrong. The last fumble of the game, in the third quarter right before Christian Kirk's ridiculous 46-yard gain, is one where Stroud clearly wasn't ready for the ball and the timing of the play is off to begin with.

The one that lead off the second quarter, I felt was probably more Stroud's fault. The ball isn't uncatchable. It isn't where he wants it to be, but it winds up in his body frame.

Then there's the major double, where the ball looks to be in a fair spot to catch, Stroud doesn't get hands on it, and then he steps up and fumbles a second time while trying to make a play:

It was an absolute disaster snap, one of two major ones in the game that probably cost the Texans 10 more points of margin – at least six.

You cannot deny that football is an emotional game. And watching Stroud play this year has been largely about developing his own emotional game. He knows that it’s all on him to elevate a cast of characters that has few stars (and in this game, basically did it without Nico Collins after an undiagnosed concussion and then a diagnosed concussion), and he knows that he got hit a ton last year.

The thing is, as annoying as it was and as emotional as it made me feel that Stroud had an ugly game on a huge national stage, it doesn’t really change how I feel about him as a player. He played well against the Chiefs in the Divisional Round last year. He played well against the Browns the year before in the Wild Card round. He played well against the Chargers in last year’s Wild Card after a slow start. I didn’t wander into these playoffs expecting him to play like vintage Joe Burrow, but I have faith in him. (If anything, I wonder if I have more faith in him than the Texans brass does.)

But he plays with the emotion and sometimes it beats him a second time. That red zone pick was perhaps the worst throw I’ve seen him make at an NFL level. You have large stretches of games (Kansas City, third quarter) where the emotions of the game take over and he feels them and lives them. I refuse to psychologically analyze football players because that is purely the realm of psychotic hot takes. I also don’t think this makes him “shook” or whatever. He didn't look shook when he stepped up and made that throw to Kirk on third-and-15:

He is simply still trying to rein in that side of the game right now, and the result is that he plays hot-and-cold.

A lot of Texans fans that follow me on BlueSky — that’s BlueSky, the app that isn’t about CSAM — were glooming about Stroud. He’s in his third year. I’m not saying Stroud is going to be a superstar. I am not saying I know anything about how the shape of his career will go, actually. But the playoff start this reminded me most of was Jalen Hurts’ first playoff start in his third season against the Buccaneers. The moment looked too big for Hurts, there were certain throws he absolutely could not make. The Eagles quickly trailed 31-0.

They made the Super Bowl the year after that.

None of which is to dust my hands and say there’s no problem. This was a hugely concerning performance. But outside of the red zone pick there are extenuating circumstances all over the place. And, weird as it sounds, I was impressed by that field-goal drive before the Texans defense started scoring points of its own. That third-down throw to Kirk basically changed the entire course of the game. I'd rather the offense look good overall and have bumbling moments than the offense be completely unable to move the ball and score 14 points on two deep balls like ... well, like the Texans looked against the Chargers.

I’d love to tell you that I had total confidence in the Texans offense this week. I don’t. (I don’t think anything the Texans could have done short of 30 offensive points would do that.) The things that the Patriots did to heat up Justin Herbert are coming for Stroud. (The weird thing is that Stroud found 148 yards under pressure against the Steelers per NFL Pro. And Stroud empirically played about even with his normal stats when blitzed this year.)

Collins will almost undoubtedly not play with a Monday concussion. But I do think Stroud has earned enough of the benefit of the doubt over the last three years to believe he’ll bounce back. With the way the Texans defense is playing — I will admit that Drake Maye’s rushing ability and deep throw ability concern me in this matchup, I think it looks more like it did against the Chargers in Week 17 than it did against Sitting Duck Aaron Rodgers — he doesn’t need to do everything.

I understand that Texans fans are frustrated and want to see that Stroud rookie year hype snowball into something truly undeniable. I think we all do. What I think this year has taught me is that Stroud just isn't close to that kind of ceiling yet. He spent the entire offseason working out to shed weight and run more – to at least be able to scoot like Mahomes – but he just hasn't shown the aptitude for that. (I don't think the concussion helped.) He doesn't have the physically dominant tools to play like Herbert or Maye. Stroud is more in the Jared Goff-Matthew Stafford physicality spectrum, and so his ceiling is probably going to be more reliant on the mental side of quarterbacking.

He just needs to distribute. He needs to stay even keeled and ride through the waves. It's a Stroud I'm becoming less confident in surfacing every game, but it's a Stroud that I know is in there because I've seen it before. The calm Stroud pretty much has to show up for the Texans to win against a non-Steelers AFC playoff opponent.

Unless the Texans are going to just run for 164 yards on 5.3 yards per attempt again, in which case it doesn't really matter what happens at quarterback.