Winter of Stroud's Content pt. II -- The Third Quarter

Here is a take I’ve been brewing in the lab for a while, but I’m going to warn you that you’re not going to like it. Okay? You were warned. 

One of the promises of analytical thinking is the idea that we can create heuristics that help us find the most dreaded word in the English language for a millennial: Efficiency. Of said heuristics in football, three of them have really stood the test of time: not paying running backs market value, going for it on fourth-and-short, and the idea that a rookie contract quarterback is the most valuable thing in sports. Specifically with the rookie quarterback, we all watched Patrick Mahomes soar as the Chiefs became an absolute juggernaut, and we saw how they were able to pay the rest of the roster while underpaying him. Said analysis doesn’t account for him later Pulling A Brady (I guess Ohtani is a more relevant current example) and leaving his cap number intentionally low, but I’ll leave that aside for the moment.

Mahomes was a generational prospect who was fully formed after sitting for a year and only made it to the Chiefs because he played for Texas Tech. He still sat a year of that contract! (I’m told that’s bad for efficiency.) Joe Burrow was a generational prospect who didn’t need much adjustment time in the NFL. He has spent much of his career hurt, including major parts of his rookie contract. Josh Allen took the better part of his rookie contract to become Josh Allen. Lamar Jackson soared in year two statistically as the Ravens built an offense that churned out third-and-shorts on a generational level, but I would argue did not really become Lamar Jackson until the back end of his rookie contract. 

Which is all to say: I think it’s great that you can build a more well-rounded team under the salary cap around a rookie contract quarterback. But the generational outliers informed the efficiency of the idea a little too much, because as it turns out nobody else drafted Patrick Mahomes or Joe Burrow. They drafted guys who go up and down. They drafted Trevor Lawrence. Jalen Hurts. Justin Herbert. Jayden Daniels. Bo Nix. Caleb Williams. Drake Maye. And, yes, C.J. Stroud. (And those are the wins for the philosophy, not the Zach Wilsons and Anthony Richardsons we already buried.) The quarterback became an efficiency question to a generation of fans who, week after week, come to their senses aghast as they realize that not every young quarterback is Mahomes or Burrow. And they’re fuming about it. Especially when whoever was the best in one season pratfalls in the next.

Instead, it turns out, we watch the successful prospects grow and falter every week while expecting the world of them. And because we are all impatient little assholes who want our open Super Bowl window right away goddamnit, when they don’t immediately inherit the world, we’re ready to throw them in the trash. Your two options as a thinking fan are as follows: approach this rationally while wading through a sea of vibes-based takes that nobody really asked for, or be the kind of anal miser who chases down said vibes-based people with receipts of dumb shit they said over a sport. I have too many children (one) to do the latter. 

We’ve successfully turned what used to be viewed as a long-term investment of watching someone talented grow into themselves into a series of efficiency checkpoints. They have to win now! If they don’t it won’t be as efficient! That, as Mr. Denny Carter would say, is analytics. More importantly, it is the promise of analytics: That nothing outside of being a generational outlier is good enough and so you should never be happy. 

None of this is to say that watching the Texans offense in the third quarter of Sunday Night’s sledgehammering of the Chiefs playoff hopes was "fun." The Texans continue to have the kind of overall offensive philosophy when blitzed that I would call “feelings of helplessness.” Oh, the blitz pick up? We’ll install that later in training camp. Promise. 

The tl;dr of rewatching the snaps in the third quarter where the Texans gained minus-2 yards is: Everyone played a part. Chris Jones pantsed the interior line a couple of times and had a nice PBU on a play where he was doubled:

Nohl Williams had a great coverage rep on a play call I actually liked that brought Jayden Higgins over the middle – there was just nowhere for Stroud to actually go with the football hot because the crosser was so thoroughly won by the defense:

Then there was Christian Kirk, the fifth-best receiver in the room, being put on the spot for this:

Can't catch it for them.

There are real issues in Stroud’s game that I think he needs to grow as he takes more control of the offense. The pre-snap operation needs to be better and the calls need to get in to Stroud quicker. They donate way too many illegal formation penalties to the free parking square, including a touchdown to Dalton Schultz in this one. I’m not entirely sure if Stroud calls/audibles hot routes but between him and Caley, there has to be more to a blitz than seven blockers and three slow-developing routes downfield. In general I think they've leaned almost too much into running simple five-yards-and-cut-in-or-out routes and need more immediate horizontal or diagonal movement – this is why I liked that playcall that Williams snuffed out on Higgins.

The point of this isn’t to say Stroud didn’t have some poor throws or decisions. He did. But the people who present the take “Davis Mills could have done this” are brain-diseased and you need to meet them with the steely silence and/or outward derision you normally reserve for people who care about trans kids competing in women’s sports. I'm not going to post every good rep he had in this game, but I mean:

Davis Mills is not doing that. I have a newfound respect for him this year, of course, as I wrote about. But he's not doing that.

It is baby out with the bath water analysis and I’m tired of seeing it happen just because it’s not fun to watch the overall offensive package. Sorry it isn’t prettier. That is, largely, young quarterback life in a year where defense is winning the pendulum. That is the efficiency you anchor to when you pair a third-year quarterback with a first-time playcaller, a bad offensive line, and a bunch of young receivers.

Anyway, that rookie contract sure has furnished some nice finishing pieces on the best defense in the NFL, as Patrick Mahomes learned.