The Josh Innes Show - Is CJ Stroud The Guy?

Episode Date: September 17, 2025

I was talking with a buddy of mine who believes CJ Stroud will never be elite and won't win big with Houston. Do you agree? Also, I get annoyed when people make statements like "The Texans don't care about Super Bowls. They just want to be relevant." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

While other money managers are holding, Dynamic is hunting. Seeing past the horizon, investing beyond the benchmark, because your money can't grow if it doesn't move. Learn more at dynamic.ca slash active. Dynamic, actively different. So I posted a pod yesterday title, Do the Texans Suck? And I don't think the Texans suck, but I think the Texans are mediocre. and that's kind of where we are and the part that bothers me about it is that they have continued to regress

in these three years now with Domeco Riance and I don't know that it's Domingo's fault I think it's a talent issue I was talking to somebody yesterday we were texting back and forth about the Texans and he said they're going to give C.J. Stroud a huge deal

because they don't really care about winning they just care about being good enough and his argument was you shouldn't pay C.J. Stroud big money because he's not worth it. And while that may be true, not every team can just keep making moves for a quarterback until they find a dude who is elite. Sometimes you just have to get lucky. They got lucky that Patrick Mahomes, third-round draft pick, that Patrick Mahomes becomes this rock star. A lot of teams spend years and years and years drafting in the first round, first top two, three picks in the draft,

and keep drafting guys. Look at the Cleveland Browns, obviously, is an obvious example. But teams go years and years and years trying to find the guys in the draft, and a lot of them never find the guy. If you have a guy who is a Mr. Right Now, if you will, maybe he's never going to win you a title. Maybe he can. Like, I haven't written off Stroud.

Let me play a few commercials, and we will get into that. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot track side. So being a fan for life, turns, into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and varied by race.

Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. slash Y-Anex. Oh, this is it, the day you finally ask for that big promotion. You're in front of your mirror with your Starbucks coffee. Be confident. Assertive. Remember eye contact, but also remember to blink.

Smile, but not too much. That's weird. What if you aren't any good at your job? What if they demo you instead? Okay. Don't be silly. You're smart. You're driven. You're going to be late if you keep talking to the mirror. This promotion is yours. Go get them. Starbucks. It's never just coffee. Well, I mean, let's look at the Eagles, right? Jalen Hertz, by every metric you use to judge a quarterback, other than wins and losses, which is obviously a big deal.

But there is nothing that Jalen Hertz does particularly well, except when. He's not a great thrower of the ball. he runs. That's what he does. He runs. He's not a great quarterback. By the definition of what is a great quarterback, he is not it. But he wins. So there are examples where you can find the right guy who know, like yesterday I said that CJ Stroud that, you know, 23 teams would be content with the quarterback they have over C.J. Stroud. Like I said, there were about nine teams in the NFL that you'd go, okay, I can see where they would take C.J. Stroud. The other 23, I think they're kind of content with the guy they have, and if they had the option of C.J. Stroud or their guy, they'd probably take their guy. It's very likely that they would just stick with their guy, all things being equal, of course, basically who would you take? Our guy or this guy? I think 23 teams would be content with the guy they have. But, like, again, look at a guy like Jalen Hertz. Jalen Hertz is just perfect for what they do there. As long as he doesn't have to win or lose you a game with his arm, generally speaking. you're going to find a way to win. If you can get a lead in the fourth quarter, the Chiefs just experienced this. If you can get a lead in the fourth quarter, the Eagles can bleed you dry with a lengthy drive, and then here comes the tush push. And before you know, at a game that you're down three with seven, eight minutes to go,

becomes a game you're down 10 or a game you're down six with 30 seconds to go. Or the clock just runs out on you, which they are very good at doing. But look, I would argue Jalen Hertz, who is a Super Bowl winning. quarterback. He's been to two Super Bowls, one of them. Jalen Hertz may have fewer people who have you asked that C.J. Stroud question. Have you said, hey, would you take your quarterback or Jalen Hertz? It'd probably be right around the same number of people. And that's a guy that's won two Super Bowls, right? So, but part of the question is, if you're a team and you judge talent and you look at guys and you say, all right,

Is this guy good enough to win a Super Bowl, which I think they believe he is? And I don't know that he isn't. Right now I think he's mediocre and right now I think he's regressed. How much of his regression has to do with the fact that their offensive line stinks? How much of his regression has to do with the fact that he's got one good receiver and a bunch of rookies? How much of his regression has to do with the fact that their running game hasn't been great? Now, the flip side of that would be figure it out. You're the star.

You're the guy that's going to get paid big bucks. You're the quarterback. No one looks at Pat Mahomes and says, boy, his wide receiver talent blows. They just say, figure it out. You're Pat Mahomes. Whenever a bunch of white dudes are catching passes from Tom Brady, no one says, boy, he just has no playmakers at receiver. They say, figure it out, Tom.

That's part of being the dude. You can't sit back and bitch about the things that you don't have, and he's not bitching about the things he doesn't have. But if people are going to try to let him off the hook and say, well, look at the talent, while it may be true, he is the quarterback, and there are a lot of dudes that deal with talent deficiencies at that position for a lot of teams. Then there are a lot of dudes who are mediocre quarterbacks who are just elevated by having two or three really baller receivers around them, right? So it goes both ways.

And I don't know what C.J. Stroud is or what he's going to be, if he's going to win a Super Bowl or not. I haven't written him off. But like, obviously three years ago, if you had to go, hey, one to ten, scale of one to ten, how much do you believe? What is your believe scale in C.J. Stroud taking the Texans to the Super Bowl? And after that first season, when they go to the playoffs, when a playoff game, and this is an obvious answer. But, I mean, you're talking eight, you know, seven, eight, nine, somewhere in that range, right? You'd go, oh, yeah, I feel very confident. This guy's good.

He's only going to get better. This was his first year. Blah, blah, blah. Second year happens, and he clearly regresses. And you'd go, okay, I haven't, look, it's a second year. We'll see. I still feel pretty confident that this guy is still capable of being a Super Bowl guy. Six and a half, whatever.

Scale of one to ten. fine as it stands today the first two games of this year it takes it down to like five four like i haven't written the guy off i don't you know i don't view him as a dud like he can still play but once you start getting to the point where people look for excuses for you and those excuses are wide receivers aren't very good he doesn't have this once you start building up the excuses for why you're playing poorly it's just a sign that you are really playing poorly and that's when I start to get concerned about you, when people can fall back on excuses, everything else but you, when people are having to make excuses for you playing poorly.

And so my belief in C.J. Stroud is as low as it's ever been. But then if you just look at the team, though, as a whole, and you do have to look at the team. This goes back to the conversation my buddy and I were having yesterday about the Texans are content with being good enough to be a playoff type team, but don't want to do what it takes to be a winning franchise. And I don't even know if that's true. I think people say that about a lot of teams. They'll say they just don't want to win. Maybe they don't know how. I think it's really easy to sit there and say, oh, this team just doesn't want to win because they didn't draft this guy or they didn't spend this money. Just because you spend a shit ton of money in free

agency or in trades or whatever doesn't mean that you're going to win or it doesn't mean that you're any more into it than anybody else is. Yeah, sure, you spend a shit, of money. What does it mean? What does it matter at the end of the day? That means it's the right money, right? Like, people get a hard on for that. Like, I'm dealing with that in Detroit right now because, you know, they're upset that they didn't make, you know, make money offers to some of these other guys like, or trying to put together a trade package to get, what's his name out of Cincinnati and, oh, what's his name? I'm, Trey Hendrickson. You know, they're upset about that and why, you know, they're cheap and these other teams, you know, like the last

week, the big talking point was, so the Eagles were willing to try to make a trade for Micah Parsons because they're always making moves and you didn't do anything or even inquire about it. That's why they win. That's why you lose. But just because you spend money doesn't mean you're spending good money and it doesn't mean you're making the right decisions, right? So I don't view the lack of money you spend as a guaranteed slam dunk way of determining that you don't care and that you don't want to win. I don't believe that the Texans don't want to win. And I don't believe that the Texans are a franchise that is content with just being okay enough to make the playoffs. I don't buy that at all. But I also don't think they

did anything this offseason that would lead you to believe that they know how. Because if you look at their wide receivers and they're banking on a lot of young dudes, but you're banking on young receivers, you're banking on has been running back, and you're banking on mediocre offensive line. So, of course, those or the lack of moves would be an indicator that you don't really care about winning. I just find that hard to believe. Anytime somebody makes a bold proclamation, like, oh, this team doesn't care about winning, they just want to be good enough.

Everybody wants to win, except maybe the owner of the pirates. Some baseball teams don't care about winning, but baseball is set up that way. Baseball is set up in such a way that you can go out and suck and still be very profitable. And the NFL being really bad, it's going to be hard to be super relevant. profitable. Now, in baseball, you can be like the pirates and just suck for 100 years. And because of rev sharing and everything else, you'll just be like, oh, make my share of whatever. And I don't have to spend any money. And there's not a salary floor and there's not a salary cap. So I don't have to spend a ton. And we can just suck and I'll continue to make money. That can happen.

And it felt a lot harder to do that. But I don't think the Texans are a franchise that doesn't want to win. I don't think Bob McNair didn't want to win. I don't think Cal McNair didn't want to win. I just think that's kind of an easy, lazy thing to say, and it's unprovable, so you can't be proven right or wrong. So you say things like, well, they don't want to win. They don't care. They just want to be good enough. You know, maybe you can make that accusation of Jerry Jones because essentially he's admitted that he just likes drama and he makes decisions based on what kind of news it'll make. So, like, if you wanted to use that for a Jerry Jones type of guy, then I, look, you could at least entertain that.

Like, do you believe that Jerry Jones wants to win? Yes. but do you believe that Jerry Jones is happy just being the lead story on the news and having drama surrounding his team like a soap opera? Do you think like he can live with that? Like he can live with no Super Bowl, but he will tolerate it because they're, you know,

all over the place news-wise? I think so. Like, that's a fair analysis. But I don't see that with the McNair's. I don't think that Hannah McNair and Cala McNair wake up in the morning telling themselves, yep, you're going to do just enough. Just enough today, boys.

Just enough to get by. and as long as we're at least relevant and competitive, that's great for us. We just don't want to be obsolete, but we don't really care about winning the Super Bowl. I just say it's a lazy take. I think for any team, by the way, just say they don't care about winning. Because, again, you can't prove it one way or the other, and then people are going to call and you're going to argue about it. Do the Texans care about winning?

Yes, they want to win. And I don't know that C.J. Stroud can't win, right? I don't know that C.J. Stroud isn't good enough to win. I know that he's regressed each year. I know that this year he's looked bad. I know that last year he looked bad. And I know that the first year he was great. And going into the season, what did we say?

Rubber match. Like, hey, one good year, one bad year. What do you got in year three here? And you look at it and go, eh. And I guess it is a fair question to ask if you'd be willing to pay him franchise quarterback money because that's going to be coming up at some point. And the play you've seen out of his last 18 football games last year and the first two of this year and playoffs

do you look at C.J. Stroud and think hey, I think this guy has done enough to get a huge deal because once you're giving that huge deal, he's yours. You break it, you bought it, pal, you're married, you're hitched. So if the trend continues, you have to determine if you believe that his

poor play is him or is it's everything around him. And if it's everything around him, you have to pay him and you have to put better talent around him. If you think he's a major part of the problem, don't pay him. You know, move on and find somebody else. Teams have done that before. But that's the situation

you're in right now. You debate whether or not you think C.J. Stroud is the big part of the issue or if everything else is a big part of the issue. Like, what is a bigger factor? Is it Stroud or is everybody around Stroud? I haven't written the guy off at this point. But I'm

leaning towards maybe he just ain't it. Maybe he just is what he is. Maybe he's just okay. Maybe that first year was a flash. And the last couple of years, there's just something about. him. And look, I'm not in the huddle. I'm not in the locker room. Maybe this isn't fair. I can only tell you what I see from afar and what the feelings I get when I see the guy. He doesn't ooze that kind of charisma and confidence that me as a fan watching from

afar rallies behind. Again, maybe that's unfair. Maybe it's like, Josh, what the fuck, dude? What do you know? Very much. But there's just like, you look at Baker. Let's go back to Baker Mayfield. Baker Mayfield has a vibe about him. First of all, the guy is like, will die for the team. Like watch what he's willing to do. The guy comes out of every game just with the hell beaten out of him. You know, look at that scramble on fourth down. He goes airborne on that fourth down scramble to keep the drive going. The dude exudes confidence. He has a vibe about him off the field. And then like he has this vibe on the field of I will do whatever the fuck it takes to get this done. He's experienced the fail. He's experienced the fail.

He doesn't want to fail again, and he's going to go out there and lay it on the fucking line. That's Baker Mayfield. Like, I don't feel that same confidence when I watch C.J. Stroud. Like, I don't know. If I'm wrong, tell me I'm wrong. But if you don't feel that same way, tell me. But I just don't feel that when I watch him play. It's hard to explain.

I just don't feel that. Anyway, more to come.