The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Is C.J. Stroud Still the Texans Long-Term Answer at Quarterback?

Episode Date: January 13, 2026

Is C.J. Stroud Still the Texans Long-Term Answer at Quarterback?

Will Anderson, Togiae, Togiao, Alshire, Alshire, how you want to pronounce it? Sheldon Arrankens. Sheldon Rankin. Jalen Petrie, Kaelin Bullock. I mean, this. Stingley. Kamari Lasser's a dog. I haven't been missing a lot of time.

I don't even mean Georgia Bulldog. He's a dog. It's fun to watch. I brought this up 30 minutes ago. I should go find Baltimore radio host and find out how you talk about a team that Trent Dilfer was your quarterback and you won a Super Bowl with him. And look, C.J. Shroud is, I would think, should be better than Trent Dilfer? Yes.

They didn't play like it yesterday. He was Trent Dofer-esque yesterday. The assignment is don't cost them the game. He tried to. But you can't, Ross, going way ahead of the curve here. I know. You can't pay somebody $60 million a year to say, don't cost us the game. I understand. And also, I mean, look, you know, we were talking. were talking about this middle of the season. If he's going to turn the ball, if he's going to play like that every game, of course you can't pay him.

Obviously, I'm not saying, hey, this guy's turning the ball over three times, having horrible fumbles and throwing ineptly bad interceptions, pay the guy. Last night was if you had to drop me out of a, or woke me up out of a coma, and I only saw that game of C.J. Stroud, I would have said, you're never paying that guy. So if he is going to play like that, obviously, don't pay him and don't get anywhere close to to even offering him any kind of big money. He's got to be better. You got, I mean, you have a legitimate,

and this obviously is for stuff we'll talk about when the season is done, whenever that may be. But you've got a potential conundrum because here's the thing, Ross. You don't have to extend him after this year, although I think Ian Rappaport alluded to the fact that they're going to start talking about it. Yeah. It's better to get it done now than wait a year from now.

But how do you go to your fan base and say, we're about to put this amount of money into the piggy bank of but C.J. Stroud win fellow first-round pick. Well, Anderson wants to be the pay the highest. You're going to. And in theory, you're going to be losing players because of it.

Yes. And every team goes through that. Daniel Hunter, bye. We were talking about this yesterday. With this hard salary cap, you have to seize the moments of when everything is. Camarie Lasseter on a rookie deal. Daniel Hunter on his deal right now. Will Anderson on a rookie deal.

C.J. Stroud on a rookie deal. You have to seize these moments. It's like college where you have to have guys graduating and everything, out at the same time where the freshmen and the juniors and the sophomores and you have this great team, you have to seize those moments. The windows can close so quickly. The window closed. How's the window looking for the Baltimore Ravens? How's the window looking for the Kansas City Chiefs right now? You have to seize these moments and right now this is a moment for the Houston Texans. Because if you don't, guess what you're going to be? Back Prescott the Dallas

Cowboys. Hanging crazy amounts of money but letting Micah Parsons go. crazy amounts of money but not being able to have secondary people that you trust. Yeah. I mean, this is, this is the, it's the hardest, I think being a general manager of an NFL team is the hardest of them all. I really do. Because you are having, because even, look, baseball general managers have to worry about position players and a pitching staff. I get that. But you are worrying about now, not only the 22 guys that are on the field playing, but you're worried about saving money for future.

your drafts, saving money for free agency. And knowing, now, you do have a caveat, you can also release players. A lot of language with, I mean, hard, well, with the hard cap, but talking about, like, yeah, roster bonuses and signing bonuses. Yeah, it's very convoluted. Restructuring of contracts. It's every, yeah, every general manager job is tough. I mean, the CBA for the NBA is probably the biggest.

Yeah. With the aprons and all that stuff. Yeah. But I mean, in terms of just construction of roster, it's, it's, you know, it's, you know, You know you're going to pay Kevin Durant. You're going to pay Alpi and all those. I mean, you've got your five, six core guys you're paying. You've got bird rights in your back pocket.

Right. And which means you can pay your own guys for those you don't know. So you need to pay your number. You're going to make sure you got a good running back who's going to want to be heavily compensated. You can need your quarterback who needs to be happy. You need your left tackle to be heavily compensated. You need your number one cornerback to be hot. And then you got an edge rusher who, by the way, is playing unbelievable.

And you get two to three golden tickets every year in the draft. And you don't want to squander those golden tickets. the Texas defense will be raising a Lombardi trophy. Now, whether they're doing it their own end of season party for their manufactured Lombardi trophy or the real one is remains a B.C. A lot of football left, but they can beat anybody with this defense. And that's the crazy part is that I think generally speaking, and again, I'm only speaking, I'm only listening to the show before us. But it feels like most people are very happy that things are going as well as they are. But they're also of concern.

And the fact is New England is going to be a significant step up in competition. Drake May is significantly better than Aaron Rogers. Their running back situation with Stevenson is significantly better. They've got better skill position. I mean, D.K. Metcalfe was good in the first quarter, but you couldn't hear from him after that. They didn't even go to the tight end. Was it Muth, Helamuth or Muth or Muth? Frankemouth or whatever?

To like the early fourth quarter. And I think the good news is, though, too, is that no matter what city we're in, Matt, and we're talking playoff football, Nobody's completely happy with their team. Drake, I guarantee you, Boston Sports Radio is nervous as hell about Drake May. Buffalo Radio is nervous about the run defense, interior run defense, which a Texans thrived in. Denver Radio. Are we sure Bonix is the quarterback? Right.

Are we sure? Yeah. And Cortland Sutton's are W.R.1? He's good, but he ain't a W.R.1. Exactly. All right. Let's go to the phone. Talk to some people.

We'll start with Vince and Midtown on the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Vince, good morning to you. Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking the call. Sure. Hey, if you guys remember, maybe about three or four weeks ago, I called and was talking about how CJ play scared. And if I was like a lawyer and I was in court of law, I could just show that last

interception he scroll through and I think I would win the case. I mean, he had no business trying to make that throw. His feet were all over the place. He looked like he didn't know what he was doing. I mean, it was just crazy. and you know in light of what you guys have been talking about whether we pay him or not i just i just don't think so um i mean we lost in spite of him i mean three turnovers and thank god for the defense that's all i got to say about that yeah thank you vince i remember your call and i remember i i

argued with you vince i was like no he doesn't play scared and on that particular play and a couple of other plays last night, he did look scared. But he didn't look scared when he had Titus Howard in his grill and he was throwing the ball 40 yards downfield. He didn't look scared when he was loft in the ball to Christian Kirk over the right side for huge gains as well. And that unfortunately has been too much the C.J. Stroud experience. Those plays where he looks completely lost and those where he looks very comfortable

and like he knows what he's doing. And last night was even more extreme for everybody, it felt like. Yeah. And the fact is either. he's not doing it because he doesn't want to or he's been told. He's not running. And he's also not very, he's just not fast. I mean, I don't want to say this, but it's the truth. Just because he's a black quarterback does not make him a running quarterback.

I'm sorry, it just doesn't. No, you can say that because I think people do have that misconception. Absolutely. Let me tell you, Josh Allen is a significantly better runner than C.J. Stroud is. There would be announced. And Josh Allen is Lily White. Arch Manning will be. better as a running quarterback in the NFL

than C.J. Strait will be. I do like the little rolls out, the control rollouts I did like yesterday. Yeah, those are good. He lumbers. And he even talked about it this season, how he just doesn't move like he used to, even from his rookie year. I think

a lot of it is not because he doesn't want to do it. I think he'd like to do it. I think he's afraid of getting hit. I think he has had too many concussions in his young NFL career that he's like, I'm not taking my chances. Yeah. But here's the reality that's coached into it. You can actually

just get concussed this as much in the pocket as you can. He's had multiple concussions. They don't want him getting hurt again. There was multiple people, maybe even at least a dozen, saying Davis Mills needs to play in this game. That's ridiculous. The Texans are not doing that.

You think you flew first class or coached to Pittsburgh yesterday? Davis Mills? Yeah. I'm sure first class? So he was going to miss the game because he had a baby, right? No, no, no. He was not going to miss the game. They were going to, he was not.

He missed the commercial. he missed the charter flight to Pittsburgh. Because of his baby. Yeah. Okay. Name Maximilian or something? Or Maximus? Well, you know what?

He does got dad strength. Now, that worked for Bregman a couple years ago. Yeah. Oh, he'd been ready, but to replace him, no. No, no, no. You think, no. Not even a conversation.