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C.J. Stroud spread the football to 11 different receivers on Sunday, hit all four tight ends, and led an offense that moved up and down the field against one of the AFC's best. The people around him noticed something else — how he carried himself while doing it.
Ryans: "Tremendous Improvement"
Speaking with John Harris on The DeMeco Ryans Show, DeMeco Ryans went through what he saw from his quarterback.
"C.J. showed tremendous improvement from just how he managed the game, how he showed command and confidence in the offense, the throws he was able to make, the decisions he made," Ryans said.
One play stuck with him — a third-and-long where Stroud passed up a covered look and took off.
"For him to see it's not there, where they're in double coverage — I can take off and run the ball. It's really a great decision by him," Ryans said.
Then came the part Ryans kept circling back to.
"His demeanor — he was just even-keeled the entire game. He never let anything faze him. He just kept punching," he said. "It was like, okay, Josh Allen, you're making plays. I'm making plays as well. So I love where he was in that game and I love how he's ascending. And I think it's gonna be really special for us. He just keeps building."
In his postgame interview, Ryans put it plainly: "C.J. had great command. We ran the ball well, did exactly what we wanted to do. We controlled the line of scrimmage. Just really proud. They gave us more than enough points that we needed to win this football game."
Montgomery: "The General of His Team"
David Montgomery, in his first game in a Texans uniform, was asked on the Texans Postgame show what Stroud was like inside the huddle.
"It's such a good thing to see, good, bad or different, that C.J. can stay consistently calm and be himself," Montgomery said. "He's the quarterback, the general of his team."
He explained why that matters to the ten other men standing around him.
"When everyone else around is kind of freaking out, for him to kind of stay even-keeled, not get too high of the highs, too low of the lows — it makes everybody else in the huddle realize, like, let's just calm down. It's just football. We practice at 12 o'clock every day. So it basically feels like practice."
Montgomery, an eight-year veteran seeing Stroud up close for the first time, didn't hedge his assessment.
"I don't know how he was last year, but I can say for what I've seen this year, he's the ultimate leader, and he's gonna lead us to exactly where we need to be."
Kalu: "He Didn't Pick Up Where He Left Off"
N.D. Kalu, joining the show to break down the film, was looking for something specific.
"I liked what I saw. Can he continue to get better? One hundred percent, absolutely," Kalu said. "But he didn't pick up where he left off last year, which is a good thing. And that's kind of what I was looking for — looking for the body language, to see how confident he was looking and if he was just having fun out there."
His conclusion: "I'm still excited about what he's going to bring to this team."
Spreading It Around
Ryans also liked how the football got distributed, particularly through a four-man tight end rotation.
"Feels like everybody caught a pass," he said. "Eleven different guys and all four tight ends. To be able to have four tight ends up on game day, it's like, okay, how are you gonna utilize these guys? So I thought Caley did a really great job of just mixing it up."
"They're not just coming in just to block, but they can be dispersed in the pass game, and you don't know what's coming from a defensive perspective."
Hear the full conversation on The Coach's Show presented by Amegy Bank — new every week in the Texans All-Access podcast feed. Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
