Texans coach DeMeco Ryans said Sunday that he didn’t consider making a quarterback change in the division-round loss to the Patriots, despite four first-half interceptions from C.J. Stroud.
On Monday, Ryans was asked to provide a big-picture assessment of Stroud’s play during the 2025 season.
“The quarterback position is going to get the most eyes, most attention,” Ryans told reporters. “We understand that. In this league, that’s what it is. C.J. understands that as well. Throughout the season, I thought he did a really nice job of coming in and learning a new offense, new scheme. I thought he picked it up well. We got better as the season went along and he made some plays to allow us to win a lot of football games as well. I’m not going to let the bad plays there in that game [against the Patriots] dictate to me who C.J. is. I know who C.J. is. I know what he’s capable of doing. We just keep looking to get better. No one feels worse about the situation than C.J. He feels bad for the team. He feels like he let the team down, and I just told him, ‘Keep your head up and you keep moving forward.’ We all want it better. We can’t go back in that game right now and run it back and play it again. We just learn from it. What do you learn from it? That’s my main message to him is, what do you learn from that and how do you make that a priority and getting it fixed and improving and getting better?”
So where does Ryans want to see Stroud improve on for 2026?
“I talked with C.J. today and my message is the same,” Ryans said. “Right now, it’s just about him flushing this one. It’s going to be a lot of negative talk, a lot of attention on him. He can’t listen to it all. He’s just got to get back to work in the offseason of going back to the basics, the fundamentals of playing the quarterback position, playing it really well, understanding how we need to play the game to win the game. He understands that already. . . .
“I just told him, ‘Don’t listen to anything. Put your phone away. Don’t listen to anything, because there’s going to be a lot of negative talk out there for you.’ Specifically, I just told him to get away, clear his mind. Because right now, at this moment, I know there’s going to be a lot of attention on him, a lot of negative media, and today, a lot of questions about him. That’s what it is, and he understands the position that he is in. As a quarterback leading the team, a lot is expected of you, a lot of eyes are on you, so when it doesn’t go right, there’s going to be a lot of negative talk about you. He understands that and he just can’t allow the opinions of others to weigh who he really is inside.”
The Texans undoubtedly will pick up the fifth-year option on Stroud’s rookie deal. The question is whether they’ll be willing to give him a second contract before or after he has a chance to show that he can respond to not one but two bad games in the 2025 playoffs; Ryans declined generally to get into the question of contract extension on Monday.
Last week, it was five fumbles (two of which were lost) and an interception. This week, it was four interceptions. That’s seven turnovers in two games. And so while Stroud may indeed flush it, the question is whether it will go down the drain — or whether it will gurgle back up in 2026.
