Even through the Houston Texans 0-4 start to the season, C.J. Stroud’s performance was a constant. Amidst a team that was failing in most conceivable ways, the Texans’ quarterback was playing some of the best football of his career. The Texans thankfully began winning games a couple weeks ago, and now sit at 2-4, and if anything, Stroud has elevated his level of play even further.
This past Sunday, for the first time this season, the Texans had a global audience to themselves, with no other NFL action ongoing during their scintillating 34-31 win over the Jacksonville Jaguars, and the world got to see the absolute best version of Stroud. With wins come recognition, and for his outstanding performance in the win on Sunday, Stroud was named the AFC Offensive Player of the Week for Week 6.
In the win over the Jags, Stroud completed 24-of-34 (70.6 percent) passes for 312 yards and three touchdowns. If you’re wondering just how good Stroud was for most of the afternoon, just know that he threw what could have been a backbreaking interception with four minutes to go in the game, allowing the Jags the chance to tie the game at 31-31. Stroud, though, got the ball back, and led the Texans’ offense on a seven-play, 36-yard game-winning drive in the win, the eighth game-winning drive of his career.
On the season, Stroud has completed 64 percent of his passes for 1,714 yards, good for second in the NFL in passing yards. He’s also thrown nine touchdown passes to just that one interception, and he is tied for the league lead in passing plays of 20 yards or more (25 total). Stroud has thrown for at least 300 yards in three of the Texans’ six games this season.
For his career, this is now Stroud’s fourth AFC Offensive Player of the Week honor, and the first since Week 5 of last season against Baltimore. The other two occurred in his rookie season in 2023 (Week 9, vs Tampa Bay and Week 18, at Indianapolis). With four weekly honors in his career, Stroud is now all alone in fourth place in franchise history for weekly NFL honors, trailing only Ka’imi Fairbairn (five, special teams), Deshaun Watson (five, offensive), and J.J. Watt (seven, defensive).
The Texans enter a four game stretch of schedule this Sunday in which they can very feasibly go from 2-4 to 6-4 on the season. They’re 10 point favorites this Sunday over the Giants at home. After the Week 8 bye week, they travel to Los Angeles to face the currently winless Chargers. In week 10, they travel to Cleveland to face the overachieving Browns, and come back to Houston for a Week 11 Thursday game against the Colts.
If Stroud takes this winning streak from two games to six games, he’s going to begin showing up on MVP odds boards, and who thought we would be discussing that when the Texans fell to 0-4 two weeks ago?