The Houston Texans are soon going to have to decide what to do with C.J. Stroud.
One route is to pay him a massive, long-term contract extension. A bolder route, potentially, would be to trade him.
There’s no direct suggestion that Stroud is a trade candidate yet. But if the two sides genuinely can’t reach a contract agreement, it’d be more logical for the Texans to deal him to get some value in return rather than eventually letting Stroud leave in free agency.
The problem is that his value is quite confusing.
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ESPN’s Bill Barnwell wrote this in a new article on Thursday about Stroud, noting that he’d be worth “two first-round picks and more” if he was traded:
I asked a handful of people around the league about Stroud and his potential trade value if the Texans choose not to sign him to a long-term contract and generally got two responses. One was an immediate response that he’s still a really valuable quarterback. The other was a long pause and a sigh before something far less confident came out of the other person’s mouth. “I’m glad it’s not my problem” is what I heard from one team that already has its quarterback under contract.
Coaches and executives tend to have longer memories than fans, and while Stroud was disastrously bad during this past postseason, the 2023 second overall pick was solid enough during the regular season, with his 11th-placed finish in Total QBR placing Stroud ahead of guys such as Justin Herbert, Trevor Lawrence and Jared Goff. He has been a consistently above-average quarterback despite playing behind inconsistent offensive lines and nonexistant run games throughout his pro career so far. And if you place stock in wins, well, Stroud is just the third quarterback in NFL history to win a playoff game in each of his first three pro seasons after Otto Graham and Russell Wilson.
And yet, it’s also fair to wonder if Stroud will ever be able to meaningfully build on his rookie season, which itself was driven by an unsustainably low interception rate and an 8.2 yards per attempt figure, neither of which Stroud has come close to matching since. I still think Stroud’s more than a midlevel quarterback, but it’s unclear whether the 24-year-old really has the sort of elite-level ceiling he hinted toward as a rookie.
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The hardest part for an acquiring team, which Barnwell breaks down after the words above, is that he wouldn’t just cost a few first-round picks to then play on a cheap contract.
An acquiring team would be giving up multiple picks to acquire Stroud, and then they’d be signing him to a long-term deal. No one would trade for Stroud if they didn’t believe he was their long-term QB answer.
That raises the perceived cost for an acquiring team much higher. Stroud is worth a bunch of picks and a bunch of money, not just one or the other.
That’ll make it extra compelling if time continues and the Texans haven’t found an extension agreement with Stroud. The tension could rise quickly.