Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00Someone asked about this earlier.
00:02Puka Nakua, wide receiver for the Rams,
00:04and Julian Edelman, former wide receiver for the New England Patriots,
00:07sat down and had a conversation.
00:09I'm assuming it was on Edelman's podcast.
00:13Julian Edelman brought up C.J. Stroud,
00:15and among the many topics they talked about was C.J. Stroud
00:18and his struggles in year two.
00:21Do you agree with this assessment by these two of C.J. Stroud in year two?
00:26What do you think about C.J. Stroud's second season?
00:29Offensive line.
00:30Yeah, I think it was definitely, and then I think it was, I mean,
00:34not only on him, but like the coaches to be like, yo,
00:36we got to evolve our game plan as well, being like, yeah,
00:39especially with their wideouts.
00:40I mean, they had Stephon Diggs.
00:42They had Nico Collins.
00:43Diggs got hurt.
00:44Yeah.
00:44Collins was banged up.
00:45They were, and Edel got hurt.
00:47Edel got hurt, too.
00:47I mean, they had a lot of, everyone keeps on saying sophomore slump.
00:51I think he just had a tough situation where his offensive line wasn't playing
00:55particularly well.
00:56Well, he had his best playmakers were in and out of the lineup like all year
01:01long.
01:02It's hard for a guy to get comfortable when he's got guys in his lap trying to
01:07read the defense, and that's what he likes to do.
01:09It's also hard to get comfortable when, like,
01:11you don't know any of those guys running out there.
01:13Especially, they haven't been practicing.
01:16They ain't going to be the same guy that was in training camp when they come
01:18back.
01:19That's what people don't realize.
01:20Practice time is extremely important.
01:23Okay, I agree with some of it.
01:26I think the one thing is they give credible and reasonable passes to CJ that I
01:32agree with.
01:33The part about not having practice time with the wide receivers, with Nico,
01:37now, practice time during the season, yes, that's true.
01:40But Nico and Tank, obviously, he already had a good relationship with.
01:44And I think with Stephon Diggs, we saw a very good relationship forming between CJ and
01:51Stephon Diggs made to Stephon in the first half of the season was really impressive.
01:57And then we saw, I mean, there is, you can look at the statistical gap of CJ in the first,
02:03was it eight games that he had Stephon?
02:05Yes.
02:05And then the nine games afterwards, everything plummeted.
02:08It was just a different offense.
02:10So I don't read into that as much as that, yeah, he really missed Stephon Diggs after
02:15he was gone.
02:16But the pass protection alone, in which, remember, CJ Stroud's pressure rate, the
02:22amount of time he got pressured for the season, was higher than what Pat Mahomes faced in
02:27the Super Bowl.
02:28And Pat Mahomes had the second worst game of his career, in a lot of respects, in the
02:32Super Bowl.
02:33That's very, very real.
02:35I think when it comes to, okay, well, how much of that can change?
02:39A hundred percent, most of it is on Nick Cayley and whether he's actually a viable offensive
02:45coordinator.
02:46And we won't know until we see it.
02:48But in terms of evolving the pass game, yes, develop a better quick game, give CJ more options
02:54earlier, spread the ball out over the field more.
02:57But then also, just the presence of a credible rushing attack.
03:02It doesn't have to be an incredible rushing attack.
03:05Just something that if you're going to base a lot of your offense on play action, you don't
03:10actually have to be awesome at running the ball to have a good play action game.
03:13But you've got to command some level of respect.
03:16And they commanded zero respect in the run game.
03:18And yes, that's on the players.
03:20But really, you take the same players from last year.
03:24And if they have a better offensive coordinator, I think that they had the potential to have
03:28at least a viable rushing attack last year.
03:30Yeah, I would agree with that.
03:33To Puka or Julian Edelman's point, probably collectively their point, but I forget which
03:40one said it that made me think to go to this.
03:43I mean, the five-headed monster that CJ talked about before the season of the three wide receivers,
03:50Nico Tank and Diggs, plus Dalton Schultz, plus Joe Mixon, played together the five of them
03:57for two games.
03:59And it was the first two games of the year.
04:01And Mixon sprained an ankle in that game.
04:02You know, look, it's football, so you're not going to have all five of them together
04:08for all 17 games.
04:10We get that.
04:10But the inconsistency with which they played together, Mixon misses three games at the outset
04:17of the year.
04:17You know, he gets hurt in week two against the Bears.
04:19He misses the next three weeks.
04:22Nico misses basically after that touchdown against the Bills all of week five.
04:27And then the next five weeks after that doesn't come back to the Dallas game.
04:30By the time Nico comes back, Diggs is gone for the season.
04:34You know, he's gone in the Colts game.
04:36And then you lose Tank in that Chiefs game down the stretch in the regular season.
04:41So there is some inconsistency there.
04:43Look, if you're a quarterback, you've got to deal with it.
04:45It just makes dealing with that sort of disjointed skill position rapport, Seth, that you're also
04:52dealing with an offensive line that's not playing well at the same time.
04:55You can deal with one of those things.
04:56The offensive line's not playing well, but I got all these weapons.
04:59My weapons are all hurt, but at least I'm getting protected and I've got time to throw.
05:03And guys like John Mechie and Xavier Hutchinson have a little more time to get open or we
05:07can scheme some things, whatever the case may be.
05:10CJ was dealing with both.
05:11A bad offensive line at the same time.