I could rattle off a list of names, dates, opponents, and scores, all detailing the Pittsburgh Steelers’ history playing rookie quarterbacks. We’re going to get to that, too. But ultimately it doesn’t matter, does it? Every player is different, no matter their level of experience. And besides, according to defensive coordinator Teryl Austin, the next one on the menu isn’t playing like a rookie.
“Very accurate. I think he takes care of the ball. He does a good job, I think, in terms of getting rid of the ball, getting out of his hands”, he said, via transcript provided by the team’s media department. “When you look at it overall, he really is doing, I think, a really good job. He doesn’t look like a rookie when you watch him play”.
We’re referring here to C.J. Stroud, the second-overall pick in the 2023 NFL Draft and the second quarterback taken behind Bryce Young. Although the Texans are only 1-2 through his first three starts, the tape really does bear out Austin’s impression that, at least often enough, he looks like no rookie. And don’t worry, we’ll be getting to that this week as well.
“They’re letting him be a quarterback”, Austin elaborated, indicating that the Texans are not limiting the playbook to accommodate Stroud’s inexperience, although they are, as would be expected for any quarterback, accentuating his strengths.
“They get a lot of four-wide looks”, he said, for example. “And he’s able to get it to the right guy, get it in terms of his ball placement really good. And I think that’s why you see them spreading the ball. If he was inaccurate and couldn’t do it, they’d be hunkered down and running the ball. He can do it. So, he’s doing a good job”.
Stroud recently set some sort of arbitrary NFL record by becoming the first rookie quarterback to throw for over 900 yards without an interception in his first three games. While historically uninteresting in the broader scheme of things, it is nevertheless impressive. And he does have four touchdown passes.
Still, Austin knows that the Steelers are working with a limited data set. By no means, he said, is three games a sufficient sample size to get a read on a young quarterback. “It maybe gives you some indicators of things that he likes and things that he may be good at. But I don’t think a three-game sample size for anybody is big enough to say, ‘Hey, that guy is that’”, he said.
Perhaps one key to this game is pressure. The Jacksonville Jaguars struggled to pressure Stroud this past week, and the Texans hung 37 points on them in a 37-17 win. He wasn’t sacked at all. But in his two losses in the first two weeks of the season, he was sacked a combined 11 times. So here’s me going out on a limb: OLBs T.J. Watt and Alex Highsmith might be a critical key to victory in this one. Remember where you heard that from, because I doubt anybody else has picked up on that yet. Those guys are solid.
