{"id":3819,"date":"2026-01-20T05:01:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T21:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/20\/cj-stroud-strains-shoulder-after-4-ints-in-texans-loss-to-pats\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T05:05:26","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T21:05:26","slug":"cj-stroud-strains-shoulder-after-4-ints-in-texans-loss-to-pats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/20\/cj-stroud-strains-shoulder-after-4-ints-in-texans-loss-to-pats\/","title":{"rendered":"CJ Stroud strains shoulder after 4 INTs in Texans loss to Pats"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"article-meta\">\n<ul class=\"authors\">\n<li class=\"mugshot-shown\">\n<div class=\"author-img\"><\/div>\n<p>DJ Bien-Aime<span class=\"timestamp \">Jan 18, 2026, 10:22 PM ET<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"author-overlay\">Shut up<\/p>\n<ul>DJ Bien-Aime covers the Houston Texans for ESPN. He joined ESPN in July 2022 after covering the New York Jets for the New York Daily News. He is a former athlete who finished his college career at Louisville. You can catch DJ on ESPN Radio on his show &#8220;Talkin&#8217; Texans.&#8221;<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p>FOXBOROUGH, Mass. &#8212; Houston quarterback CJ Stroud took the blame Sunday after the worst outing of his career saw the Texans&#8217; season end with a 28-16 loss to the New England Patriots.<\/p>\n<p>Stroud threw a game-high four interceptions as Houston fell to the divisional playoffs for the third straight year. He went 20-of-47 for 212 yards and one touchdown with a career-low 28 passer rating. One of the crosses was returned for a touchdown, the first of his career.<\/p>\n<p>The loss wasn&#8217;t all for Stroud, as the Texans&#8217; defense gave up three touchdowns, the most from the starting unit since Dec. 21 against the Las Vegas Raiders. But Stroud had a completion percentage of minus-15.9% above expectations, the worst mark of any first-round quarterback in the last decade, according to NFL Next Gen Stats.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I feel like I let people down. &#8230; It hurts, and I&#8217;m not used to it,&#8221; Stroud said. &#8220;I didn&#8217;t play very well this year. But I will respond, keep my chest up, my chin up and I will keep fighting forward. If God is in front of me, who can be against me? I will rely on that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<aside class=\"inline editorial float-r\" data-behavior=\"article_related\">\n<h2 class=\"editorial-title\">Editor&#8217;s Choice<\/h2>\n<p>2 Related<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Although Stroud had four starts, all of which came in the first half, coach DeMeco Ryans said he never considered benching the 2023 No. 1 overall pick. 2 in favor of Davis Mills.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;CJ is our guy,&#8221; Ryans said. &#8220;I believed he could come back in the second half and throw it. I believed he could play better, and he did in the second half. He played better. We had some good drives there in the second half. I believed he was going to do that, and he did. Like I always tell our guys at halftime, it doesn&#8217;t matter what happened in the first half.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Stroud&#8217;s turnovers were numerous in the first half of the playoffs as Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence also had four in the 2022 wild-card game against the Los Angeles Chargers. Since the 1970 combine, players with four interceptions are 3-35 in the postseason. Since 2000, only Lawrence in 2022 and Russell Wilson in the 2014 NFC Championship Game have won despite being selected four times.<\/p>\n<p>After Sunday&#8217;s loss, Ryans told Stroud, &#8220;Keep your head up. I love you. I got your back.&#8221; The message from the coach went down to the players in the locker room. Defensive end Will Anderson Jr. and Stroud sat next to each other offering words of encouragement.<\/p>\n<p>Anderson, who had three sacks and two forced fumbles, made sure Stroud knew he was &#8220;hands down the best quarterback in the league.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There is no one better than him [Stroud],&#8221; he said. &#8220;We&#8217;re behind him, we&#8217;re following behind him, we didn&#8217;t get the result we wanted, but that&#8217;s why we have an offseason to get better and grow.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Stroud finished the postseason with two touchdowns to seven turnovers (five interceptions, two fumbles lost). He became the first player with that many turnovers in a single postseason since Carson Palmer had eight, and in just two games, in 2015.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m just careless in football. I have to fix that, and it&#8217;s something I know I can do. So I&#8217;ll do that,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Since Stroud finished as the Offensive Rookie of the Year in 2023 with historic numbers, he hasn&#8217;t reached that level of production. He finished the 2025 season with 3,041 passing yards, 19 touchdowns and 8 interceptions, down even further from last season, when he totaled 3,727 yards and 20 touchdowns.<\/p>\n<p>Houston is now 0-7 in the divisional round, including 0-3 under the Ryans-Stroud pairing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DJ Bien-AimeJan 18, 2026, 10:22 PM ET Shut up DJ Bien-Aime covers the Houston Texans for ESPN. He joined ESPN in July 2022 after covering the New York Jets for the New York Daily News. He is a former athlete who finished his college career at Louisville. You can catch DJ on ESPN Radio on &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3820,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nfl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3819"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3821,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3819\/revisions\/3821"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}