{"id":3915,"date":"2026-01-20T09:53:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T01:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/20\/demeco-ryans-wants-cj-stroud-to-hit-the-ground-running-sundays-game-against-the-patriots\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T11:45:53","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T03:45:53","slug":"demeco-ryans-wants-cj-stroud-to-hit-the-ground-running-sundays-game-against-the-patriots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/20\/demeco-ryans-wants-cj-stroud-to-hit-the-ground-running-sundays-game-against-the-patriots\/","title":{"rendered":"DeMeco Ryans wants CJ Stroud to “hit the ground running” Sunday’s game against the Patriots"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

Texans coach DeMeco Ryans said on Sunday that he he didn’t think<\/span> making a quarterback change in a division-round loss to the Patriots, despite four first-half interceptions from CJ Stroud.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Ryans was asked to provide a big-picture assessment of Stroud’s performance in the 2025 season.<\/p>\n

“The quarterback position is going to get a lot of attention, a lot of attention,” Ryans told reporters. “We understand that. In this league, it is what it is. CJ also understands that. All season long, I thought he did a great job coming in and learning a new offense, a new scheme. I thought he handled it well. We got better as the season went on and made plays that would allow us to win more football games. I’m not going to let us play in that bad game. [against the Patriots] tell me who CJ is. I know who CJ is. I know what he can do. We are always looking to improve. No one feels worse about this situation than CJ. You feel bad for the team. He feels like he let the team down, and I just told him, ‘Keep your head up and keep moving forward.’ We all want better. We can’t go back to that game right now and go back and play it again. We just learn from it. What do you learn from it? That’s my big message to him is, what do you learn from that and how do you make that a priority and fix it and improve and get better?\u201d<\/p>\n

So where does Ryans want to see Stroud develop in 2026?<\/p>\n

“I talked to CJ today and my message is the same,” Ryans said. “Right now, it’s just going to be about him, it’s going to be a lot of bad talk, a lot of attention for him. He can’t listen to it all. He has to go back to work at the beginning of the season to get back to the basics, which is the basics of playing the quarterback position, playing it well, understanding how we have to play the game to win it.<\/p>\n

“I just told him, ‘Don’t listen to anything, put your phone away, don’t listen to anything, because there will be a lot of bad talk about you.’ Literally, I just told him to go away, clear his mind. Because right now, in this moment, I know there will be a lot of attention on him, a lot of negative media, and today, a lot of questions about him. That’s just the way it is, and he understands the position he’s in. As a defender who leads the team, a lot is expected of you, many eyes are on you, so if things don’t go well, you are talked about badly. He understands that and he just can’t let other people’s opinions get in the way of who he really is inside.”<\/p>\n

The Texans will likely pick up the fifth-year option on Stroud’s rookie deal. The question is whether they will be willing to give him a second contract before or after he has a chance to show that he can respond to not one but two bad games in the 2025 playoffs; Ryans declined to enter into the question of a contract extension on Monday.<\/p>\n

Last week, there were five blinds (two of which were lost) and a block. This week, it was four cuts. That’s seven games in two games. And so while Stroud may indeed pull it off, the question is whether it will go down – or if it will bounce back in 2026.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Texans coach DeMeco Ryans said on Sunday that he he didn’t think making a quarterback change in a division-round loss to the Patriots, despite four first-half interceptions from CJ Stroud. On Monday, Ryans was asked to provide a big-picture assessment of Stroud’s performance in the 2025 season. “The quarterback position is going to get a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3916,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3915","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\/3915","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=3915"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3917,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3915\/revisions\/3917"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}