CJ Stroud hopes to lose to Jets ‘a wake-up call’ for Texans

EAST RUTHERFORD, NJ — On a night when he was sacked a career-high eight times, quarterback CJ Stroud called the Houston Texans’ 21-13 loss to the New York Jets “embarrassing.”

Stroud had a Thursday night he would prefer to forget, completing a career-worst 36% of his passes for 191 yards with no touchdowns or interceptions.

“To come out here on a prime-time game and get embarrassed, that’s never fun,” Stroud said. “We have to be better in a lot of areas, and it starts with me. There’s plays I gotta make, throws I gotta make. I point the finger at me and realize I gotta be better as a football player. If we want to win, this is not the recipe for it. We gotta learn how to dominate.

“This is definitely a great wake-up call for us to tighten up the ship.”

Stroud also took 11 quarterback hits and was pressured on 46.7% of his drop-backs. That has been a season-long trend. Stroud has been sacked 30 times this season, the second-most in the NFL, behind Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson, who has been sacked 33 times and suffered a season-ending Achilles tear in Week 7.

Texans coach DeMeco Ryans has preached all season that the Texans must improve their pass protection, but the issues have lingered.

“We give up eight sacks, and every drop-back and pass situation looks like we’re in scramble mode, so it’s just not good enough,” Ryans said. “We can’t operate on time, and we gotta get that fixed. Anytime you get sacked that many times, it’s not good enough. Don’t want a quarterback getting hit as many hits as he took. … We got to adjust.”

Stroud admitted that it was “not easy” to operate under duress Thursday night. He was 5-for-12 for 67 yards under pressure but characterized some of it as self-inflicted wounds.

“One thing I can do is just get the ball out faster,” Stroud said. “When something’s open, I got to be able to hit it, because there’s times where I sit back there and I’m thinking too much. I gotta be able to get it out, get it to No. 1 if No. 1 is there, No. 2 if No. 2 is there, get through my progressions. So it’s not just on them.

Stroud’s time to throw was 3.63 seconds against the Jets, which was the highest of his career. On average, the pressure was reaching him in 2.87 seconds on Thursday night, according to Next Gen Stats, and he scrambled on a few of those plays to keep him alive.

The struggles allowed the Jets, who didn’t score a touchdown until early in the third quarter, to emerge with 21 second-half points. Two of the sacks the Texans allowed were costly. One sack in the first quarter, with the Texans on the Jets’ 11-yard line, caused a Stroud fumble. Another sack late in the second quarter, on the Jets’ 34-yard line, pushed the Texans 4 yards back, forcing Ka’imi Fairbairn to attempt a 56-yard field goal, which he missed.

“We gotta take what we’re doing at practice and apply it to the field,” right tackle Tytus Howard said. “We’re not doing it right now. We started off early in the game letting the quarterback get too much. It trickled down and made it start slow for us. That’s been our problem. We gotta fix it.”

By contrast, the Texans’ run blocking was effective again. The team rushed for 187 yards, including 106 from running back Joe Mixon, who posted his fifth 100-yard rushing game. It’s the third time this year the Texans have gone over 180 yards on the ground.

Pass protection has been a different story this season.

The Texans hope to fix their woes by next week when they host the Detroit Lions on Sunday Night Football.