The 2023 NFL Draft is here! After months of waiting, we finally know where the 2023 NFL Draft class will land. This information shapes the outlook for rookies in 2023 and beyond. We’re going to have you covered throughout and following the 2023 NFL Draft to help you prepare for your fantasy football leagues. Next up for many will be dynasty rookie drafts. To help you prepare to make your dynasty rookie draft picks, let’s dive into Thor Nystrom’s 2023 NFL Draft profile as well as Pat Fitzmaurice’s dynasty rookie draft outlook for C.J. Stroud.
Dynasty Rookie Picks & Predictions: Texans Draft C.J. Stroud
Let’s first see what NFL Draft expert Thor Nystrom says about C.J. Stroud.
Thor Nystrom’s 2023 NFL Draft Outlook & Player Comp
Player comparison: Justin Herbert
Bio
When Stroud was 13 years old, his father was sentenced to 38 years in prison for a drug-related incident that included carjacking, kidnapping and robbery. That crippled the family financially, forcing a move into a tiny apartment above a California storage facility during Stroud’s high school years.
The Strouds could not afford new cleats, so C.J. would return home with blistered feet in the old pair he would reuse. His high school would send home packaged meals. He played one high school game with only one contact lens.
C.J. Stroud knew he was gifted. He could throw the ball 50 yards as a 9-year-old. But with the Strouds unable to afford a private QB coach, C.J. instead studied YouTube tutorials to improve his mechanics. He literally built himself in a makeshift lab in that storage facility at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains.
Bryce Young flashed ability from a young age but was doubted throughout because of his size. Stroud, the third five-star California quarterback in that recruiting class with Young and DJ Uiagalelei, was more a case of delayed development.
Entering his junior year of high school, Stroud had only one scholarship offer and had attempted only 50 passes. He did not play at a powerhouse. He was self-taught. He did not have a connected tutor to spread the word about him. This was the last moment in C.J. Stroud’s life when he was a secret.
To that point, everything had been an uphill struggle. But the day he entered the starting lineup, a star was born. After a life of grinding, suddenly, on that field, inside those hashes, everything came easy to him. He lit it up as a junior and started rising up recruiting boards. The offers poured in.
Summer before his senior season, Stroud received a call from Ohio State’s Ryan Day. Day offered a scholarship. Stroud fell to his knees and wept. The Buckeyes lost Justin Fields to the NFL after the 2020 season. Stroud won the open derby to replace him.
The NIL offers came fast and furious. Stroud was given a $200,000 Bentley. But he wasn’t so far removed from having nothing. He bought his mom and sister a house. He handed out $500 Express gift cards to each of his teammates.
Stroud was named the Big Ten Offensive Player of the Year and a Heisman Trophy finalist both years as the starter. For years, C.J. had avoided prison communication with his father. After the 2022 Heisman ceremony — Stroud finished third — C.J. took an incoming call from his dad. They had a long talk. Stroud forgave him.
A projected top-five pick, Stroud was seemingly a slam dunk to declare early. But he waited all the way up until the NFL’s declaration deadline of January 16 to announce his intentions. Stroud called leaving Columbus “one of the hardest [decisions] I’ve ever had to make.”
Strengths
Stroud is the new-age prototype of a pocket-passer. He’s well-built. He’s got a smooth, juicy arm. He’s aggressive, attacking all levels of the field. You need to mind all three sectors because he can fit it anywhere he wants and has no compunction about doing so.
The nuance of Stroud’s throwing arsenal jumped out most over the past two years. His combination of touch and placement is best in class. Stroud’s arm and accuracy speak for themselves — his completion percentage in college was 97th percentile among all quarterbacks going back to 2005.
But the touch and placement on Stroud’s downfield and window throws in conjunction make him very, very dangerous — he serves up balls that are as catchable as humanely possible. Bucket throws, layer throws, rifle-it-into-tight-window throws, timing throws up the sideline — you name it. He is the pitcher who can throw any pitch in any sequence at any time and fit it through a keyhole. Funny enough, ESPN’s Jordan Reid compared Stroud’s setup and delivery to an ace pitcher during Stroud’s throwing session at the NFL Combine. Spot-on.
As you can imagine, Stroud’s game — the accuracy, touch and timing — maximizes yards after catch (YAC) opportunities. His receivers rarely have to adjust with the ball in the air. It tends to hit them on the hands in stride, leading them upfield or away from oncoming defenders.
This week, coming out of the NFL Combine, Stroud’s arm is getting a lot of ink — justifiably so. What doesn’t get discussed enough, I think, is Stroud’s innate understanding of how to attack defenses in the moment. Stroud is a day trader who takes advantage of the market factors presented at any given moment. Humor a brief aside.
Remember the book on Pat Mahomes coming out of Texas Tech? That he was a YOLO quarterback? In the Super Bowl, Mahomes’ longest completion was 22 yards. The Eagles dropped back to take away deep shots and forced Mahomes to be methodical and efficient with underneath space. Mahomes completed 77.8% of his passes for three TD. That’s why the Chiefs won the Super Bowl despite Mahomes throwing for only 182 yards with no explosive passes. The Eagles forced Mahomes to beat them in a very specific way. And he obliged them. This is a hallmark of the greats more than any singular physical trait.
Back to Stroud. One of the All-22 tapes of Stroud’s that I watched was the 2021 Ohio State-Purdue game. The Boilermakers decided to begin that game dropping back in coverage, ala the Eagles’ Super Bowl strategy. Purdue’s plan was well reasoned. It made sense to protect yourself on the back end against OSU’s receiving corps of Garrett Wilson, Chris Olave and Jaxon Smith-Njigba.
Stroud did not get frustrated by this. The opposite. Stroud began the game by eating the Boilermakers’ lunch in the quick game. Every throw early on was a short/manufactured/first-read concept where the ball came out lickity-split. OSU’s demigod receivers piled up YAC. So, of course, the Boilermakers were forced to move up coverage to stop the hemorrhaging of free yards.
You know what happened next. Bombs away. Ohio State’s next two passing plays were a wide-open touchdown and a wide-open dropped touchdown. The latter was one of Stroud’s seven incompletions on the day. He finished 31-of-38 for 361 yards, five TDs, and zero interceptions. Purdue’s defense finished top-25 SP+ that year. You pick the way you prefer CJ Stroud to beat you. And he’ll oblige.
Another subtle aspect I love about Stroud’s game is how he always stays squared to throw behind the line of scrimmage, no matter what. He’s like a gun that’s always cocked. Even when he’s rolling left, he’s got his finger pressed lightly against the trigger with his eye trained in the scope.
For most of Stroud’s career, he had little interest in leaving the pocket to run. But as we found out when Ohio State played Georgia in the College Football Playoff in December, he can if required. Not only that… he might be good at it. Who else won off-script against that Georgia defense the past two years like Stroud did?
It wasn’t just that performance, I should mention. In my film notes, I jotted this: Moves around better than billing. Better athlete than people think. Maniacal adherence to winning in pocket kept this part of his game dormant.
Watching Stroud live the past two years, I wasn’t as impressed by his movement. It opened my eyes — along with everyone else’s — during the Georgia game in last year’s CFP. But on film, it was clear Stroud moved around in the pocket better than I had given him credit for. He just didn’t run around and show off his legs.
Some wondered why we hadn’t seen that skill prior to his last game in college. I loved Stroud’s answer to that question at the NFL Combine: “You spend eight hours on one play, you are not going to go, ‘1, 2, run.’ You are going to go, ‘1, 2, 3, 4 and try to figure out who is open.’ You want to feed your guys the rock.”
Below, we’ll touch on the biggest question mark of Stroud’s eval — that he played with a ludicrous amount of supporting talent in a high-octane system tailored to his strengths. But it’s important to differentiate Stroud from the Ohio State helmet. He is not Justin Fields, nor Dwayne Haskins, nor is he a product of a system or his supporting cast.
Haskins was a one-year wonder who didn’t move around as well as Stroud and lacked Stroud’s accuracy and nuance as a thrower. Stroud and Fields share very few similarities. Whereas Fields was dinged for being a slow processor and his preference of seeing receivers open before throwing, Stroud is an emphatic decision-maker, averaging nearly a half-second less per throw on average over his OSU career than Fields. He’s also a more courageous thrower, albeit lacking Fields’ athletic package.
Stroud doesn’t simply accept what he’s given. He will throw receivers open. Stroud was, of course, aided by the skill of the receivers he was throwing to. But that doesn’t negate the number of balls that left his hands before a receiver’s break that found the receiver’s hands immediately thereafter. In the NFL, you don’t get open looks every snap – this is another skill that will immediately translate.
Weaknesses
Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Stroud played with a stupid amount of talent at Ohio State. His offensive lines were elite. His receiving corps was even better. Stroud threw to WRs Chris Olave, Garrett Wilson, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Marvin Harrison and Emeka Egbuka the past two years. The WR room was so stacked that 2022 first-rounder Jameson Williams had to transfer to Alabama prior to the 2021 season to get on the field.
So yes, Stroud is a courageous, anticipatory thrower who trusts his receivers — but it would have been crazy not to trust the specific receivers he was working with. Nearly every ball Stroud threw in college, his man had a physical advantage over the defender covering him.
Stroud also needs to get more consistent under pressure. This is an area of the game he shined in during the 2021 season. But during the 2022 regular season, the difference between Stroud’s work in clean pockets (93.4 PFF grade) and under pressure (42.0) was staggering. Too often, we’d see Stroud recognize pressure late and move on to the next play instead of finding an alternate answer while under duress.
This is what made Stroud’s performance against Georgia in Round 1 so important. In that game, Stroud was fabulous under pressure against the nation’s best defense. He also showed an ability to throw accurately on the move and steal yards as a runner when Georgia dropped heavy numbers into coverage.
On instances where he did attempt to extend plays earlier in his career, Stroud did not look natural. His processor slowed, his field of vision seemed to narrow, and he didn’t mind his mechanics as he did in clean pockets — where he’s obsessive about them. In those rare off-script situations, you’d see him arm-muscle balls without a sound base beneath him or his shoulders squared.
The other thing you have to mention is that Stroud is at his worst when he’s locking onto his first option. And perhaps this is a natural manifestation of playing with so many outlier talents. But Stroud could glitch when the look he expected to get wasn’t there. One thing to work on is a more smooth continuum from Point A to Point B to Point C when those looks aren’t there.
This was an issue at times during the 2022 regular season. In his defense, OSU’s running back room was a MASH unit all year, Smith-Njigba was essentially unexpectedly lost for the season, and Stroud was working with a new receiving corps. Year-over-year continuity was minimal at the skill positions, and week-to-week continuity was not guaranteed either.
Returning to the Georgia game — can you tell how important that singular game was to his eval?! — the Bulldogs’ defensive gameplan centered around taking Stroud’s first- and second-reads away while banking on Stroud staying in the pocket and getting frustrated.
The Bulldogs wanted to make it very difficult for Stroud, the Facilitator, to facilitate. This was a brilliant strategy based on the book on Stroud heading in. But for that one game, Stroud turned into Stroud the Creator, manufacturing answers that weren’t there.
Was that performance a one-off, or a sign there’s a ton of dormant play-making potential still waiting to be unlocked? If the answer is the latter, my ranking here is wrong, and Stroud is the best quarterback in this class. If I had seen it more, he’d be ranked that way on my board.
Stroud has closed ground on Bryce Young since that Georgia game. For me, the gap between those two feels like it gets narrower by the day.
2023 Dynasty Rookie Draft Outlook: C.J. Stroud
FantasyPros college football and NFL Draft analyst Thor Nystrom calls Stroud “the new-age prototype of a pocket-passer.” The 6-3, 214-pound Stroud is a mechanically consistent and uncommonly accurate passer who can fit throws into tight windows and hit the bull’s-eye on deeper passes. He throws easily catchable passes, maximizing his receivers’ ability to make yardage after the catch. Stroud isn’t going to add much fantasy value as a runner, but he’s not a complete statue either. He has enough functional mobility to avoid pass rushers and occasionally run for a first down when a play breaks down. But Stroud is first and foremost a pocket passer.
A two-time Heisman Trophy finalist, Stroud completed 69.3% of his passes at Ohio State and averaged 9.8 yards per pass attempt, with 85 TD passes and 12 interceptions in 26 games. Granted, Stroud was blessed with an embarrassment of pass-catching riches at Ohio State, including WRs Garrett Wilson, Chris Olave, Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Marvin Harrison Jr.
There was a great deal of predraft speculation that Stroud’s stock was falling, possibly due to a reportedly low score on the S2 cognitive test, which is designed to measure an athlete’s capacity for information processing and quick decision-making. Earlier in the draft process, Stroud was the betting favorite to be taken No. 1 overall.
In dynasty leagues, Stroud figures to be a top-4 pick in superflex formats. His supporting cast with the Texans won’t be very exciting early on, with Nico Collins his top veteran wide receiver, so don’t expect strong numbers in Year 1. But Stroud’s long-term outlook is bright. He’s a good bet to start right away, and for redraft purposes he should be considered a low-end QB2 or high-end QB3.
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