5 significant questions for the Houston Texans at quarterback
By Randy Gurzi
2. Does C.J. Stroud start for the Texans in Week 1?
All the questions about Case Keenum and Davis Mills will work themselves out but the one that matters the most is where C.J. Stroud stands right now. Yes, he's going to be the starting quarterback for many years to come but the coaching staff needs to decide when that era begins.
There are a couple of schools of thought on how to handle this. One is that it's better for a quarterback to sit, learn the playbook, the speed of the game, etc. They are then expected to get better with practice and mental reps.
The flaws in this approach are easy to see. Not everyone learns by watching. Hands-on is often the way to go and as long as the quarterback can learn from his mistakes, it's fine to let him go out there and make them.
A second flaw is that practice reps are limited in today's NFL due to CBA rules. That means the starting quarterback needs his reps and the No. 2 gets what's left over. If Stroud is going to succeed, he needs to feast off more than table scraps.
This is why many prefer a different school of thought, which is to put the rookie in there from Week 1. This idea is to simply let him learn the game with on-the-job training — and it has been more successful than having players wait in recent years.
Trevor Lawrence, Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, and Justin Herbert all started right away and have had success. A counter-argument to this would be Patrick Mahomes sitting behind Alex Smith but that was vastly different.
Smith was an established starter that had his team constantly in the playoffs — and let's not kid ourselves, Mahomes didn't learn anything from Smith. He would have been just fine as a rookie.
There's also the debate that Aaron Rodgers learned behind Brett Favre but if anyone compares Keenum or Mills to a Hall of Fame quarterback such as Favre, it's time to walk away from the conversation before a migraine sets in.
So the Texans need to decide how to approach this, and whether or not they want to throw Stroud in as the Week 1 starter.