Key to success for CJ Stroud

After a bunch of watching every throw in his games for the past 3 or so months I've come to understand where exactly I stand on Stroud. I'm very comfortable and happy with him as QB1 and I feel like there's a lot of good evaluations on him but also some false narratives as well.

To start, let me just say Stroud's tape is so good. He doesn't really have a glaring weakness. He's not perfect (although his strength is that he can make perfect throws nearly all game long) and like every QB he'll struggle with certain things but there's not really one thing where, at least without projecting, you're really concerned will cause him to fail.

However, the concerns about his play under pressure, processing and s2 scores are half true. Stroud doesn't struggle to go through reads, or even to play under pressure (in the second half of the year he got MUCH better at this and the Georgia game was a showcase of all his improvement in this area not a one-time showcase). But the real times I charted consistent concerns are when multiple things went wrong.

First condition is that there must be good coverage on the backend. Second is that the pocket is collapsing/there's interior pressure and CJ can't really roll out or side step like he likes to. This is a situation which happens often in the NFL but every QB struggles with it to some degree and some are just better at handling it than others. This is kind of where the s2 scores may have some indication of Stroud's weakness. If you're able to delay Stroud's reads post snap, he hasn't really shown me the processing speed to deal with confusing coverage plus a well contained and collapsing pocket.

However, that's a big IF. That's what I believe things will come down to for Stroud. How well can he analyze things pre and post snap to account for where he may be lesser in quick processing. That's the thing, he was pretty good at it in college but there's reps where he wasn't. For me it's all contingent on pre snaps and mostly POST snap recognition. Forgive me, this is kind of hard to describe but there's clearly plays where you can tell even under pressure he's able to read pre and post snap and deliver but there's also plays where he's wrong post snap and it looks like he can't play under pressure.

TLDR; Stroud has all the physical tools and intangibles to be successful. The biggest point of make or break for him will be how he accounts for his quick recognition/reading and processing by overcoming them with a combination of good pre and post snap processing as well as well designed schemed throws by Slowik. I'm very hopeful. StroudSZN baby