The stories that stood out to me Sunday:
Stroud handled the heat wonderfully in Jacksonville. Remember all the stuff about C.J. Stroud struggling to process information under pressure, and without the supporting cast he had at Ohio State, he’d struggle in a relative startup in Houston? I take you to Jacksonville, with the Texans having trouble running it Sunday, and even more pressure on the shoulders of the rookie in his third NFL game. I watched good chunks of this game, and Stroud’s performance under pressure in the 37-17 rout of the Jags was notable. NFL NextGen Stats backed that up. It was Stroud’s composure against the blitz that was crucial in Houston winning this game.
When blitzed in Jacksonville Sunday, Stroud completed eight of 11 throws for 130 yards and two TDs. When facing a regular rush, he was an efficient 12 of 19, without the difference-making TD plays. Add to this the fact he had two injury replacements at tackle and didn’t get sacked, despite the 11 blitzes from Jacksonville.
“I think I just learn from week to week,” Stroud told me post-game. “A lot of the sacks and hits that happened last week were on me. I gotta get rid of the ball, get it out on time. This week, I think I fixed that issue.”
Watching Stroud (20 of 30, 280 yards, two TDs, no picks, 118.8 rating), it seemed like he had more answers for what the Jags threw at him than young quarterbacks should have. Maybe we expected the learning curve, and the rebuilding process in Houston, to take longer. He didn’t think the word “rebuild” was one his team places much stock in. “We’re grown men,” he said. “We’re NFL players. Why can’t we win any game we show up to play? That Jacksonville team’s a top 10 team in the NFL, but we knew we could play with them. I’m nobody’s fish. I’m not somebody a team can tee off on. I compete. We all compete. The way I look at it, all pressure is a privilege. It helps me prepare, it helps me win. I love it.” It showed Sunday in Jacksonville.
You could see during the game why Stroud and fellow rookie Will Anderson were named captains. It’s not just their pedigree. With Stroud in particular, the way he seems to command his huddle and play with a calm but commanding demeanor is easy to see. “I don’t think leadership has an age,” Stroud said. “It’s something that’s in you. I didn’t come in demanding respect. I came in wanting to earn it.”
Jordan Love is passing every test. In the first seven series of the Saints-Packers home-opener for Green Bay Sunday, Jordan Love went 0-for-7 in productivity. Four punts, two failed fourth-down conversions and an interception, all in the game’s first 47 minutes. These are the times that try a quarterback’s soul—and the times a quarterback has to just forget it and move on to the next series.
Love will be linked to Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers forever, or at least as long as he’s the Packers’ quarterback, the third in a 32-season line of quarterbacks that have kept the Packers relevant for a third of a century. At least early in his career, Love has something in common with Favre and Rodgers: they’ve all beaten the Bears, and they’ve been good (mostly) in crunch time when needed.
In the final 13 minutes, Love went field goal-TD-TD, capping the last drive with clutch completions to Jayden Reed and Romeo Doubs to pull out an 18-17 win. His 30-yard throw up the seam for Reed was a great throw and better catch; his eight-yard throw to Doubs was perfectly placed.
“I didn’t feel nervous at all,” Love said from the Packers’ locker room. “I just stayed even, trusted the team and trusted what we were doing and kept pounding away. That’s what everyone did. When you’re down like that you gotta make plays, and everyone was confident we would. I could feel it.”
Interesting, the similarities (other than accuracy) in the first three Packer starts of the last three starting quarterbacks:
- Favre, 1992: 2-1, 70.5 percent accuracy, 709 yards, 3 TD, 1 INT, 98.1 rating.
- Rodgers, 2008: 2-1, 64.6 percent accuracy, 796 yards, 4 TD, 0 INT, 102.9 rating.
- Love, 2023: 2-1, 53.1 percent accuracy, 655 yards, 7 TD, 1 INT, 94.8 rating.
Love’s got miles to go before he sleeps, of course. But he’s started well. Most importantly, he’s been cool when the games get hot. That’s something you’d better be able to do in the NFL or you won’t last long.
The best day a kicker ever had. This is Matt Gay’s fifth NFL season, and he’s had a nice early career. But entering Sunday, he’d been close to average (17 of 23, 74 percent) in field-goal tries from 50 and beyond. That all changed in Baltimore Sunday. He made 54-, 53-, 53-, and 53-yard field goals, all after halftime, to lead the Colts past Baltimore 22-19. Gay’s the first kicker to hit four field goals of 50 yards or more in a game, ever.
What impressed me: Under big pressure late in overtime, Gay’s last field goal was so perfect that if there’d been a stake rising straight up from the middle of the crossbar, his kick would have shtoinked it. Beautiful, straight down the middle, with plenty to spare.
“I didn’t see it,” he said from the Colts’ locker room. “I kind of just blacked out when I kicked it. I’ll go back and watch it, but if it was right down the middle, that’s pretty cool.”
Good kickers, I’ve found, don’t ever think they’ve done something momentous when they make a big kick, or even four of them. If you’re looking for great drama or great quotes, don’t go to kickers.
Gay was exactly like that post-game. A flatliner. Just did my job. Emotions don’t help kickers. “Those four kicks, honestly, didn’t feel any different,” he said. “I’m not really thinking too much about anything else. I like to have my mind free.”
Re: the record, he said: “You get your name in the record book, it’s pretty cool. It’ll probably hit me later. More than anything—the records, the numbers—I really like just being able to give my team a win after they’ve fought so hard to win an important game.” Sounds like a good guy to have on your team.
It’s hard not to root for guys like Josh Dobbs. Follow this: Dobbs started starting at quarterback 22 years ago, when he was 6 years old. “The Alpharetta Eagles,” he said from the Cardinals locker room Sunday. “That was my first team. I kept going from there, went to Alpharetta High, started all the time, went to Tennessee, started midway through my freshman year and then for the rest of my time there. All those years playing, then I got drafted behind a Hall of Fame quarterback in Pittsburgh [Ben Roethlisberger] in 2017, and your life changes when you get to the NFL.”
Entering Sunday’s game, Dobbs had started two games in Tennessee last year and the first two this year in Arizona … 0-4. So it’s hard to imagine what goes through the mind of Josh Dobbs, on the one-month anniversary of his trade from Cleveland to Arizona, when he completes 17 of 21 passes for a career-high 81 percent, manages six scoring drives in nine possessions against a team that entered the game as the NFC’s best in 2023, with the most fearsome pass-rusher in the game. Cards 28, Cowboys 16. First win of Dobbs’ professional life—in year seven since being drafted.
“I am proud of my performance,” said Dobbs, who once thought he wanted to be an astronaut, not a quarterback. And you could hear the pride in his voice. “I’m actually more proud of the team and how we all played, not just me. We started fast, played complementary football, started the second half rough with a three-and-out and six-and-out, then came back with a four-play touchdown drive when we really needed it to clinch the game. It’s Jonathan Gannon’s first win as a head coach, and Drew Petzing’s first win as an offensive coordinator, so a lot of firsts for a lot of people—they get to enjoy it the same as I do.
“And I am going to appreciate it, a lot. This league, man, it’s so crazy. It’s a league of opportunity. Across the league, you see guys who’ve been waiting months, years to play. The only way you can have a real chance to play and keep playing is to focus on the moment, live in the moment. This is a great reward for that.”
Read more in Peter King’s full Football Morning in America column.