C.J. Stroud has a major chip on his shoulder and it all stems from what happened to him back in college.
New Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud said in a pre-draft interview with Uninterrupted’s The Shop that he felt “disrespected” when Ohio State head coach Ryan Day shockingly brought in five-star quarterback Quinn Ewers in the fall of 2021.
Ewers, who was ranked as the No. 1 player in the high school class of 2022, reclassified up one year to join the Buckeyes which did not sit well with Stroud, who already had sat behind Justin Fields in the 2020 season.
“How hard can I make it on myself to like, be better. And Ohio State wasn’t going to be easy. I had another quarterback who came in and I knew I was gonna play early. So Justin [Fields] was a starter and I was the backup and the next year, they brought somebody else in Quinn Ewers, the Texan quarterback, was the No. 1 player, I think, ever ranked. They brought him the weekend of fall camp, which is training camp for us. And I kind of felt disrespected. I didn’t like that … They told me the day he came.”
Once Fields hit the draft, Stroud was penciled in as the starter for the 2021 season. However, adding Ewers to the mix during the team’s fall camp could have changed things.
What made things worse is the staff didn’t let him know about Ewers’s impending arrival until “the day [Ewers] came.”
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Stroud still ended up as the Buckeyes’ starting quarterback and put up insane numbers as he completed 70 percent of his passes for 4,435 yards and 44 touchdowns while leading Ohio State to a Rose Bowl victory over Utah.
Ewers would hit the transfer portal after the 2021 season and returned to his home state of Texas to suit up for the Texas Longhorns.
His hard work paid off after the Houston Texans selected him in No. 2 overall in the 2023 draft.
