C.J. Stroud says he’s nearly 100 percent healthy for Jaguars game after shoulder injury

Houston Texans quarterback CJ Stroud has not been able to lead his team to a victory yet in his first two weeks of his rookie season, but he’s still surely impressed with his impressive play so far this year.

It’s clear the Texans’ offense has instilled trust in their first-year player, as he’s thrown over 40 pass attempts in each of his first two games of the season. But with that comes a price, as his body has taken a beating through two weeks of the season resulting in right shoulder issue that made him limited participant in the team’s practice on Wednesday.

Stroud knows the cost that comes with being a franchise quarterback, and recently gave an update regarding his health as he plans to still play this weekend versus the Jacksonville Jaguars.

“I feel blessed, I feel good,” Stroud said. “Football is a physical sport and that’s what I signed up for, but my body is fine. I’ll be all right.”

Stroud completed 63.6% of his passes in Week 1, failing to reach the end zone and getting sacked five times. He entered Week 2 banged up but was still able to improve on his debut, throwing for 384 yards on the same completion percentage while adding two touchdown passes to his stat line.

Unfortunately for Stroud his body would go through the ringer even more in Week 2, taking nine hits and six sacks this time around versus the Indianapolis Colts.

Any kind of injury to a quarterback’s throwing shoulder never sounds like good news, but Stroud is not a rookie regarding this specific situation. He suffered from a sprained AC joint to his throwing shoulder in his redshirt freshman season at Ohio State, and shared how that experience has prepared him in feeling almost all the way like himself ahead of Sunday’s matchup versus a divisional opponent.

“It helped a lot,” Stroud said. “I did a lot of the same things I kind of did for this injury that I had now, just to get back feeling right. When you’re playing, your adrenaline usually takes away the pain, so that helped a lot. But after the game, I felt it a little bit, but as I’ve gotten back with Roland and my guy [Brandon] Kukal. They’ve helped me a lot, so I feel almost 100%.”

Houston is hoping Stroud can stay healthy and continue building on his solid start to the season, as the Texans will face the Jaguars at 1:00 p.m. ET in Jacksonville this Sunday.