Texans' C.J. Stroud after win at Jaguars: 'I’m nobody’s fish'

Houston Texans rookie quarterback C.J. Stroud certainly isn't lacking confidence now that he's earned his first career regular-season win, an impressive 37-17 victory at the 1-2 Jacksonville Jaguars on Sunday afternoon. 

"We’re grown men," a somewhat defiant Stroud told NBC Sports' Peter King. "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." 

As recently as earlier this month, former NFL quarterback and current ESPN analyst Dan Orlovsky explained he believed Stroud was among first-year signal-callers not yet "ready" for live action. The second overall pick of this year's draft hardly looked overwhelmed in Jacksonville on Sunday, as he completed 20-of-30 pass attempts for 280 yards with a pair of touchdowns and zero interceptions in the win. 

That performance was no one-off for Stroud. According to ESPN stats, he began Monday sitting fourth in the NFL with 906 passing yards on the season, and his 98.0 passer rating was good for 11th overall. As of Monday afternoon, OddsChecker listed him third among the betting favorites at +600 odds to earn Offensive Rookie of the Year honors. 

Some members of the NFL community questioned Stroud's intelligence this past spring after he reportedly posted a poor S2 Cognition Test score. He's thus far turned such chatter into a distant memory. 

"I think I just learn from week to week," Stroud told King. "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." 

Stroud's next opportunity to prove himself and to silence critics will come this Sunday when the 1-2 Texans host the 2-1 Pittsburgh Steelers. OddsChecker had Houston as a slight underdog (+142, +3) for that matchup as of early Monday afternoon.