What C.J. Stroud Said After Texans' MNF Loss vs. Buccaneers

The Houston Texans came up short of putting together a Monday Night Football victory against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to cap off the Week 2 action, which now leaves the Texans as both 0-2, and one of ten teams in the NFL who have yet to secure a win to start this season.

The Texans were just seconds away from pulling out a narrow victory in the fourth quarter over Tampa Bay. A massive 25-yard run from Nick Chubb would take the lid off of Houston's scoring woes and put them up 19-14 with two minutes to go.

However, it would be a strong Baker Mayfield, Bucky Irving-led drive from Tampa Bay to put the Texans away with under 10 seconds, inevitably be the dagger to keep the Bucs both alive and 2-0 to start the year, and now leaving Houston stunned without a win two weeks into the year.

But after the game, Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud wanted to keep the room steady. It's only game two of a long season with tons of time to rebound, but still many learning experiences to come away with after the results on Monday.

"It's a long season. It's week two," Stroud said during his postgame presser. "Hopefully, we learned our lessons and learned to put teams away and learn to put points on the board. We can say a bunch of different things and what could have went right, but at the end of the day, it's about winning games. And those last plays that are in between those are the games, those are the plays that you end up winning or losing on."

The Texans didn't have a perfect night, even while coming within arm's reach of a Monday night victory. The offensive line still presented a few holes upfront, the run game was nonexistent until Chubb's fourth-quarter run, and defensively, it would be that last offensive drive from Tampa that ended their productive performance to that point, thus putting Houston away.

But Stroud and the Texans also struggled at times to capitalize on the offensive side of the ball to keep the Buccaneers in the hunt throughout the night. Following their two scores in the first quarter, Houston would go on to punt on their next four consecutive drives, and on the fifth drive, committed a turnover on downs after an 11-play drive in the fourth quarter.

Those are the moments that Stroud wants to clean up moving forward.

"Plays where we're going three-and-out, we're just not sustaining drives," Stroud said. "Those are the ones that lose us the game. Of course, not coming up short on the goal line is tough as well. 
And that's evident as well, but there's a bunch of different things we can clean up."

"In my opinion, I think that's what we've got to get better at, is just making more plays and sustaining drives."

Stroud and the Texans were just seconds away from walking to the podium with the ability to talk about this game in a much different light. However, it was a few critical plays, especially towards the end of the contest, which ultimately decided how the narrative will surround Houston and their team this week, now sinking to 0-2 with questions piling up for what's ahead.