AHEAD OF GAME
Stroud's breakout season wows even his Rancho Cucamonga supporters
Oh, they'd love to say they told us so. Because they sure did tell us.
What did C.J. Stroud's high school football coach, Mark Verti, say to me before his former star quarterback was selected No. 2 overall in the 2023 NFL Draft? That he should go No. 1: “He's the best quarterback in the draft.”
What did his youth coach, Tojo Munford, tell anyone who asked for a Bryce Young-Stroud comparison pre-draft? “In all honesty, I'm taking C.J. He's taller, he's got the arm — and I know what that arm is!”
Oh, and those questions about “that stupid test score,” as Verti called the S2 cognition test that placed Stroud last among his peers? We know now it was the test that failed.
We know because of what defenders are saying after they've had to deal with Stroud, long a curious, coachable player who now is steps ahead of even NFL veterans.
“C.J. don't play the rookie games, bro,” Indianapolis Colts linebacker Zaire Franklin said on a “The Trenches” podcast appearance. “He played like he's already lying to you with his eyes, he's already lying to you with his drop, he's already lying to you with his shoulder movements ... that's some (stuff) that he ain't really supposed to have until like Year 6 or 7.”
What else were the folks who have been in Stroud's corner for so long saying before his rookie NFL season kicked off?
Were they thinking the former Rancho Cucamonga High talent would storm on the scene and join Joe Montana and Tom Brady as the only quarterbacks in the past 50 years to lead the NFL in passing yards per game and
touchdown-interception ratio?
Did they expect that of the five rookie quarterbacks in NFL history to throw for more than 4,000 yards — along with Justin Herbert, Andrew Luck, Cam Newton and Jameis Winston — Stroud would be the first to win a playoff game? That he would do it by dominating the league's topranked defense, completing 76.1% of his passes against the Cleveland Browns last week for 276 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions in a 45-14 victory?
That he'd have people well beyond Rancho Cucamonga and Ohio State arguing that Stroud could be having the greatest rookie quarterback season ever?
Or that he would turn so many Southern Californians into Houston Texans fans, many of them filling the Wings and Rings restaurant in Rancho Cucamonga to watch together every Sunday? That he'd have NFL fans from Texas calling his old high school asking if they can buy No. 7 replica Cougar jerseys?
Oh, no.
Nothing like that.
“To me,” Munford said, “it's not even real what's going on with him right now.”
“It's crazy,” said Rancho Cucamonga athletic director Bill Burke, who coached Stroud on the hardwood, where he led the Cougars basketball team to the CIF Southern California Division II Regional final in 2019. “You don't see this, not how he's done what he's done — as a rookie?”
“I didn't expect him to break NFL records,” Verti said Wednesday, a couple of days before Stroud takes on the top-seeded Baltimore Ravens in an AFC divisional game on Saturday at 1:30 p.m. “But I also don't expect him to throw interceptions or have bad games. Because he doesn't do that.”
Stroud's historic debut season comes up with his former history teacher, Aaron Bishop, and current Cougars football players: “We were just talking about it (Wednesday) in class,” said Justice Turner, a senior offensive lineman at Rancho Cucamonga who finds Stroud's journey supermotivating. “Mr. Bishop, he was saying it's crazy seeing him do that on national TV when he was teaching him not too long ago.”
For his part, Turner has six Division II college offers, he said. But he's still hoping — still working — for one from a Division I program, keeping in mind that even Stroud was overlooked for a long time, and that “he didn't even play until his junior year, so seeing that is very inspiring, for sure.”
Turner knows this because he's heard it from Stroud himself whenever he's swung back by campus, including those visits when he was a Buckeyes star dropping by with pep talks and tips.
Stroud frequents Rancho Cucamonga Warriors practices, too, retracing his steps to where he started his football career, getting pushed to tears by Munford, who demanded the youngster with the big arm resist the urge to use his legs.
Now it's the opposite, Munford joked, because once one kid recognized Stroud on the sideline during his last visit, the coach told the quarterback: “You better run! Better get to your car, 'cause here these kids come!”
Stroud didn't run, of course. He stayed and talked to the youngsters, and he has paid for new uniforms, too.
He's not a runner at heart, it turns out. He didn't bolt for another more prestigious high school program or a competing youth program even though, “a lot of the time,” Munford said, “you coach them, get them real good and then somebody comes and snatches them away after they're good and says, `Look what I did!' ”
But Stroud — who has weathered upheaval in his family life — always stayed true, consistent to his core. The kind of guy who is still going shopping at Target, Verti said he heard recently from Stroud's mom, Kimberly.
He's “a guy who you can root for,” Verti said. “Because of who he is, because he's fun to watch and because it's fun to see who he's becoming.”
And what can Verti tell us about the NFL quarterback who Stroud might become yet?
That there is no telling at this point. Except for this: Stroud's supporters in Rancho Cucamonga, they'll let you know that they'll be in his corner, no matter what.