CJ Stroud looks absolutely amazing and on a team that I would say is on par with our roster at best.
Poles said all along he needed to be blown away to stick at #1 and take a QB last year. By the time the combine rolled around he all but announced to the world the pick was for sale. I understand Fields showed flashes towards the end of last year and that played into that decision.
Fast forward to now and Stroud is blowing everyone away.
I think it's fair to question what our staff missed on Stroud to be out on him immediately and whether or not we should be worried about them making the next decision on who our QB is.
20/20 hindsight -- I would much rather have Stroud instead of the DJ Moore package and it's not even close. Give me a franchise QB and figure out the rest of the line and WRs after that.
Poles said he would have to be "Blown Away" to move off of Fields. We all heard him say it, right? Well, Stroud is now having the greatest rookie year for a QB in history. Not the last 10 years. Not the last 25 years. ALL TIME.
It IS fair to ask why Poles was not blown away -- and to question either what the scouts missed or the process of selecting talent. To NOT do so would be stupid.
It’s because picking a QB isn’t an exact science. Why weren’t scouts and GMs blown away on Mahomes, Allen, Lamar, or Herbert? We’ve seen time and time again that it is very difficult to project how a QB will turn out. Even one of the best GMs in the league, John Lynch, had a huge miss in evaluating a QB prospect, Trey Lance. But if you watched Stroud’s college tape and heard what scouts and analysts were saying, it’s easy to see how you wouldn’t be blown away with him as a prospect. A lot of times his elite WRs at Ohio St would get wide open and he had a difficult time dealing with pressure and off-script plays. Basically, he was labeled a system-dependent QB.