Bryce Young, C.J. Stroud enter crucial third year with plenty to prove, loads of questions

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Welcome to "NFL Thoughts," a wide-ranging, in-depth look at some of the top storylines of the 2025 season. This week, we're examining two young quarterbacks who will be inexorably tied to one another: Bryce Young and C.J. Stroud, the No. 1 and No. 2 picks in the 2023 NFL Draft who have taken very different paths ahead of crucial third seasons.

On Oct. 13, 2024, Stroud threw three touchdown passes as the Houston Texans cruised past the New England Patriots 41-21 to improve to 5-1. Some 800 miles down the East Coast, Young watched, helpless and, from an outsider's view, hopeless, stuck to the sideline as the Carolina Panthers fell to 1-5 with a 38-20 loss to the Atlanta Falcons.

A year and a half since Young and Stroud went first and second overall, respectively, their careers appeared to be polar opposites. After a marvelous Offensive Rookie of the Year debut, Stroud was spearheading a contender ahead of schedule. Young, meanwhile, wasn't even on the field, much less leading any sort of success. He had been unceremoniously benched after just two games, the once-promising partnership with new coach Dave Canales seemingly turned sour nearly immediately. This was the fourth straight time Andy Dalton had started over Young, and things looked as dire as ever.

When we say the NFL stands for "Not For Long," it usually has a bad connotation. Success can turn into struggle, and promising careers can be over, in the blink of an eye. But for Young, the opposite was true; his benching ended two weeks later, and he'd finish the season strong, capped by a five-touchdown performance in a Week 18 win over the Falcons -- the very team he could only watch months earlier.

For Stroud, though, Week 6 was as good as it got. He managed just 86 passing yards in a loss to the Jets the next week. Two weeks later, his Halloween got especially spooky when he completed just 11 of 30 passes and took eight sacks. The Texans would make the playoffs and win a game once there for the second year in a row, but given Stroud's terrific 2023, it was impossible to view 2024 as anything other than a disappointment. How big a disappointment -- and how to divvy up the blame -- is up for debate.

That leaves a fascinating dichotomy entering 2025. Young showed good signs late in the season, but the overall product was still underwhelming. Stroud took steps backwards but was overall still a superior player. Can Young continue his upward trajectory? Can Stroud rebound after significant changes in Houston?

Bryce Young 2025 outlook: Decisiveness, accuracy among biggest keys

There are lots of things Bryce Young has never been and will never be: particularly big, particularly strong-armed or particularly athletic. Those were things the Panthers knew when they moved heaven and earth to get the No. 1 pick and take him. What they counted on were his smarts, his poise, his feel and his slithery improvisation.

For Young's entire first season and the start of his second, the weaknesses looked to be overwhelming him. During his late-season run, his strengths helped him overcome those weaknesses.

The biggest difference was Young's ability to avoid negative plays. Before being benched, Young had an untenable 10.4% career sack rate. It's not just how often he was sacked, either, but how rarely he avoided sacks. He was sacked on 25.1% of the dropbacks on which he was pressured.

We can blame an atrocious set of circumstances for his rookie struggles, but that number was actually worse across just the first two weeks of the 2024 season (31.6%). For what it's worth, no one has had a sack-per-pressure rate that high in at least the last decade. Pressures happen. They can't result in disaster as often as they did for Young.

Young's pocket management was vastly improved after his benching. He took a sack on under 15% of his pressured dropbacks, and he not only stopped having as many negative plays but started producing several really good ones.

From Week 8 onward, Young was sixth in expected points added per dropback against the pressure, one spot ahead of Patrick Mahomes, who is considered the king of play against pressure (among other things). And that's with Young's pass catchers dropping seven passes in those situations over that span, most in the NFL.

Young let throws rip, playing a much more aggressive brand of football, too. He averaged the sixth-highest air yards in the NFL from Week 8 onward, not necessarily throwing the ball deep but really attacking the intermediate depths. Nearly 28% of his pass attempts traveled 11-20 yards downfield, the highest rate in the NFL. The results on these throws were middling, but when it was good, it was really good. He made throws with anticipation and threw his players open. Here's a tremendous throw against almost immediate pressure from the Chiefs:

Young played with more confidence after his benching. He knew where passes were supposed to go and threw them often before they were open, which makes up for his lack of arm strength. It was an awfully impressive 360.

If there's an aspect in which Young must continue to improve, it's his accuracy. Even in his much-improved final 10 games of 2024, Young had the seventh-highest off-target rate in the NFL. Given how many throws are going to be really hard to make due to his physical limitations, plus his natural inclination to attack the intermediate part of the field and try some high-skill throws, he has to hit on the easy ones.

Still, Young's development was immense. He really showed his savvy playmaking skills down the stretch and simply played more like the star he was at Alabama, making confident reads and throws while adding creativity when he needed to. That is, in part, what should excite Carolina fans about first-round wide receiver Tetairoa McMillan, a big-bodied ball winner who can fit well in that intermediate area of the field, especially on in-breaking routes.

It's reasonable to expect Young to be to a solid starter who will have his down moments -- throws he misses or that get intercepted/broken up because he simply doesn't have the arm strength. But if he plays with the anticipation, confidence and poise he showed down the stretch, another jump is very much in the picture.

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C.J. Stroud 2025 outlook: Pocket management, surroundings must improve

After having a first-row seat to Stroud's terrific rookie year, the Texans made several win-now moves last offseason, including trading for Stefon Diggs and signing Danielle Hunter. Then they posted the exact same 10-7 record and won the exact same number of playoff games (one). Worst of all, Stroud regressed.

So, too, did his surroundings. Consider the following:

Out of 77 qualified guards, the Texans' Shaq Mason and Kenyon Green, ranked 47th and 76th, respectively, in Pro Football focus' grades.
Right tackle Tytus Howard ranked 39th out of 50 right tackles.
The Texans were dead last in rushing success rate (38.7%).
Stroud had the most pressured dropbacks in the NFL. Nearly 85% of those dropbacks -- the fifth-highest rate in the NFL -- were at least partially the offensive line's responsibility, per PFF.

Now, to be fair, Stroud's management of said pressure was ... not good. Only Caleb Williams took more sacks. Stroud was sacked 22.1% of the time he was pressured, the 11th-highest rate in the league, and unlike many of the players who had a higher rate, he didn't pose much of a threat with his legs. He took 3+ seconds on over 42% of his dropbacks, the fourth-highest rate in the NFL.

There were far, far too many times the pass protection was fine and Stroud, unwilling or unable to pull the trigger, eventually got swallowed up, often losing even more yardage in futile attempts to escape. Only the Broncos lost more yards per sack. Here's a perfect example; the second view shows Stroud had multiple check-down options.

Of course, there were also too many times Stroud was completely hopeless. He was pressured within two seconds of the snap 59 times, second-most in the NFL, and he took 11 sacks in those situations. Again, some were his fault. Others, like when his right tackle simply falls down trying to get back in his stance or when three players block one defender, weren't.

Perhaps the perfect encapsulation of the Texans' offensive drop off was offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik. After 2023, Slowik had several head-coaching interviews and appeared to be the next young hotshot offensive mind on the fast track. After 2024, he got fired. So, too, did offensive line coach Chris Strausser and assistant offensive line coach Cole Popovich.

So, what's next? The Texans hired Nick Caley as their new offensive coordinator, and Stroud has said he's able to control the offense at the line of scrimmage, something Slowik's system didn't allow him to do. That's a start

Whether an overhauled offensive line is better remains to be determined. Houston traded away its top offensive lineman, Pro Bowl left tackle Laremy Tunsil, to the Washington Commanders. New left tackle Cam Robinson, on his third team in under 10 months, struggled last season. Same with new left guard Laken Tomlinson. Howard is moving to guard, and new right tackle Blake Fisher, who had a rough rookie season, needs to make a big leap.

Even if the individual talent isn't as good, the protection plan should be much, much better. That, coupled with growth from Stroud, could lead to better results.

Stroud simply didn't look nearly as confident last season. He was sometimes too quick to come off reads, sometimes too late. His luck also balanced out, too. After having six potential interceptions dropped in 2023, he had just three dropped in 2024. His off-target rate was actually the exact same as it was as a rookie, though still a little too high, and the misses were penalized more heavily. If anything, it was a similar year to Dak Prescott: an unexpected major rise in turnovers that led to a disappointing overall product

There were plenty of really, really good moments, too. Let's not forget Stroud's terrific arm talent and ability to fit the ball into tight windows. He still fared well in NFL Next Gen Stat's completion percentage over expected, coming in ahead of Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen. He was still a top-dozen quarterback on intermediate throws (11-20 yards), where his ball placement can be exquisite. He's not damaged goods, perhaps just delayed goods.

He -- and Houston -- clearly needed an offensive reset. They got one. Now, having shown he can be an upper-tier quarterback as a rookie and received more pre-snap responsibility, Stroud needs to ascend once again.