Sports Riot Investigates: Who Was CJ Stroud?

There are many unanswered mysteries in the NFL. How did TMZ get the Ray Rice tape? Why was Maclom Butler benched in Super Bowl LII? Did Tom Brady put a hit on Drew Bledsoe? And CJ Stroud; Who was he? Was he even real? Or was he just a collective wish manifestation of a desperate Texans fanbase?

We started at the last place where the Houston QB was reportedly seen: Houston, Texas. “I sort of remember CJ,” said Texans head coach DeMeco Ryans. “There’s bits and pieces of him being really good, but then they disappear. Like a distant dream. In fact, the more I think about him, the less I remember.”

Though there hasn’t been a confirmed sighting in over two Texas millennia, Stroud’s name can still be heard around the Texans’ locker room. “I never saw CJ, but some of the older guys around here still talk about him,” said rookie receiver Jayden Higgins. “They say he once threw for 470 yards in a game. The game must’ve changed so much since way back then…He’d never be able to do that in today’s game.”

Unfortunately, that’s where the trail goes cold. Every once and a while, someone will report seeing the alleged former Buckeye missing Nico Collins on a crossing route, or getting close but never winning the big one…but then he vanishes again. One fan reported seeing someone who looked like Stroud, getting completely confused when presented with zone defense, but skeptics claim that was just Davis Mills.

“Do you know how hard it is to have your star quarterback vanish without a trace?” lamented Texans general manager Nick Caserio. “It’s horrible! That’s why we built a brand new team model to make sure it never happens again. Most games, our defense is so good that fans don’t even notice that we don’t have a quarterback.”

Though it’s unclear if we will ever find out what happened to CJ Stroud, there is some good news: we had a break in the New York Jets Sam Darnold disappearance! Our most up to date sources place him in Minnesota, which is where we’re headed next.