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.
The question to ask is whether or not what Poles did was “good process”. The decision that was made was sound at the time (and still is). Does Stroud look like a franchise QB through 10 weeks? Yes. Was there any certainty this would be the case during draft season? No. The bears and panthers were the teams that passed on him, but so did every other team with a QB question that evaluated him and didnt trade up to #1 to get him. If other teams were evaluating him as a can’t miss franchise QB, they would have paid the price to go get him.
At the end of the day, Poles decided to commit to JF1 for another year after showing flashes in 22, got a great return for the pick (that may yield even more dividends in a few months if a trade back occurs), and there’s not a lot of value in looking back. Sometimes players outperform projections