With the NFL draft two weeks away the noise coming out of Carolina Panthers and Houston Texans camps are Alabama’s Bryce Young and Ohio States C.J. Stroud are going to be the top two picks in the draft. How they’ll be drafted is still a mystery, but reports are Young is headed to Charlotte and Stroud is headed to Houston.
While Young and Stroud have handled the process the way they handled opponents on the gridiron weekly, NFL analyst Mike Lombardi is now reporting that Stroud may not go second overall. He’s also saying that Stroud’s not easy to deal with or coach.
Mike Lombardi Questions Stroud’s Character
During a recent episode of his “The Lombardi Line” podcast, the former Cleveland Browns GM had this to say.
“C.J. Stroud’s an interesting guy. When you talk to people in the league, they’ll tell you C.J. Stroud is not — this is not a knock, this is just a conversation — not an easy guy to coach,” Lombardi said. “I think the word that people use is he’s very not believing in what you’re saying, and so he’s a little bit challenging to coach. So it’s not like he comes in and embraces it, he’s got a little bit of a different style to him.”
Lombardi is the first person to say something disparaging like this about Stroud. Not once have we heard Ryan Day, Stroud’s head coach at Ohio State say that. So, to hear Lombardi say his intel is relaying this, is a bit odd if it’s not Day telling them this, which is highly unlikely, as he and Stroud had one of the best relationships you’ll see between coach and QB. It could also be nothing more than smoke and mirrors, which is what you tend to see more and more as the draft gets closer.
Lombardi Says Stroud Thinks He’s Better Than Others
Lombardi took things a step further in his next statement about Stroud, saying he’s been told the California native believes he’s a bit superior to others. And that has led to the rumors about his being hard to coach.
“What I’ve done is asked people, I said, You know, I heard C.J. Stroud’s not an easy guy to coach, yeah, and everybody echoes that back to you,’ Lombardi said. “I’m not saying he’s not a good player. I like C.J. Stroud. Would I pick him at two? I don’t know.”
Hate to tell you, Lombardi, but you’re no longer a GM, so you don’t have to worry about that. Stroud’s talent and leadership showed countless times at Ohio State, and you’ve never heard a coach or teammate say anything negative about the strong-armed gunslinger. So if the Panthers or Texans need a franchise QB as much as they say, he ain’t making it past the second pick of the 2023 NFL draft, as he shouldn’t.
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