Houston Texans QB C.J. Stroud and the family forces that shaped him

9/5/2023
C.J. Stroud is a little ticked off.
Not with anybody else. With himself.
He’s a perfectionist who’s learning that he’s not going to be perfect. That he doesn’t have to be perfect.
Being a quarterback in the NFL isn’t easy. Let alone doing it as a rookie for the Texans, a team that hasn’t had a winning season in three years.
He thinks about the passes he should have made in practice. The defenders he should have seen. The open receiver he missed. He’s his own worst critic. He pours over hours of film trying to perfect his craft.
“I’m irritated a lot, but it’s because I care,” Stroud said in an exclusive interview with the Chronicle. “I really love what I do. And it’s hard because I don’t like making mistakes.”
Stroud will make his first career start in the Texans’ season opener against the Ravens on Sunday. For many, that would be a lot of pressure.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate
Stroud sees it differently.
He doesn’t believe so much in the pressure of football. Sure, he feels some pressure as a rookie quarterback. Who wouldn’t?
But to Stroud, being the quarterback of the Texans isn’t pressure compared to what he’s seen in his life. He saw his father battle addiction, go to prison, and rehabilitate himself. He saw his mother suddenly become a single parent of four kids, make a way for her family, and keep food on the table.
That’s pressure.
“You don’t know somebody’s story,” he says. “People didn’t know my story until it started to come out.”
Why is he so weird? Why is he crazy? Why is he so focused?
“People in my high school would say ‘he’s so overly focused. He doesn’t know how to have fun,’” Stroud recalled. “Well, y’all don’t know what I’ve been through. Y’all don’t know what I’ve seen.”
So, he tries to have empathy for people, especially those who are homeless, people who battle addiction, and single moms.
Stroud didn’t always have this perspective.
For years, he didn’t talk to his father. He was angry at him. Angry that his best friend and mentor was no longer there, leaving the family to fend for themselves.
But he’s since learned how to forgive his father.
And now he can play free. Free without pressure.
The Coleridge line
C.J. was born Coleridge Bernard Stroud IV in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., about an hour’s drive east of Los Angeles.
The Coleridge men are known for having accomplished great things in their lifetime.
“Every generation of Coleridge have all had their struggles, but they are really phenomenal, intelligent men,” Kimberly Stroud, C.J.’s mother, said.
His great-grandfather, the first Coleridge, was a 20-year navy veteran and tap dancer. He was a small man, and well dressed.
His grandfather, Coleridge II, once went into a burning house to save children who were trapped. He suffered burns on his body and face, but he saved the children.
Coleridge III, C.J.’s father, was an executive for a Fortune 500 company. He founded a church in San Bernardino County, where C.J. grew up.
Kim and Coleridge taught their son the importance of faith and keeping God first. Every Thanksgiving when he was a child, C.J. and his family would pass out turkeys to the homeless in the Rancho Cucamonga area.
Coleridge was C.J.’s best friend. He was his first coach. He taught him sports. He took him to his games. C.J. likes to say he and his dad are similar.
They are givers, big on birthdays and Christmas. They bonded over food. They used to go go-kart riding. C.J. remembers the AAU trips. The long rides in the car with his dad. They could talk about anything.
He taught him that “just because you make a mistake, doesn’t mean you are a mistake.”
Coleridge III has made mistakes. He said he fell victim to addiction and was arrested around the time C.J. was 13.
He pled guilty to kidnapping, robbery, carjacking and misdemeanor sexual battery charges. He is currently serving a 38-year prison sentence in a Northern California prison.
C.J. says he was hurt when his father went to prison. He didn’t know how to process it.
He and his dad did everything together, and now he was gone.
A new pressure
When C.J. was nine, his dad created a YouTube video titled “9 year old quarterback phenom. The next Michael Vick.”
It shows a little kid, wearing a No. 7 jersey, after his favorite player. He looks a little taller than the other players. But he’s dominating on the field, running, catching and throwing touchdown passes. He can’t be stopped.
The video, which garnered 183,000 views, earned C.J. a tryout in a 7-on-7 youth football league run by rapper Snoop Dogg three years later. He made the team and won MVP.
But after Coleridge went to prison, the family was alone to fend for themselves. They had to move from their two-story home in a nice neighborhood to an apartment in a different city.
C.J. didn’t talk to his father for years. His father tried, but C.J. didn’t want to talk. He was still hurt. Still angry.
“Repairing our relationship had to come on his terms,” the elder Stroud said in phone interview from prison. “I continued to pray. I continued to being a voice of comfort and encouragement and advice for him, but it’s always been on his terms because my son didn’t put me here. My actions allowed me to be here.”
For years, after his father went to prison, C.J. didn’t let people see his emotions. C.J. kept everything inside. He didn’t want them to see what he was going through. That his father was no longer there. That he couldn’t afford certain things.
By this time, his two older brothers were old enough to move out.
C.J. thought he had to be tough. He thought he needed to be the man of the house. He thought he needed to protect his mother and older sister Ciara.
C.J. remembers preparing for the first day of sixth grade before his dad got locked up. He had a Ralph Lauren Polo shirt, True Religion jeans and red, white and black OG Jordan 1s. His dad bought him a chain.
“I was fly,” he said. “And then the next year, I didn’t have much. This was right around the time where things in my family were starting to fall off. But I didn’t know what was going on.”
At the beginning of seventh grade, he had grown out his clothes. He was nearing 6 feet tall. But he didn’t have new, fresh clothes that year.
“And I remember my homeboy was like ‘Damn, you came fly last year on the first day of school, what’s going on?” Stroud recalled. “Nah, bro, I just wanted to chill today.”
“I didn’t have no clothes,” Stroud explained. “I was wearing hand-me-downs from my older brothers. For me, that’s pressure.”
A time to forgive
Pressure is figuring how you’re going to make rent, and how you’re going to provide for your family as a single mom. That’s what Kimberly Stroud was faced with.
But she found a way. She got a job as a manager at a storage unit in Upland, Calif. The job came with benefits, including an apartment at the storage unit as the on-site manger with a discount on utilities.
It gave her family a place to stay and peace.
But they didn’t have extra money for things like new clothes, or a personal coach that the top quarterbacks in the area had.
“To adapt as a young Black man without getting in trouble, without acting out — he still went to school every day,” Kimberly Stroud said. “He got good grades. He was very focused on sports. But he had his time. It was really, hard on him.”
Pressure is being upset with your father for years and not talking to him and having that weigh on you. For so long as a child, he saw his parents as superheroes.
But as he matured, he began to see his father for what he actually was: He was human with flaws. He wasn’t perfect. He made mistakes and that was something C.J. had to come to terms with.
You see, he too, had made mistakes in his life. And he began to wonder, ‘How could he judge his father? ’ He had punished him enough by not talking to him.
“He made a mistake, and at the end of the day, I just… ” Stroud said. “I said I’m not going to do that anymore. It took me to start going through some stuff to realize this isn’t right.”
Things weren’t going well in his life. As C.J. described it, everything was “going downhill.” After not starting the first two years of his high school career, and nearly transferring to IMG Academy in Florida, he was finally named the starter at Rancho Cucamonga High School before his junior season.
But he suffered a foot injury on the third play of his first game. He missed the next three games and Rancho went 0-4.
When he came back, the team turned things around and he led them to the playoffs.
But the colleges he thought should have been calling for his recruitment weren’t. He was being overlooked.
So, around the end of his junior year of high school, heading into his senior season, Stroud made the call to his father.
“Me and him started crying on the phone and I just told him that I’m sorry,” Stroud said. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
In that moment, Stroud felt like a two-ton weight had been lifted off his shoulders. He needed his father’s guidance and wisdom. They began to talk more.
And as a result, Stroud started to open up to his coaches and friends more. He started to accept his emotions. He’d tell his coaches what he was going through at home.
Some helped him behind the scenes. Others didn’t, Stroud said.
One of the coaches who helped was Tony Wilson, who coached the receivers at Rancho Cucamonga. He became one of Stroud’s close confidants and helped support him.
When Wilson found out that Stroud couldn’t see the plays being called out from the sidelines because his contact lenses had expired, he bought C.J. a year’s worth of contacts. Wilson saw something in Stroud and he wanted to help him get there.
“When you know a kid is special, you just want to give him all the resources he can,” Wilson said. “Because you have a shot. It was like ‘Dude, you have a shot.’
“And he deserved it.”
Stroud went on to be star at Rancho Cucamonga. He started two seasons there and helped lead them to the playoffs both years.
Division I recruiters were late on seeing Stroud. He was often overshadowed by fellow Southern California prospects Bryce Young and D.J. Uigalalei, who were often mentioned as the top two quarterbacks in the area. Stroud knew he was just as good, if not better.
So, when he finally did get that shot to showcase his talent at the Elite 11 camp in Oakland, he put colleges on notice. He went from three-star prospect to four-star.
The scholarships offers came rolling in, including one from Ohio State, where he eventually chose to go and became a star. He was a two-time Heisman Trophy finalist, threw 85 touchdowns and 12 interceptions in two seasons, and led his team to the College Football Playoff semifinals last season before losing to Georgia.
“On the field, just his IQ in the pocket, I think he projects really, really well in the NFL,” Ohio State coach Ryan Day said at Stroud’s Pro Day. “The way he can throw the ball on third down. His touch, his vision downfield … We’ve seen that time and time again at Ohio State and that’s going to carry him in the NFL because he just has a great feel.”
Stroud says forgiving his father helped relieve his pain. He was no longer burdened with the anger he harbored.
“And that’s kind of when I just took off,” Stroud said. “I just think it was time. God was keeping me down for the come up.”
Impressing the Texans
When Stroud suits up Sunday for the Texans, it will be the culmination of the work he put in to get there.
Stroud wasn’t given the starting quarterback role. Coach DeMeco Ryans and his coaching staff made him earn it.
Stroud preferred it be that way.
He wants his teammates to see the hard work he’s putting in. He wants them to know how much he cares.
When he was in college at Ohio State and he got his first big Name, Image and Likeness deal, Stroud bought suits for the entire Buckeyes team. Aside from wanting them to look and feel fly, he wanted them to know they played a part in his success, too.
Without them, there was no him.
At one point, he told his agent, David Mulugheta, that he didn’t want any more money from NIL deals unless his teammates shared in the profits.
When Stroud told that story to Ryans and the Texans staff at his meeting with the team at the scouting combine, Ryans came away impressed. Aside from the accolades, he saw a potential leader in Stroud.
He saw someone who cared about the people around him.
“You can tell he understands that he needs to connect with his teammates,” Ryans said.
In July, Stroud hosted a three-day trip for the quarterbacks, receivers and tight ends in Los Angeles at UCLA’s campus so the players could work on their timing and get to know each other. They went out to eat, went bowling, ran routes, watched movies and told stories.
They bonded.
Then there was the competitiveness, Ryans noticed. He saw Stroud’s competitiveness on film, but to see it in person was different.
It was the first preseason game against the Patriots, and Stroud had just finished playing in his second series. He was 2-of-4 for 13 yards and threw an interception. His day was done.
He tried to lobby his coach to put him back in for a third series.
But the Texans had a plan. Only two series.
“He wasn’t ready to be taken out of the game,” Ryans said. “Although, I had a set amount of reps for him, he said, ‘no I want to go back in.’
“I love that because ‘Yeah, I know I can put you back out there, but I’m good. I understand who you are and the mentality that you have,’ Like ‘I don’t want to go out like that.’ I love it.”
That competitiveness has also endeared him to his teammates. When he suits up, Stroud knows he can make a play. And his teammates feel it too. He is one of four team captains.
“He has a silent confidence about him that just pours out when he gets on the football field,” wide receiver Xavier Hutchinson said. “It’s not cockiness. Everything he preaches, he does himself.”
Earning it at home
That confidence and competitiveness started when he was a child. C.J. was the youngest of five kids. He had two older sisters and two older brothers. Whether it was playing sports or cracking jokes on each other, they never let C.J. win. He had to earn it.
They had a Nerf goal in their childhood home and they put the rim at the end of hallway. C.J. would run with the ball down the hallway, and his siblings would knock him to the ground, or block his shot.
“We were tough on him,” his sister Ciara Stroud says with a laugh. “He had to grow thick skin.”
When he played organized sports, whether it was AAU basketball or football, his father always put him in leagues where he played up a grade level.
He still dominated. He was never intimidated.
C.J. was far more advanced than the other children his age in understanding sports, the competitive nature of it and how to win.
When other kids were inside playing video games, C.J. was outside throwing a football, shooting a basketball or playing soccer. After games, he’d go home and watch film of old games and analyze the players and ask his father why a certain player made a certain move or throw.
The other parents were amazed.
They’d often approach Kimberly Stroud at games and tell her that C.J. was going to be special and that he’d probably be a professional player someday. “I hope so,” she’d tell them. “God willing.”
The power of forgiveness
Forgiveness didn’t make everything perfect.
Stroud is about to play his first real NFL game on Sunday. And while his mom and siblings will be there in the stands cheering for him, his father will have to watch on television from prison.
He likely won’t ever get to see his son play in person in the NFL.
But forgiveness has allowed Stroud to grow, move forward and relieve some of the pressure. It’s allowed his father to move forward. They talk regularly again. Not every day, but regularly.
Get Coleridge III talking about his youngest son C.J. and he can go on and on. He watches all his son’s videos, highlights and the interviews he’s done from high school to Ohio State. He’s proud of his son and what he’s accomplished. And he’s happy they’ve made amends.
“When he talks about his father, being my best friend, you don’t lose that,” Coleridge said, his voice cracking. “He supports me. I’m grateful to God and all my children, they know the quality of father they have.
“I always taught them, just because you make a mistake doesn’t mean you are a mistake.”
C.J. realizes that.
That’s how he was able to get to this point in his life. That’s how he was able to open up and let others in. It’s why he’s willing to tell his story. He wants to inspire others to find their talent and achieve their dreams. He thinks if he can do it, others can.
It’s why he’s not feeling the pressure as the Texans’ quarterback. He’s seen and been through higher pressure situations. He’s learned that it’s OK to make mistakes, and to not have a great day. It’s not always easy.
C.J. still has some moments of self-doubt. When that creeps up, he thinks back to being a kid in his room daydreaming about being an NFL quarterback.
And he’s grateful.