Beyond the Patriots loss, this podcast dissects C.J. Stroud's struggles and the Texans' offseason roadmap for contender status.
Garret’s latest Houston Stressans episode is a full postmortem on a season that ended with a thud, as the Texans fall to the Patriots in the Divisional Round and head into an offseason that suddenly feels heavier than expected. The tone is blunt from the jump: this wasn’t just a loss, it was a collapse that forces hard conversations.
The centerpiece is C.J. Stroud’s performance. Garret doesn’t dance around it — Stroud was bad, and that reality is the entry point for everything that follows. From there, the show gets into the real debate that Texans fans are going to have all offseason: how much of this is on the quarterback vs the environment around him. That means breaking down what Stroud struggled with (decision-making, processing, timing, handling pressure) while also examining the context — protection, play design, personnel limitations, and whether the offense put him in positions to succeed when the game started slipping.
After walking through the key swing moments that defined the game, the episode zooms out into the bigger-picture themes. The conversation quickly becomes less about one night and more about what the loss revealed about Houston’s identity. What is this offense trying to be. Is the coaching staff building something modern and flexible, or is the structure too rigid when defenses adjust. What needs to change schematically so games like this don’t spiral.
The back half is essentially an offseason roadmap. Stroud’s trajectory becomes the headline, but it’s tied to larger roster-building questions — how to upgrade the supporting cast, what “must-fix” areas exist up front, and what the coaching direction needs to look like to get Houston from “promising” to “consistent contender.”
True to the show’s style, the breakdown leans on more than vibes. The discussion is framed with data, trends, and film-based observations, using references like PFF, NFL Pro, and Next Gen Stats to explain what mattered beyond the box score and why this loss is going to define the early offseason narrative.