TORONTO — Luis Severino has just finished his pregame work on a sunny Wednesday in Toronto. This was a simple day, catch, as the right-hander prepares for the 29th and most important start of his season, Saturday in Philadelphia.

Severino’s emergence as a reliable option in the Mets’ rotation is one of the main reasons New York’s starting staff has been a strength. The rotation ERA sits, like the Mets themselves, sixth in the National League with 16 games to go.

Severino is slated to start four of those remaining 16 games: twice against the first-place Phillies, once against rival Atlanta and, if needed, in the season finale against first-place Milwaukee. Few Mets loom as critical down the stretch as the rebound candidate who has been everything they could have wanted.

And to this point, this season has been everything Severino could have wanted.

“I haven’t done it in so long,” Severino says, smiling. “It feels really good. It feels really good to compete at this level and be healthy for so long this year.”

To get a better understanding of how Severino works — before a start and within a start — The Athletic sat down with him, scorecard in hand, to go inning by inning, batter by batter through his last start against the Cincinnati Reds. In Sunday’s 3-1 loss, Severino pitched 6 2/3 innings and allowed one run — the 12th quality start of his season.

It’s a window into the veteran’s mind at the most important juncture of the season.

Pregame

Severino previously faced the Reds in his second start of the season, on April 6. In that game, he went five innings, allowing two runs (one earned) on three hits. His main takeaway from that game was the two walks he issued — he remembered it being a higher number — and how he couldn’t issue the same kind of free passes to Cincinnati this time around.

Severino’s prep work for a start involves a lot of video study — “what they do good, what they do bad, the last 10 at-bats against a righty with my similar arm angle,” he said. “I look at the pitch sequences: What are they looking for behind in the count?”

Who are those pitchers with a similar arm angle?

“I’ve got the Phillies next. (Miami’s Edward) Cabrera threw a good game against Philadelphia — seven scoreless innings. So I’ll go to that,” Severino said. “He’s similar to me. He throws hard, his changeup is like a sinker, he’s got a good slider. I’ll go to that guy and see what he did good and why he was successful.”

Severino then blends his scouting report with one from his catcher — it’s Luis Torrens in this start — to create a game plan. Cincinnati presents one specific challenge.

“They have runners,” Severino said. “Almost everybody runs there, so understanding I have to be quick to the plate. Any hit or any double, they’re going to try to score. I have to keep that in mind. I’d rather them hit the ball hard than walk somebody.”

First inning

Jonathan India is the Reds’ leadoff batter. Severino starts him with a fastball, sweeper and sinker in that order. He likes to establish that sinker and sweeper, in particular, right away.

“It’s like a little message to the hitters: Don’t get comfortable at the plate,” he said. “I’ve got a sinker in and also a sweeper away. If I do that from the beginning, then they have a different idea of how to approach me in the second at-bat.”

He catches India looking on a full-count sinker. Next up is Elly De La Cruz, the Reds’ shortstop sure to get down-ballot MVP votes in his first full season in the majors.

“He’s the main guy there,” Severino said. “He’s the guy who’s got power, he can run. We either make good pitches to this guy or even 3-2, we’re not giving up. We’re going to throw a nasty pitch and he either swings or goes to first base. That’s the guy I don’t want to let beat me.”

He doesn’t in the first inning, as Severino retires the side in order.

Second inning

To start the second inning, Severino retires Ty France and Jake Fraley on one pitch each. Does that change how he attacks Santiago Espinal with two outs?

“I’m going after the third hitter right away,” he said. “It’s going to be a strike. The game has changed a lot, but for me, if the first two pitches are two outs, you have to take at least two strikes. That’s an advantage for me because I’m going to go after you.”

Espinal takes a first-pitch fastball strike, fouls off the next pitch and eventually strikes out on a sweeper. Six up, six down on just 20 pitches for Severino.

Third inning

Noelvi Marte leads off the third. He and France are the two Reds in the lineup Severino has never faced before.

“France and Marte have almost the same approach. I would throw them inside and the report was they were not as good against off-speed,” Severino said. “It was just trying to get ahead in the count and finish it with a breaking ball.”

Severino got ahead of Marte 0-2 with sinkers, then threw six consecutive sweepers. The last of them caught the infielder looking.

Next up is Will Benson, whom Severino had beaten consistently with fastballs last matchup until Benson tripled off him in his third at-bat. Against a hitter like Benson, Severino thinks less about the velocity of his fastball than where he locates it.

“The only spot he can hit the ball is down and in, where he has a lot of power,” he said. “If I hit my spot, if I go up and away, that’s a tough place to hit that ball. It’s not about how hard I can throw; it’s about where I can put that ball.”

Benson works a walk and moves to second on a Luke Maile groundout. In Cincinnati’s first at-bat with a runner in scoring position, Severino reaches back for something extra against India. His 1-2 sinker is clocked at 99.5 mph — the hardest pitch he’s thrown all season. India fouls that pitch off then flies out on a 98 mph sinker.

“If I get men on second or third, I don’t know how it comes to me, but I’m able to reach back and throw a little bit harder in those spots,” Severino said.

Indeed, Severino averages nearly a mile per hour more on his fastball when runners are in scoring position this season.

Fourth inning

Severino is now working through the Reds order for a second time. He threw his first slider last inning to India, and in this inning, he introduces both his changeup and his cutter.

“It’s just looking for a pitch they haven’t seen before, more against the lefties,” he said. “I want to show them not to get comfortable at the plate. Our mindset was cutter in and then changeup down and away. If you can get to those two pitches, you’re a really good hitter.”

True to what he said earlier, Severino doesn’t give in on a full-count offering to De La Cruz, walking him with a sweeper. De La Cruz leads the majors in stolen bases, and Severino throws over to first base right away.

“I’m usually really fast to home plate, so just in that situation, I have to be even quicker,” he said. “I know Torrens has a good arm, so I have to give him a chance to throw that runner out.”

De La Cruz runs on a first-pitch cutter, and Torrens nails him at second. The catcher has caught an incredible 13 of 20 runners this season.

“He was in the minor leagues for two months. I don’t know how you can have someone like that in the minor leagues,” Severino said of Torrens. “He’s so valuable for us right now. I don’t have to worry much about who’s running. It’s about making my pitch and trying to be quick and not trying to do something I’m not used to.”

Spencer Steer pops up to Torrens, and Severino gets a comebacker from France. After France made a first-pitch out on a sinker last time, Severino started him off with a sweeper for a strike.

“If you make a first-pitch out, you don’t give me much to do,” he said. “After that, we had everything in our pocket to get him out.”

Fifth inning

Severino runs into his first real jam of the day in the fifth through little fault of his own. Fraley leads off with a duck-snort double that doesn’t even reach the outfield grass on the fly. Espinal follows with a bloop single to right. Two balls hit under 65 mph, and yet it’s first and third with no outs in a scoreless game.

“It’s tough,” Severino said. “For me, it’s like, ‘OK, this happens. I have to go out there and compete. If I get out of this inning with one run, that’s good.’”

With the count 2-2 on Marte, the Mets call for a pickoff throw to first, which Severino executes in the blink of an eye. With the help of video review, they nab Espinal for a huge first out. At that point, Severino gets greedy.

“After that, let’s go for the strikeout now and try to get out of the inning with no runs,” he said.

He does just that, beating Marte again with a two-strike sweeper, though this time swinging. While Severino’s strikeout rate for the season is a pedestrian 20.7 percent (below the league average for a starting pitcher), that number balloons to 26.7 percent with a runner on third and fewer than two outs — when a strikeout is especially important. (Hitters strike out less often in that spot than they do overall.)

Against Benson, he gets whiffs on both a 1-1 sinker and a 1-2 four-seam fastball to end the threat.

That sinker is essentially a new pitch for Severino this year. How does he like to play it off his traditional four-seam fastball?

“Hitters get used to speed really quick. In this game, everybody throws hard,” he said. “So I like to play with the movement.”

Here’s an example: If Severino throws a four-seamer up and the hitter fouls it off, his expectation is that the hitter will adjust his swing to get on top of the high heater — leaving him susceptible to the sinker.

“That’s played well for me this year,” he said.

The sinker also allows him to work inside to righties more consistently.

“It was just a four-seam I was throwing middle-away, middle-away,” he said of his arsenal in the past. “After working with that sinker, I just do the same thing. I throw it middle and it’s going to go in.

“For me, everything now is about location. I don’t have to do much. I don’t have to aim my pitch. Just throw it in the middle and the pitch will do its job.”

Sixth inning

Severino is about to start his third tour of the Reds order in the sixth inning. As with most starters, that’s when Severino has been hit the hardest (.834 OPS against).

The inning starts with Maile, the ninth hitter.

“The main thing is just trying to get the first guy out,” Severino said. “You’ve got to get that guy out because after that, the best three hitters are coming. Get the first guy out, don’t let him get on base for the good part of the lineup.”

After striking out Maile on a sweeper, he surprises India with a 1-2 changeup for the swinging strikeout. This was Severino’s sixth encounter with India this season, and by the time he’d reached 1-2, he’d thrown him 36 pitches in 2024. The 37th was the first changeup. India almost smirks at the mound after swinging through the pitch.

“Torrens called that pitch there; I thought that was an amazing idea,” Severino said. “Nobody was waiting for that pitch there.”

Severino credited both Torrens and Francisco Alvarez for being active participants throughout the game, even when they’re not playing that day. He’s always seeking input from the two of them.

“The communication is the main thing for a pitcher and catcher, and they communicate really well with everybody,” he said. “Those guys do a good job.”

De La Cruz singles and moves to second when another quick pickoff attempt from Severino sails past Pete Alonso at first base. Severino shrugs it off to face Steer.

“He can steal third base, but I knew there’s two outs,” he said. “I just needed to worry about getting this guy out. We threw a changeup to get a fly ball to left field to get out of that inning.”

Seventh inning

The Mets finally break the seal on a two-out RBI single from Starling Marte in the bottom of the sixth. Now with a lead, Severino is facing the middle of the Cincinnati order having thrown 83 pitches.

France leads off with yet another soft hit, an excuse-me bloop to no man’s land between Alonso, Severino and second baseman José Iglesias. The Mets then just miss turning two on Fraley’s first-pitch grounder to first. Fraley moves to second on a wild pitch, but Severino wins a seven-pitch battle with Espinal with a fastball for a swinging strikeout.

Severino just has to get through Noelvi Marte, whom he’s struck out twice, to record seven shutout innings.

Instead, Marte loops a first-pitch sinker down the right-field line to score Fraley.

“That inning there, I would say I was not lucky enough,” Severino said. “I threw a lot of good pitches, I competed there. I know there’s a lot of things I can’t control, but the stuff I can control I try to do a good job with those.”

Manager Carlos Mendoza took the ball from Severino after 97 pitches.

What’s the right-hander thinking as he walks back to the dugout in a 1-1 game?

“About throwing another pitch (to Marte),” he said. “I could have gone with slider or changeup or fastball up and in. Something else. But at the end you can’t do anything about that.”

Postgame

The Reds rallied for two more runs in the ninth inning against Phil Maton to salvage the finale of the three-game series and snap the Mets’ nine-game winning streak. Severino’s final line included 6 2/3 innings, one run on five hits — only one of which was hit even 80 mph — with eight strikeouts and two walks.

“Just give my team a chance to win,” Severino said. “That’s the main thing for a pitcher. If you go out there and compete and give your team a chance to win, that’s really good.”

He’s done that consistently throughout the season, allowing no more than two runs in 16 of his 28 starts. The Mets will continue to lean on him down the stretch.

“Hopefully I can continue that and keep working hard and keep improving,” Severino said. “Hopefully we make the playoffs this year and I can keep showing everybody what kind of pitcher I am.”

(Photo of Luis Severino: Noah K. Murray / Associated Press)

For 14 seconds, Jordan Chiles paused and looked down to collect her thoughts and emotions.

The question — about what Chiles felt she lost when the International Olympic Committee stripped her of her bronze medal in the Olympic women’s gymnastics floor exercise — forced her to stop mid-answer. The audience at the Forbes Power Women’s Summit in New York applauded her as she regrouped and held the microphone back up to her mouth.

Holding back tears, Chiles said she lost more than a bronze medal through the controversy that dominated the end of last month’s Paris Games. The controversy “wasn’t about the medal,” she said, but other realities that made her feel “stripped.”

“The biggest thing that was taken from me was the recognition of who I was, not just my sport, but the person I am,” Chiles said.

“It’s about my skin color,” Chiles added. “It’s about the fact there were things that have led up to this position of being an athlete.”

The on-stage interview Wednesday — which occurred before Chiles appeared at MTV’s Video Music Awards at night — marked the gymnast’s most extensive comments since the IOC said it would reallocate Chiles’ bronze to Romania’s Ana Bărbosu following an appeal by the Romanian Gymnastics Federation.

At the floor final on Aug. 5, Chiles originally finished fifth but rose to third after her coach, Cecile Landi, submitted a successful inquiry to raise her score by one-tenth of a point. Five days later, the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled that Landi’s inquiry should be invalidated because it came four seconds after the one-minute window for such an appeal. After the ruling, the International Gymnastics Federation dropped Chiles to fifth, and the IOC reallocated the medal. USA Gymnastics has said it is appealing the CAS decision to the Swiss Federal Tribunal.

Chiles said she felt “left in the dark” and unsupported during the controversy. She felt her voice wasn’t heard during the appeal process and compared her emotions to 2018, when she said an emotionally and verbally abusive coach caused her to lose her love for gymnastics.

“No one was listening to the fact that there are things that we have in place,” Chiles said. “There are things that we have that should’ve been seen but weren’t taken for realization.”

“The biggest thing that was taken from me was the recognition of who I was, not just my sport, but the person I am.”

Olympic Gymnast @ChilesJordan spoke with @MoiraForbes about being stripped of her bronze medal at the 2024 #PowerWomensSummit. https://t.co/gRF3MBW6J9 pic.twitter.com/Fjett19aDY

Advertisement

— ForbesWomen (@ForbesWomen) September 11, 2024

USA Gymnastics has argued that it has video evidence showing Landi made the appeal 47 seconds after Chiles’ score was posted, 13 seconds before the inquiry window closed, and that it did not have enough time to properly make its case to CAS.

Chiles previously referred to the decision as “unjust.”

“(It) comes as a significant blow, not just to me, but to everyone who has championed my journey,” Chiles said in a post on X on Aug. 15. “To add to the heartbreak, the unprompted racially driven attacks on social media are wrong and extremely hurtful.”

Almost a month later, Chiles maintains that she and her coach followed the rules and did “everything that was totally and completely right” in the floor exercise competition.

“I made history and I will always continue to make history,” said Chiles, who won gold in the Olympic women’s team competition.

Chiles, who will return to UCLA for the upcoming college gymnastics season, received a bronze clock at the VMAs as a gift from Flavor Flav, who promised to make her one after her medal was stripped.

Required reading

(Photo: Steven Ferdman / Getty Images)

At first, his screams were met with silence. Stunned silence, really.

This rookie was standing there, two weeks into his NFL career, moments after a humiliating loss at home, and he was calling out … the entire team?

“Where my leaders at?!?” C.J. Stroud shouted, grabbing the attention of everyone inside the home locker room at NRG Stadium. “I need some leaders! Right now! Where they at? Speak up!”

The Texans were 0-2. They’d just been routed at home by the Colts. They hadn’t won more than four games in three years. “We got waxed that day,” remembers tight end Brevin Jordan, “and we all had the same question, like, ‘Are we gonna have one those seasons again?’”

Stroud was livid, not merely at the loss but at the fact that he was the only one willing to step up and say something about it.

This was last September, six weeks before Stroud would throw for more passing yards in a game than any rookie ever, four months before he’d become the youngest quarterback in NFL history to win a playoff game. This was before belief in Houston really started to build, before the rest of the league started to realize this team wasn’t just coming — it was coming fast.

Few inside the building saw a turnaround happening this quickly or this dramatically. But the margins are painfully small in the NFL, and sometimes seasons come down to little moments, like when a rookie punctures the silence of a somber locker room and changes how his teammates see him — and themselves.

“Some people needed to be called out. The captains needed to be called out,” says defensive end Will Anderson Jr., like Stroud a rookie captain at the time.

Jimmie Ward, a veteran safety who’d come over from San Francisco that spring, sat at his stall that afternoon and watched from across the room. He was injured and didn’t play in the loss; in his mind, it didn’t feel right to rip into his new teammates, not with him in street clothes and them in shoulder pads.

When Stroud was finished, Ward walked up to him.

“You’re a rookie,” he told him, “and that took some balls.”

The Texans were learning the kid who oozed California cool also had what Ward calls “this asshole side to him.” They won their next two games by 44 points.

It’s early August. On a high school field outside of Cleveland, a half hour after a training camp practice has wrapped and two days before the Texans face the Steelers in a preseason game, Nico Collins is wearing out the JUGS machine. Most of his teammates have boarded the bus and headed back to the hotel. A few linger on the sideline. Collins works alone.

The fourth-year wideout is eight feet from the machine, jogging in place, waiting for a football to be fired. Snap. He snares it with one hand. These are coming out hot. Snap. He grabs another, then taps his feet down, like he’s inches from the sideline. He adds to the total in his head. He’s nearing 20 without a drop. Snap.

What looks ridiculously difficult — what is ridiculously difficult — Collins wants to turn into second nature.

“Man,” he says a few moments later, shaking his head, “C.J. was on us today.”

It was a sloppy practice. The offense looked awful. Stroud missed throws and threw picks. Receivers broke off some routes early, others too late. The defense dominated, then gloated. At one point, after he was intercepted along the sideline, Stroud slammed his towel to the ground in disgust. Then he called his unit together.

“Slow it down!” Collins remembers Stroud screaming in the huddle. “How many times have we run this play? How many times?

“Now lock in.”

That’s the side to the young quarterback teammates hadn’t seen until his eruption after the early-season loss to the Colts last year. Stroud’s soft-spoken, laid-back persona belies an edge he’s always played with — and now leads with. He doesn’t unleash it often, preferring to pick his spots. But when he does, teammates feel the fire. Quarterbacks don’t get far in this league being polite.

“Oh, he’ll snap at us,” Collins says. “Way more than you think.”

“At practice you see glimpses of it,” new Texans receiver Stefon Diggs says of C.J. Stroud. “But come game time, he’s the real deal.” (Justin Casterline / Getty Images)

Stroud made it a point last summer to work quietly and earn the locker room’s respect. He was a rookie. He knew his place. Then the Texans stumbled to 0-2, and what irritated Stroud most during that loss to the Colts was how quiet the huddles were. When the team gathered before kickoff, he was the only one who said anything. When they did so again after halftime, same thing. So after coach DeMeco Ryans finished in the locker room, Stroud unloaded on them.

He knew he couldn’t be the only voice.

“Look, C.J.’s a great dude, all the guys like him, but there’s just enough prick to him, you know what I mean? He’s got some dog in him,” says Texans defensive coordinator Matt Burke. “We’ve all been on teams where the quarterback is separate from the rest of the group — he sorta does his own thing, and when he gets on guys, no one really listens, right? But when you’ve got a guy who’s got some s— about him, the team responds.”

Wideout Stefon Diggs, the team’s marquee offseason acquisition, felt it during Sunday’s season opener in Indianapolis. “At practice you see glimpses of it,” Diggs said after catching two touchdowns. “He’ll sprinkle a little emotion on you, he’ll get on you a little bit. But come game time, he’s the real deal.”

That intensity, Diggs said, is essential. Everyone on the offense knows what the expectation is, full stop. Stroud demands it.

“He makes it easy to be a receiver,” Diggs added.

Diggs’ arrival this spring via trade with the Bills, plus the additions of running back Joe Mixon and defensive end Danielle Hunter, made it clear: the Texans are going for it. Last season’s 10-7 regular season and surprise run to the divisional round of the playoffs was enough to scrap the slog of a long rebuild.

The window had opened. They weren’t going to wait. With Stroud still on his rookie contract, Houston wants to take its shot in the crowded AFC.

The QB opened training camp in late July welcoming the hype, mindful that the spotlight shines most on the teams that matter. “Pressure is a privilege,” Stroud likes to say, and it’s something he learned from his time at Ohio State. The Buckeyes would get every team’s best shot every single week. He knows Houston isn’t sneaking up on anyone in 2024.

And with that comes the burden of expectation, something that’s buried teams before them, teams that thought they were ready to contend only to find out the hard way they weren’t even close. “We have that big red target on our back,” Stroud says. “That’s something we didn’t have last year.”

Last season, Houston didn’t have a single regular-season game scheduled for a national television window; this year the Texans are slated for five, including a marquee Christmas Day matchup with the Ravens, the team that bounced them from the playoffs in January. Season tickets sold out by July, a first for the franchise in five years. Entering Week 1, only five teams had better Super Bowl odds. Stroud currently has the fourth-shortest odds for MVP.

So much has changed for this city, this franchise and this quarterback in 12 short months.

“It’s not going to be easy. It’s going to be harder,” Stroud says. “That’s how you should want it.”

It started Sunday in Indianapolis. The Colts were desperate to steal this one — they haven’t won a Week 1 game since 2013 and haven’t won an AFC South title since 2014. At the moment, Houston remains Indy’s biggest roadblock.

In the first quarter, the Colts’ Anthony Richardson made the throw of the game, maybe the year.

With two minutes left in the fourth, Stroud made the throw that won it.

A false start turned a third-and-6 into a third-and-11. Leading by two, the Texans needed a conversion to prevent Richardson from getting another chance. After the snap, Collins peeled toward the sideline, blanketed by Colts’ corner Jaylon Jones.

If there was a window, Stroud might’ve been the only person inside Lucas Oil Stadium to see it. The coverage was superb.

Stroud fired. Jones got a finger on it. Collins kept his concentration — the byproduct of all those reps on the JUGS machine — and somehow snagged it. Then he got a foot down. Then a knee. The ridiculously difficult had become second nature.

One Mixon run later, it was over. After the 29-27 win, Stroud was asked about the completion to Collins. How in the world did he fit it in there?

He smiled. Then he repeated an old quote Peyton Manning used to say all the time.

“There’s no defense for the perfect throw.”

Nico Collins’ third-down sideline catch all but sealed the Texans’ victory over the Colts. (Christine Tannous / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)

Nine months ago, after their divisional playoff game in Baltimore, Stroud stood before a lectern on the bottom floor of M&T Bank Stadium, wearing a sweatsuit, beanie and Asics running shoes. It was his first lesson about how punishing postseason football can be. A tie game at the half had ballooned into a 34-10 Ravens’ triumph.

One minute, the game’s tight. The next, you’re getting steamrolled out of the stadium.

“It’s tough getting embarrassed like that,” Stroud said.

His face told the story. He was drained.

“I’ve been going hard since I was like 12 years old,” he said. “AAU tournaments. Baseball. Football. 7-on-7. High school. It’s been a blessing. It’s been a ball. I’m 22 years old, and this is my first time ever having freedom away from school, away from college.”

The climb was so quick, so consuming, that he’d never taken a minute to breathe. That cramped apartment 40 miles east of Los Angeles that Stroud lived in with his mom and siblings, where he cried after getting his first Division 1 offer, still feels like yesterday. Then came Ohio State. The draft. The S2 drama. Training camp. The season. And now, at just 22 years old, he was already one of the young faces of the league, the quarterback some were starting to think might be good enough to do what Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson so far haven’t. That is, beat Patrick Mahomes in the playoffs.

But first, before the rest of his career could start, Stroud needed to get away. So he did. He played in the Pro Bowl. He swung by media row at the Super Bowl and broke down his own film. He hopped on podcasts. He taught football to high schoolers in China as part of an Asian tour with Cowboys edge rusher Micah Parsons, threw out the first pitch before a baseball game in Japan, then trained with — well, sort of trained with — sumo wrestlers.

GO DEEPER

Troy Aikman ‘never lost at anything.’ He’s just now starting to enjoy it.

By the spring, Stroud couldn’t help himself: he was lighting up the text thread again, the same one he used to send teammates film clips last season. Pretty soon, the Texans’ skill position players, including Diggs, were meeting up for throwing sessions. In Los Angeles. In Miami. Finally, in Houston.

“Come on, you know who planned those,” says receiver Tank Dell. “Of course 7 did.”

Burke, the Texans’ DC, felt Stroud’s urgency and inquisitiveness after all of one practice last year. After Stroud threw his first pick, he hunted down Burke after the workout and asked him to explain how he’d disguised the coverage. The QB didn’t wanna get beat on that play again. Burke was floored. “I was like, ‘Are you kidding?’” he says. “You love that. That piece of it, that desire to learn that stuff, that’s so important.”

Scoop City Newsletter

Free, daily NFL updates direct to your inbox.

Free, daily NFL updates direct to your inbox.

Sign Up

Hunter, the veteran defensive end who arrived via free agency this spring, has spent nine seasons chasing quarterbacks in this league. What struck him during training camp was Stroud’s unflappability in the pocket. He’d tick through his reads without hurrying, without letting panic — a weakness game-wreckers like Hunter prey on — set in.

“He just doesn’t fold under pressure, when guys are coming,” Hunter says. “If it’s not there, he doesn’t try to do Superman stuff. You know how big that is for a guy his age?”

Thing is: Stroud can do Superman stuff. He won Offensive Rookie of the Year doing Superman stuff. Richardson’s stunning 60-yard bomb on Sunday overshadowed a 55-yard second-quarter beauty from Stroud to Collins that, per Next Gen Stats, was the most improbable completion of Stroud’s young career. Two Colts defenders were within a yard of Collins when the ball arrived.

CJ STROUD DEEP TO NICO COLLINS FOR 55 YARDS.

📺: #HOUvsIND on CBS/Paramount+
📱: https://t.co/waVpO909ge pic.twitter.com/pIG9hzf0CD

— NFL (@NFL) September 8, 2024

Stroud found the window. Somehow. When it comes to deep balls, few QBs in the league are better.

“It just seems so natural, so easy for him,” Collins says of his quarterback.

“It may seem easy, but it’s not,” Stroud says.

And it won’t be anytime soon. Stroud knows the innocence of his rookie season is gone. Now he needs to win. The Texans’ first primetime game of 2024 arrives Sunday night against the Bears, and with it, another test to see if they’re ready to meet the moment. The quarterback, too.

Stroud seems to relish it, always returning to that word of his: pressure. He refuses to see it as a negative. His story tells us he never has.

“We love that pressure, and we want that pressure,” he says. “There’s no real reward if there’s no pressure.”

(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; photo: Tim Warner / Getty Images)