The emergence of the Houston Texans defense as the best unit in the National Football League during the 2025 season seems to have caused some fans to forget about how only two seasons ago the optimism surrounding this organization was predicated on a belief that the Texans had found a superstar in the making with CJ Stroud. Stroud's dynamite rookie season had many around the league believing he'd be the next player to climb into the top tier of the NFL's best quarterbacks, and it was assumed that his ascent would be linear.
But a bumpy second season paved the way for a so-so first few weeks of the year in 2025, leading some to question whether Stroud's rookie season would go down as something closer to an aberration than a sign of things to come.