Back at the NFL scouting combine, Texans general manager Nick Caserio described the trade speculation around C.J. Stroud as “moronic.” He also called the exercising of Stroud’s fifth-year option a “no-brainer” a few days ago. But one has to wonder if it would also be ridiculous to consider extending Stroud at a time when Houston just made Will Anderson Jr., an edge rusher who went one pick after Stroud in the 2023 draft, the highest-paid defensive player in football.
Having the offensive and defensive rookies of the year from the same draft class is a luxury issue, but we’re going to discover in real time what happens when those players’ career arcs begin to resemble less of a steady ascension on parallel tracks. The Jets, for example, didn’t have to wonder. Both Sauce Gardner and Garrett Wilson were extended within days of one another in 2025. Ever since their starlit rookie campaigns in ’22, the team has made a conscious effort to market them together and promote them as a kind of dual-headed hydra of the future. That is, until new management deemed Gardner tradeworthy in a sweetheart deal that even members of the Jets’ organization employed when Gardner was drafted would have taken without much hesitation.
