Houston QB C. J Stroud bullish on Ohio State player’s NFL potential: "Definitely a steal"

NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year award winner C. J Stroud of the Houston Texans had an epic first year in the league throwing for 4,108 yards resulting in 23 touchdowns and 5 interceptions.

The former Ohio State Buckeyes quarterback was recently bullish about former Ohio State linebacker, Tommy Eichenberg's performance captioning a video of the player at the NFL Combine:

"Definitely a steal in the draft!"

Eichenberg showed off his vertical (32.5") and long jump (9’8’’) to the attending scouts although he decided against running the 40 during the combine.

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Eichenberg recently hinted at a preferred move to the Las Vegas Raiders due to their coach Antonio Pierce being a former linebacker.

"I haven't met with him yet, but from what I've seen, he's a really, really good dude," Eichenberg said. "I mean, he was a great linebacker, too. And I think linebackers as head coaches is awesome, and that's just another example of a guy that's like -- he's a football dude, and I feel like you always want to play for guys like that."

The C. J Stroud controversy

Houston Texans quarterback C. J Stroud had his S2 results in which he scored 18/100 from the pre-draft process leaked last year and it caused a huge controversy in the sport as the test results are supposed to remain confidential.

He replied in a typically confident fashion to the outrage and was picked No. 2 overall by the Houston Texans during the NFL Draft.

“I’m not a test-taker. I play football,” Stroud said. "At the end of the day, I don't got nothing to prove to nobody, so I'm not going to sit here and explain how I process football. The people who are making the picks know what I can do, so that's all that matters to me."

Houston Texans coach DeMeco Ryans went to bat for C. J Stroud last year when the controversy reached a fever pitch.

"You don't pick a guy based on a test," Ryans said. "It's silly to say, 'Take one metric,' when there are so many different variables that go into drafting a guy."

NFL insiders then revealed the intention behind the results being leaked.

"It was complete B.S. that it was leaked, but people in our league can't help themselves," a general manager told The Athletic.

"I think it was thrown out there by a team that had their own goals and wanted to use it to put him down and gloat on what they wanted seen," another general manager revealed.

Ryans recently revealed to the media that he had a different view of C. J Stroud at the NFL Draft Combine last year.

“Well, it started right here at the combine when we were evaluating young players,” Ryans said. “You’d see C. J Stroud come into our room in formal interviews and just see he had that calmness about him in the room. You can tell, for me, I could tell instantly if a guy has what it takes. I saw that in C.J. when I first sat down and he began to speak to us about his background and his college experience. Then, you see his teammates and how they spoke about C.J."

After the controversy surrounding their client, the firm that represents C. J Stroud, 'Athletes First' recently announced that it had directed all of its clients to forego S2 tests during future draft combines.