SB Nation Reacts Results: Texans vs. Ravens in DeMeco, Stroud debut

The Houston Texans will face the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday, September 22nd in hopes of extending their win streak to three games. But, before battle red takes on the purple people eaters, we took a poll of the SB Nation audience to see how they thought of the Texans and the rookie quarterback class entering week three.

When asked to grade the 2024 rookie quarterback class so far, the majority of voters gave them a "C" grade. There was a nearly even bell-curve distribution between this grade, with 26% of the vote going to the "A" and "B" category, and the remaining 23% going to the "D" and "F" categories. Seems like most fans are largely unimpressed by the class so far, likely being weighed down by underwhelming performance of Denver Broncos quarterback Bo Nix and lack of playtime for Falcons quarterback Michael Penix and the injured Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy. That leaves just the first overall pick, Caleb Williams, and the second overall pick, Jayden Daniels, to lift the tide of all ships. They've done an admirable job of this so far, Williams looking far better in week two than in week one, while Daniels has shown off his athletic ability to an almost excessive extent already.

Of course, that wasn't the biggest news surrounding a young quarterback this week. Not by a long shot! That honor goes to Carolina Panthers quarterback Bryce Young, who was unceremoniously benched by head coach Dave Canales in favor of the journeyman quarterback Andy Dalton. The Panthers traded up the first overall pick in the 2023 NFL Draft to select Young, leaping past Houston and forcing them to settle with the other top-ranked QB of that class...CJ Stroud. History was made that night, for all of the right and wrong reasons.

These two quarterbacks will forever be linked together because of their draft class, forever be compared to one another, and now the franchises themselves will constantly be held up against each other as a sort of morbid litmus test of "what could have been" for the Panthers had they selected Stroud instead. One thing is for sure: the Texans dodged a franchise-killing bullet when Carolina took Young in front of them.

Next up, we asked the Texans about their confidence in the team, which still remains at extremely high at 96%. Although, last week's poll showed 99% of fans having confidence in the team's direction, so this close victory against the Bears has started as ever so slight decline in confidence. Even though a 3% is incredibly mild, I think it represents a little of the disappointment Texans fans had after seeing this Super Bowl bound Texans team struggle to pull away from the lowly Bears. I think Texans fans want to see a blowout to solidify their belief that this is really a Super Bowl team.

One player did stand out a truly exceptional, though. Wide receiver Nico Collins is off to an amazing start to the 2024 season, hauling in 14 of 18 targets for 252 yards and a touchdown right on top of Bears cornerback Jaylon Johnson. He's picking up right where he left off last year as CJ Stroud's favorite target, and how could you blame Stroud? Yeah he has Stefon Diggs and Tank Dell, but Nico Collins is HUGE! He's tall, has a massive wingspan, catches everything, and is deceivingly fast. He is the perfect complement to CJ Stroud.

Below Collins, we got a rarely even distribution of votes between CJ Stroud, Danielle Hunter, and "other." Who could "other" be? Could this mean defensive end Will Anderson Jr. for his impressive game, linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair for his big day against the run, or even linebacker Henry To'oTo'o for his biggest game yet? Let us know who you would have picked if they were on this list in the comments below!

Last here is rookie cornerback Kamari Lassiter, who snagged his first interception of his NFL career in week two, coming immediately after Derek Stingley Jr.'s interception of Caleb Williams on the previous Bears drive.

Those interceptions kicked off a party in Houston that lasted all night long. The last time the home crowd got to enjoy the elation of an interceptions was Christian Harris's pick-six against the Joe Flacco Browns in the Wildcard Round of last season. That was a big interception in a season choc-full of big interceptions, which got us wondering...how many interceptions are we going to see this year?

It looks like the fans are pretty confident this is going to be a good year! 11-15 interceptions would put Houston in the same zip code as they were in last year when they finished with 14 interceptions, but it looks like 29% of the voting public are little less confident they can return to that high. Losing Steven Nelson to retirement was big blow to this Texans secondary, but, in my opinion, I can see rookies Kamari Lassiter and Calen Bullock making an equivalent impact in the turnover battle as Nelson did last year. 13% of voters are hot on the Texans, thinking they're going to get to the coveted 16+ interception club. It's unlikely, but it's not impossible! And then, 6% of voters think Houston is already approaching their season total of 3-6. Houston is already at three interceptions right now, so I'm going to hope that we don't spend the next 15 games just trying to match the current two-week total.

Next up, the Houston Texans face the Minnesota Vikings (-2) on Sunday, September 22nd, at 12:00 CDT.

Check out the odds for this week's matchup courtesy of FanDuel Sportsbook , and join us for Houston's matchup against the red-hot Vikings. I never thought I'd getting hyped up for a CJ Stroud vs. Sam Darnold game, but here we are!

GO TEXANS!!!!