C.J. Stroud always believed.
The Ohio State quarterback just needed everybody else to get up to speed with what he could do.
Two years ago Stroud was a three-star prospect before dominating at the Elite 11 competition, changing everything about his recruitment and putting his future on a completely different trajectory. He would skyrocket into five-star territory, virtually every major program in the country would be calling him and the kid from Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., was something of an overnight celebrity.
Some of that did catch Stroud by surprise. But even in the middle of his senior season when Lettermen Row paid a visit to the eventual Buckeyes commit and now projected heir apparent to Justin Fields, Stroud was never unsure about his own potential.
“What if The Opening didn’t happen? That’s a great question, and honestly I don’t have a certain answer,” Stroud said then. “I’d probably be staying close to home, maybe somewhere in the Pac-12. But I feel like my senior season would have been the same no matter what. I would have been proving myself. I feel like schools would have reached out, but I don’t know if it would have been to this extent. I think my senior year, though, is showing people that I can actually really play football.
“When I was going [to compete] this summer as a three star, I was happy with that. I was like: I’m going to show people why I’m this good, because the rest isn’t up to me to decide. All I can do is control what I can control. I can’t control what a reporter thinks about me unless I’ve talked to them in person. But I can control what happens on the field, so I wanted to show everybody that I’m the best quarterback in the country.”
