When CJ Stroud Reflected on His Tough Childhood, Like Eating Cereal While Cockroaches Crawled Out of the Box

There was much debate leading into the 2023 NFL Draft about who was the better QB between C.J. Stroud and Bryce Young, two childhood friends from SoCal. And while both stories are still largely unfolding, there’s no question that Stroud — selected No. 2 behind Young — has been the better playmaker through two seasons.

He led the Houston Texans to back-to-back AFC South titles and a Wild Card playoff win. He earned Offensive Rookie of the Year honors and a Pro Bowl nod as a rookie in 2023. And though he regressed slightly in 2024, he still looked like a quarterback with a very high ceiling.

He is likely just one or two years away from signing a mammoth deal worth over $60 million a year. But for now, he’s playing on a four-year, $36.3 million contract. And that’s more than enough for now. Growing up, Stroud did not have it easy living in Rancho Cucamonga in Southern California.

As Stroud laid out in his documentary, CJ Stroud: The Offseason, back in 2023, he used to have to make some grisly concessions while living in an apartment above a storage facility.

“When I lived in a storage—I didn’t live in the actual garage, it was like an apartment to the back—but it wasn’t a lot. It was pretty tough. I remember pouring a bowl of cereal and roaches scattering out of it, and I still ate it because I was hungry. (Laughs) It might sound nasty, but that was the mindset I was in. Like man, I gotta eat. It is what it is.”

The documentary was published by NickInTheCutt on YouTube. In the 18 or so months since it was released, it has received over 613k views and 15k likes on the video-sharing platform. Stroud went on to describe how important his mother, Kimberley, was in keeping him and his three siblings above water during those lean years.

“I wasn’t gonna make my mom feel uncomfortable. That’s something that I never did. I always made sure my mom knew, I didn’t care what was going on, I was gonna have her back. That taught me now that, you could have the world, I had a lot, I was exposed to a lot of good things growing up. So I knew wrong from right when everything went bad. But everything was snatched from me and my family, like gone. We had little to nothing.”

Stroud’s father, Coleridge, was booked for kidnapping, carjacking, and robbery in 2016 when CJ was just 15 years old. Due to California’s outdated three-strikes law, this meant that his father had to serve a 38-year-to-life prison sentence. He has been in Folsom State Prison since Stroud was in middle school.

Though they talk on the phone from time to time, CJ never visited his father until after his college career, when his mother said they planned to have what will be a long-awaited and awkward reunion. Whether they did end up having that visit is unknown.

But forgiveness or not, Coleridge’s incarceration is what precipitated the family’s financial struggles. Struggles that have now been alleviated—and then some—thanks to CJ Stroud’s talent, hard work, and dedication when it comes to the game of football.