Stroud Tied His Career High With Five Touchdown Passes in Houston's 44-22 Rout of the Chargers

INGLEWOOD, Calif.

Somebody was getting well at SoFi Stadium on Sunday. A 2-5 team flew in to play an 0-7 team, and the Houston Texans turned out to be the ones holding the medicine. C.J. Stroud completed 21 of 35 passes for 384 yards and five touchdowns in a 44-22 win over the Los Angeles Chargers — the five scores tying the career high he set as a rookie against Tampa Bay.

The touchdowns went to four different receivers. Xavier Hutchinson took the first, 17 yards on third-and-6 in the opening quarter. Tank Dell took the second, 63 yards down the right side. Kayshon Boutte scored from 12 yards out with 31 seconds left in the half, at the end of a drive that covered 76 yards in 34 seconds. Nico Collins scored the fourth. Boutte scored the fifth. By halftime Stroud already had 270 yards and three touchdowns, Ka'imi Fairbairn had added a 56-yard field goal, and Houston led 24-9 in a game that never got closer than that again.

The strange part is how long the game pretended to be close. After Hutchinson's touchdown, the next four scores were field goals — Cameron Dicker from 52 for Los Angeles, Fairbairn from 56 for Houston, then Dicker again from 33 and 43 while the Chargers' offense stalled between them. Houston's own running game was ordinary all afternoon: Woody Marks carried 18 times for 70 yards, and nothing about the ground attack explained what was happening. The explanation was Stroud, throwing against a defense that had not allowed a 300-yard passer all season.

Collins caught the fourth one behind the defender's back

Derek Stingley Jr.'s first interception of the season gave Houston a short field early in the third quarter, and the drive came down to third-and-6 at the Chargers' 13. Tarheeb Still had Collins covered — genuinely covered, a step he never lost. Stroud threw it anyway, toward the front corner, and Collins reached back with one hand, caught the ball behind Still's back and landed with both feet in the end zone.

NBC Sports called it one of the best touchdown catches you will ever see. The numbers next to Collins' name look ordinary — four targets, four catches, 55 yards — until you remember which catch the 13-yarder was. It made the score 31-9, and it is the play this game will be remembered by.

Dell's touchdown waited 687 days

The Chargers had crept back to 10-9 in the second quarter on three Cameron Dicker field goals, and the afternoon had a brief, nervous shape to it. It lasted two plays. Stroud dropped an over-the-shoulder ball to Dell, who took it 63 yards for the touchdown that broke the game open.

It was Dell's first touchdown since December 2024 — 687 days earlier. The knee injury that followed cost him his entire 2025 season. He finished Sunday with four catches for 105 yards, and the score that started the rout belonged to the player who had waited longest for one.

Boutte arrived without a touchdown this season. He left with two.

Kayshon Boutte had not scored a touchdown all year before Sunday. His 12-yarder before halftime was his first, and his second — 63 yards down the sideline early in the fourth quarter — was Stroud's fifth touchdown pass of the day, the one that tied the rookie record. Boutte caught four passes for 125 yards, a career high and his first 100-yard game since the August trade that brought him to Houston.

Stroud's one mistake barely registered. A tipped ball became Daiyan Henley's first interception of the season, and Los Angeles spent the afternoon turning its chances into Dicker field goals anyway. He finished with a 125.5 rating, added 20 rushing yards, and — per the Texans' own beat coverage — came within a whisker of a sixth touchdown pass. Five was the number that mattered. It matches the best day of his rookie year, three seasons later, on an afternoon when his team needed the reminder that those days were still in him.

The Chargers' drought outlasted the game

Houston's defense sacked Justin Herbert eight times. Herbert finished 13 of 23 for 193 yards — a season spent running from pressure, compressed into one afternoon. Stingley intercepted him, Calen Bullock recovered a Keaton Mitchell fumble, and the Chargers did not score a touchdown until Quentin Johnston's 58-yarder with 12:47 left in the fourth quarter — their first touchdown in 11 quarters, stretching back to Week 5 against Denver.

Herbert left with about six minutes to play, his hand hurt, and backup DJ Uiagalelei threw his first NFL touchdown pass in the final minutes. The Chargers' own recap did the arithmetic on the other side: Houston's 485 yards were the most their defense has allowed this season, and Stroud's 384 were the most any quarterback has thrown for against them. Los Angeles is 0-8.

Houston goes home 3-5, still chasing Jacksonville in the AFC South, with a problem it did not have on Saturday: deciding which of Sunday's versions of this offense shows up next. The full box score and every drive live in the Game Center, and the rest of the day's finals are on the NFL front.