Josh Rosen has been given a raw deal ever since his college football days and since being drafted 10th overall by the Arizona Cardinals in 2018. Rosen could not have landed in a worse situation as he’s gone through five different offensive coordinators since college, he went through three during his time at UCLA: Noel Mazzone, Kennedy Polamalu, Jedd Fisch and he had two offensive coordinators during his lone season in Arizona, Mike McCoy and Byron Leftwich, that’s 5 different Offensive Coordinators in 4 years.
So after a disastrous 3-13 2018 season, the Arizona Cardinals fired their head coach Steve Wilks after one season on December 31, 2018. That meant at the very least Josh Rosen will have his sixth OC in 5 years. On January 8, 2019 the Arizona Cardinals hired Kliff Kingsbury as their new head coach and rumors quickly spread that new head coach Kliff Kingsbury was enamored with a different QB that was coming out in the 2019 NFL Draft Kyler Murry. The Rumors proved to be true as Murray was drafted first overall by the Arizona Cardinals in the 2019 NFL Draft.
Shortly after drafting Kyler Murry the Cardinals were looking to dump Josh Rosen who was drafted a year earlier 10th overall in the 2018 NFL Draft. So GM Chris Grier took advantage of their desperation and offered a 2nd round pick after first trading down from the 48th position in the 2nd round with the New Orleans Saints. The Dolphins sent the Saints the 48th and 116th overall picks for the 62nd and 202nd picks that year, plus a 2020 second-round pick.
The Dolphins then sent the 62nd overall pick acquired from the Saints and a 2020 fifth-rounder to the Arizona Cardinals to acquire quarterback Josh Rosen, so after only one season with the Cardinals Rosen found himself traded to the Dolphins and considered it a chance for a fresh start.
Unfortunately Josh Rosen’s situation in Miami was just as bad as his landing with the Cardinals a year earlier as the Dolphins were in the beginning of a rebuilding process that started by purging the 2019 roster of all the overpriced players and some young players that either did not want to be on the roster or the Dolphins took advantage of a deal they could not refuse no matter the reason the Miami Dolphins 2019 roster was bereft of talent and did not provide Josh Rosen with the supporting cast to be successful.
The offensive line was in flux all season as head coach Brian Flores fired his first O-Line coach Pat Flaherty just about a month before the 2019 season started and hired then consultant Dave DeGuglielmo (who also is no longer with the team) to replace him and throughout the season the o-line either through injuries or out right poor play was a total mess.
The running game also proved to be ineffective as the Dolphins for some odd reason failed to utilize their best RB on the roster who they eventually traded (Kenyan Drake) and was disappointed with the play of who they made the starter over Drake, Kalen Ballage. To show you how bad the running game was the leading rusher for the Dolphins in 2019 was 37 year old QB Ryan Fitzpatrick who rushed for 243 yards with 54 rushing attempts and a 4.5 AVG YPC.
The Dolphins made a mistake in putting a young Josh Rosen in the starting lineup under an almost impossible situation to succeed, a situation only an experienced veteran like Ryan Fitzpatrick could lead that team to a 5 win season. I had written earlier in the 2019 season that Miami should not rush Josh Rosen in fact I felt they should let him sit a season or two and learn from Ryan Fitzpatrick.
If you recall we have already talked about how Josh Rosen had been through 5 different offensive coordinators since college and being traded to the Dolphins in 2019 and now in 2020 Josh Rosen will have his seventh OC in six seasons as to everyone’s surprise last years OC Chad O’Shea was fired at the end of the 2019 season. Though we may never know the real reason, from some reports it appears that the offense run by Chad O’Shea was just to complex for the young players including our Young QB to grasp and that seems to be the reason for the change.
Josh Rosen ended up being on a team last year that did not have enough talent to be supportive of the Young quarterback as well as having a rookie offensive coordinator who did a good job because he had a veteran quarterback who protected him while at the same time Josh Rosen was left hanging in the wind with a complicated offensive system that required Josh Rosen to do things he was not familiar with so after putting Josh Rosen in as a replacement in week 3 it did not take coach Flores long to realize his mistake and benched Josh Rosen after the two-and-a-half games in week 5.
So far every indication of Chris Greer is that he’s made very wise and calculated decisions and I cannot believe that the Dolphins have given up on Josh Rosen without even giving him a fair chance, that’s why I am still holding to the belief that the Dolphins are not drafting a quarterback this year, in fact I think they want to double down and build support for Josh Rosen by providing him with a supporting cast through free agency and in the draft that will assist him and his development as our starting quarterback of the future.
That is why I feel the Dolphins protected Josh Rosen by not reinserting him as the starter at the end of the 2019 season as many were crying they should do, but Rosen will now get a fair chance when Miami add the talent that this roster needs this off-season, if Miami did not intend to give Josh Rosen a legitimate chance they should never have traded for him, when they knew what their goals were for the 2019 season. It’s no fair way to judge Josh Rosen based off of the two seasons he’s had so far in the NFL because of the lack of talent that both Arizona and Miami had on their rosters.
Josh Rosen has the talent and skills to be a starting quarterback in NFL, in addition to that he has conducted himself very admirably considering the circumstances that he has found himself in, he’s never complained and he’s been working hard to prove to the Dolphins that he can be that starting quarterback. Just 22 years of age there’s plenty of time for developing Josh Rosen even if it meant he were to sit out another year and work under the tutelage of Ryan Fitzpatrick for 2020 season. What price is to much to develop this young QB?
Aaron Rodgers sat 3 years and look what it did for him. I find it almost unconscionable that the Dolphins would muddy the waters by adding another high drafted quarterback to this roster in the 2020 draft with so many other holes they have to fill on their roster, it just does not make sense to me when you already have a young man poised and ready and desiring to be our starting QB.
What the Dolphins should do is let the 2020 season play out with Ryan Fitzpatrick and Josh Rosen competing for the starting job and see how it ends, use the money they have for free agency (over 100,000.00 dollars) and the draft capital they have (a projected 14 picks and counting) to fill the roster with talented players and allow 2020 to determine the fate of Josh Rosen because if he fails there are plenty of opportunities to fix the QB position in the 2021 NFL draft.
Hopefully the Dolphins will look at what discarded QB Ryan Tannehill was able to accomplish last season with the Titans and see that having a solid team that can run the ball will aid in the play of the QB and with a young 22 year old QB like Josh Rosen he can develop and grow with the young talent we add in 2020 and beyond.
The last thing we need is to see Josh Rosen go to some other team and flourish and become a franchise QB for a team like the Patriots…there is no big hurry to move on from Josh Rosen. It is well worth the time and money to develop our young signal caller who is potentially the next franchise QB we are seeking.
Fins Up!
The Dolphin Seer 