There isn’t a good excuse for the Cincinnati Bengals to avoid asking the Arizona Cardinals about Josh Rosen.
Rosen seems available as the Cardinals publicly flirt with the idea of grabbing Kyler Murray first overall. It’s somewhat silly for the new head coach to give up on a top-10 pick already and might be one of the most elaborate smokescreens we’ve seen — but the NFL is a strange place.
Also strange? A team like the Bengals not even asking about the price. Owner Mike Brown — usually quiet about his plans — just admitted the team won’t extend Andy Dalton this offseason.
Dalton has two years left on his contract, but it sure sounds like 2019 is a prove-it year. If he’s not a fit in Zac Taylor’s offense, it sure sounds like Brown will be willing to move on.
But the reality is Dalton is well over the age of 30 and another extension for is going to cost a ton. Rosen is a top-10 prospect on his rookie deal.
Look, the teams sniffing around Rosen says it all. From Fox Sports’ Joel Klatt on Undisputed:
So get this — the New York Giants have possibly thought about it as an eventual Eli Manning replacement. So have the Los Angeles Chargers for Philip Rivers.
Oh, and so has Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots with Tom Brady aging.
That should send a big signal to teams like the Bengals: Rosen is viewed as worth obtaining by teams looking for long-term successors to Manning, Rivers and Brady. Hello.
Detractors will point out Rosen was bad last year, but that’s like saying an expansion team struggled during its first season. He completed 55.2 percent of his passes behind an offensive line that got him sacked 45 times, of which advanced metrics shows many of them occurred so quickly he couldn’t complete a five-step drop.
Things were so bad around Rosen his head coach got fired after one year. Misusing an MVP-caliber talent like David Johnson does that. Throwing Rosen to the wolves in the middle of a fourth quarter and asking him to win it after Sam Bradford was predictably bad wasn’t an ideal situation, either.
Switching teams and offensive coordinators would obviously be a hurdle for Rosen. But the Bengals obtaining him wouldn’t mean starting him right away. It’d mean learning before stepping into an offense built to prop up quarterbacks, boasting A.J. Green, Tyler Boyd and Joe Mixon, at a minimum.
And there is an argument to be made Rosen would be the best quarterback in this 2019 class. He’s got more potential to elevate those around him than Dalton ever had.
For the Bengals, if Taylor likes Rosen, it isn’t anything to fret over when it comes to coughing up say, a second-round pick in a trade. The 11th pick might be too high, but getting other picks back could make it work. Again, the exchange is eventually swapping out Dalton’s $16 million per year (that will only go up next time) and being able to spend that money elsewhere. It’s getting a top-10 prospect for cheaper than that who already has pro experience as opposed to gambling on a rookie or settling for one who falls.
With superb mechanics, pre-snap acumen and an affordable contract for four more years enabling the Bengals to splurge on talent around him, Rosen would jump-start the soft rebuild. It would mean not wasting the rest of A.J. Green or Geno Atkins’ prime while also squeezing the most out of rising stars like Joe Mixon and Jessie Bates.
The Bengals are doing themselves a disservice if they don’t at least pick up the phone and see what it might cost.
