When Josh Rosen took the field for the Dolphins against the Falcons on Thursday night, he was working under his sixth offensive coordinator in the past five years. There were three at UCLA from 2015 through 2017 — Noel Mazzone, Kennedy Polamalu and Jedd Fisch, each with different overall concepts and philosophies.
Then, after he was drafted by the Cardinals with the 10th overall pick in the 2018 draft, he had two more — Mike McCoy, until McCoy was fired in mid-October, and Byron Leftwich for the rest of the season. When the Cardinals sent Rosen off to Miami after just one season, Rosen met former Patriots receivers coach Chad O’Shea, who is coordinator No. 6.
Even in football, where jobs change at an uncommon rate, this is unusual. Rosen completed 60.9% of his passes for 9,340 yards, 59 touchdowns and 26 interceptions over three seasons with the Bruins despite and because of that persistent staff turnover, and the talent around him wasn’t always stellar. He did not have blue-chip receivers. Rosen’s most prominent college teammate, offensive tackle Kolton Miller, was selected 15th overall by the Raiders last year and allowed more sacks (16) than any other offensive lineman in the NFL.
Meanwhile, under two professional offensive coordinators who seemed unable to utilize the talent they had, Rosen completed 55.2% of his passes for 2,278 yards, 11 touchdowns and 14 picks in 14 games (13 starts). Behind an offensive line that wouldn’t pass muster among the better NCAA teams, Rosen was pressured on 40.4% of his snaps and gave up six of his picks under pressure, per Pro Football Focus.
Rosen’s reward for weathering all those storms was to be hauled off to a Dolphins team in the throes of what some would call a rebuild, and others might call a tank job. He’s second on the depth chart behind veteran Ryan Fitzpatrick, and though his rookie season parallels Jared Goff’s 2016 debut in terms of inefficiency, there doesn’t seem to be any Sean McVay on the horizon for Rosen — just a series of Rob Borases to shuttle through.
Against Atlanta’s aggressive defense, and with yet another patchwork offensive line in front of him, Rosen completed 13 of 20 passes for no touchdowns and one interception. He was sacked twice and made several throws under severe duress, like this improbable 16-yard hurl to undrafted rookie receiver Preston Williams, who would become Rosen’s best friend in the game.
“I felt some guys at my ankles,” Rosen said after the game. “I knew Preston kind of had a stop coming back to me. I saw he was a bit inside of him, so I knew if I just put it up, he would kind of have the break on it. It might have been a little bit too dicey, but I don’t know. A couple fall in your favor, a couple don’t. I probably should be a little smarter with that, even though this one worked out.”
Rosen has always had a belief in his arm to make plays in disadvantageous circumstances — it’s both a blessing and a curse for any quarterback with a gunslinger mentality. Either you find a team that knows how to harness it, or you run around like a headless chicken, trying to make something out of nothing.
“You just can’t fall into that trap, because bad games will turn really bad really quickly if you don’t learn to kind of mitigate that risk,” he concluded. “So I’ve been kind of battling that my whole career. I’ve got to find that balance of knowing when to kind of push the edge and when to just take the sack and live to play another day.”
On other occasions, Rosen had no choice but to bail out of the pocket and throw the ball away — like on this play, where left tackle Jordan Mills and right tackle Will Holden were absolutely folded from the snap by Atlanta’s edge rushers.
Damien Woody, who played center, guard and tackle for the Patriots, Lions and Jets from 1999 through 2010, may have said it best.
The interception below is on Rosen. He failed to catch linebacker Jermaine Grace jumping the route on the attempted throw to receiver Isaiah Ford. Rosen said after the fact that his perception on the play was far from ideal.
“The pick was pretty bad in the sense of my read told me to go here and I didn’t. It wasn’t like a ball-play kind of pick. It was a read kind of pick, so it’s definitely something to build on. I think there was some good, some bad and everything in between. I’m looking forward to breaking down the film and trying to get better from it.”
There were signs of life, though — Rosen made a couple of nice cross-body boundary throws near the end of the second half, and this one to Williams was particularly nifty.
Perhaps there’s something to build on for both players.
Rosen is at a crucial point in his career. You have to look to find it among all the little messes around him, but he does have the embryonic talent to do most everything you want a quarterback to do. But no quarterback, no matter how gifted, can survive in a situation where the game plans don’t work and the protections don’t exist. Goff found a McVay. Jim Plunkett had some really rough seasons with the Patriots and 49ers before he quarterbacked the Raiders to two Super Bowl wins.
Perhaps Rosen will find a similar savior at some point. Right now, it’s the same as it ever was for him — a few dynamic plays around far more confusion than definition.
