What should the Miami Dolphins do with quarterback Josh Rosen?
This is a popular question among Miami Dolphins fans as the team looks to transition from veteran quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick to 2020 No. 5 overall pick Tua Tagovailoa behind center. Rosen seems to be on the outside looking in yet again — the second time in as many years that a team who invested in him decided it was paramount to invest a top-5 overall pick in the NFL Draft on another quarterback to dethrone him on the depth chart. First it was the Arizona Cardinals in 2019, drafting Kyler Murray No. 1 overall.
Miami, to their credit, picked Rosen up for a discount after an underwhelming rookie season and that decision to pick up Murray — trading back in the 2nd round of the 2019 NFL Draft to turn one second rounder into two (one in 2019 and one in 2020) before trading a late 2nd for Rosen last April.
Rosen’s play in 2019 with the Dolphins was arguably worse than anything he put on display for the Cardinals in 2018, although Miami’s offense under offensive coordinator Chad O’Shea was admittedly complicated and forced Rosen to take on a lot of pre-snap responsibility at the line of scrimmage — something he wasn’t tasked with doing in any of his other recent stops out west between UCLA and Arizona.
The end result was ugly. Rosen played slow, held the ball entirely too long, took sacks and illustrated poor mastery of his passing concepts in the Patriots-based offensive attack. And, perhaps to Rosen’s credit, Miami dumped the offensive approach this offseason in favor of a simpler attack under new offensive coordinator Chan Gailey. But with Tagovailoa now in the building, the writing is on the wall for Rosen — he’s not viewed as the future. At least not in South Florida. And one year after trading for him, the Dolphins will likely struggle to find a viable market for Rosen this summer. That is, of course, unless he thrives in a simpler offense this preseason.
And that’s exactly what one anonymous executive is advocating for the Dolphins to do according to Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald. Jackson tasked two long-time NFL executives and one former NFL scout to weigh in on the Dolphins’ roster at each position — and the general consensus about the Dolphins quarterbacks was that Tagovailoa is gifted, Fitzpatrick is erratic and Rosen is an afterthought. But the second of Jackson’s sourced executives provided the blueprint for how to handle Rosen.
“I would play Josh Rosen a lot in preseason to try to trade him.”
That’s the ticket. Rosen will be fine in Miami as a long-term backup if the Dolphins aren’t able to drum up interest for him, but getting Rosen plenty of preseason reps and looking to showcase that he’s not a lost cause may be the Dolphins’ best case scenario in their hopes to recoup their investment after doubling down at the position in April of 2020.