Miami Dolphins: It’s time to close the book on Josh Rosen

It is time for the Miami Dolphins to realize that Josh Rosen is fool’s gold.

For some reason, Josh Rosen is still on the Miami Dolphins active roster. He never should have been a Dolphin in the first place, but that is a conversation for a different day. Now with Rosen throwing some nice passes against the air in practice, his supporters in the local media have returned.

Josh Rosen, the former top-ten pick of the Arizona Cardinals, was acquired by Miami during the 2019 NFL draft. The Dolphins gave up second and fifth-round picks for the young quarterback. The trade came on the heels of a rookie season so awful that Arizona bit the financial bullet to avoid having to watch Josh Rosen play another snap for them.

General manager Chris Grier has made some very shrewd moves since being handed more power and responsibility in the 2019 off-season. The trade for Josh Rosen however, was not one of them. It is perhaps the biggest waste of two draft picks in the history of the franchise. The only good thing to come out of that trade is that Josh Rosen was so awful at playing quarterback that had Ryan Fitzpatrick played just one or two more games in 2019, the Miami Dolphins would not have Tua Tagovailoa. They also would have potentially missed out on Oregon quarterback Justin Herbert.

After the Dolphins landed their potential superstar young quarterback in Tua Tagovailoa, Josh Rosen should have immediately been on the chopping block. Miami should have taken whatever they could get for him. In a year with such few practice reps to go around, Rosen’s presence is taking precious time away from Fitzpatrick getting familiar with all the new parts, as well as trying to get the rookie as many reps as possible.

Enter the local Miami media. They might be Rosen’s biggest fans. They continue to harp on how great he looks throwing on air. Many of them simply refuse to admit they missed out on his draft evaluation and their opinions about the “great value trade”. It’s okay, everyone missed on the Rosen draft evaluation. He profiled as a cerebral and pro-ready quarterback who understood coverages and how to dissect defenses. It turns out he was even less pro-ready than Bills quarterback Josh Allen who went to *checks notes* the University of Wyoming. He struggled heavily with processing speed and was abhorrent in the two-minute drill whenever he got the opportunity in 2019.

It’s time to stop making excuses for Josh Rosen and come to accept the fact that he’s not an NFL quarterback. No one cares that he’s young. No one cares how “bad his first two situations” were. Ask Matthew Stafford about bad situations. Finally, he was not “screwed” by the Cardinals. He was an objectively bad football player for them and Kyler Murray, a future superstar in this league, was too tantalizing a prospect to pass up.

With no preseason to showcase him, it would be hard for Miami to move Rosen. His abysmal start to his career has significantly lowered his trade value. The Dolphins would have to either wait until next August to trade him after he has a preseason or selfishly hopes for another team to lose a quarterback and become desperate. As of right now, he serves virtually no purpose on the roster. And no, the Dolphins do not need “insurance for Tua”, but that is a whole different can of worms for another day.

If Rosen is smart, and by all accounts, he appears to be very smart, he needs to stop talking about his “next opportunity” and do everything he can to convince the Dolphins he can be a long term backup. Ask Matt Moore how great that job is. Moore was able to create generational wealth for his family, have access to NFL training facilities to stay in shape, secure an NFL pension, and did not play more than two or three regular-season snaps from 2012 to 2016. Now he has a Super Bowl ring. It’s not a bad gig.