I will preface this with I'm putting a very low chance of using an early round pick on a QB, but if it were my team to run I would be exploring it.
Even though I have been putting all of my hope on Rosen to hit the ground running and making the case for him being a franchise level QB, I did not have high hopes for him even being decent in the NFL, let alone great. I was not excited about him as the choice for QBOTF, but since it was made to seem like it was almost a free-roll, there was really only upside, why not? Taking a chance is better than sitting on your hands.
He flashed in preseason, which is really means nothing in retrospect, but at the time gets your hopes up. He flashed in a couple of the early starts, but it only seemed better than it was due to the ineptitude of the offense until that point. Overall, he has played really poorly.
But there are reasons to give him an out...
- His rookie year... there have been QBs with bad rookie years that turned it around the next.
- Bad coaching... don't need to explain this.
- Oline isn't very good... don't need to explain this either.
I don't think any of those individually are big enough to excuse his play. A rookie should get better, not worse as the year goes on. Bad coaching has little to do with the turn overs, missed throws, holding the ball too long, bad reads or missed opportunities. The oline isn't great, but there are QBs (even rookies) getting pressured nearly as often that are playing well. Palmer had a worse oline, so let's not pretend like Rosen doesn't have an oline blocking for him. Making plays under pressure is what separates good QBs from bad ones. Anyone can be a franchise QB against air.
If some think the culmination of all of those is a good enough to reason to bank on next year being a turnaround for Rosen I won't fault you at all, because there is precedent for it to happen. I just personally put the odds at being long. New coach, new players, new plays... I don't think it is going to take him from worst QB to top 16.
If you recall, everyone basically argued that this was a gimme with the way the pick worked out, so even if he didn't work out it was no big loss. I feel like some have morphed a free-roll into the idea he has to work out, he's our only chance, we've got so much invested and he just has to be the QBOTF no matter what happens.
I'm of the mindset that we need hedge our bet on Rosen and not after two or three seasons... we need to hedge that bet for next season. To what degree I think depends on how certain you are he will or won't succeed.
I haven't dug into the draft enough to know if it makes sense to *me* to trade down and be able to use the extra picks to take a early QB or use our high pick on a DL or OL player and take a value QB late. I know if I could have my cake and eat it too it would be that Haskins wasn't projected so high that we could get a good situation to be able to get what we needed early and pick him up in the 2nd round. That guy has been dropping dimes in tight coverage from his very first snap with rarely making a mistake or bad read. He's on a whole next level and is a pure passer with a quick release and NFL arm strength.
Anyone else thinking we should draft a QB, and what part of the draft and/or who are you interested in?
