Josh Rosen didn’t exactly get a glowing endorsement from his former college coach when Jim Mora said last week that USC’s Sam Darnold should go to the Cleveland Browns ahead of him.
Mora explained to The MMQB’s Peter King in detail that while he views his former UCLA player as the No. 1 QB in the class with all the tools needed to succeed, he made those comments because he believed Darnold was a better fit for the Browns than Rosen. Moreover, Mora also said that Rosen needs to be “challenged intellectually” by whichever team he ends up on.
“[Rosen] needs to be challenged intellectually so he doesn't get bored,” Mora said of his ex-QB. “He's a millennial. He wants to know why. Millennials, once they know why, they're good. Josh has a lot of interests in life. If you can hold his concentration level and focus only on football for a few years, he will set the world on fire. He has so much ability, and he's a really good kid.”
Rosen is considered by many evaluators as an NFL-ready quarterback with all the requisite physical attributes – arm talent, accuracy, athleticism – to be a franchise-altering player. However, the main knock on him has been on the mental side, with question marks surrounding his make-up as a leader and as a teammate.
Perhaps unintentionally, Mora’s comments may have shed a bit more light into that part of Rosen’s psyche. NFL teams likely aren’t too thrilled to hear that they need to motivate a potential franchise quarterback so that he doesn’t get bored.
Despite those lingering concerns about Rosen, someone will inevitably take a chance on him very early in the draft because the talent is simply undeniable. And if it turns out that Mora is right in terms of needing to challenge Rosen to stave off boredom, then that's a risk they'll just have to take.
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