A UCLA quarterback who stunk as a rookie.
Now, does he have excuses? Absolutely. As Bill Barnwell wrote, Rosen faced some pretty rough circumstances last year, particularly when it came to his offensive line.
Other rookie quarterbacks have started their careers behind porous offensive lines, of course, but not to this extreme. By the end of last season, the Cardinals had lost all five of their starting linemen to injuries. During the second half of 2018, the five linemen who took snaps most frequently protecting Rosen included a pair of rookies (third-rounder Mason Cole and seventh-rounder Korey Cunningham), a player signed off Minnesota’s practice squad (Colby Gossett) and a pair of veterans who were cut by teams and almost immediately stepped off the street and into Arizona’s starting lineup (Oday Aboushi and Joe Barksdale). It’s one thing to have a relatively untalented line, but the Cardinals were starting guys who barely knew the playbook at times.
Now, given that we know Rosen was terrible as a rookie, how likely is he to still turn out to be a good quarterback?
The Eight That Turned It Around
Since 1967, there have been 8 quarterbacks who were drafted in the first round, played more than a handful of snaps as a rookie, were very bad, and then one day became a good quarterback.
They are: Terry Bradshaw, Troy Aikman, Eli Manning, Matthew Stafford, Jared Goff, Donovan McNabb, Bert Jones, and Alex Smith.
All 8 quarterbacks had era-adjusted passer ratings of under 50 as a rookie; they averaged a collective 39.1 era-adjusted passer rating, slightly worse than what Rosen (40.5) averaged in 2018. All 8 quarterbacks finished at least 2.00 ANY/A worse than average; collectively, they were 3.07 ANY/A worse than league average, slightly worse than Rosen’s -2.79 RANY/A in 2018. [continue reading…]
