Josh Rosen’s college coach explains why he’s made for Jets
If Jim Mora could pick a team for his former quarterback Josh Rosen to end up with Thursday night in the NFL draft, that team would be wearing green and white.
“I think he’d be a fantastic fit with the Jets,” said Mora, the former UCLA coach who has served as an analyst for the NFL Network on its “Path to the Draft” program.
“Josh is kind of ready to go. You give him the keys to the offense, teach it to him, and then he’s going to master it pretty quickly. He’s that type of kid. I think he’d be a tremendous fit with that coaching staff, with that city. I think it would be a great spot for him.”
Mora will be tuning in to NFL Network on Thursday to see where Rosen winds up. Rosen is considered one of the top quarterbacks in this draft, but has not really been linked to the Browns or Giants (who own the top two picks) in any of the recent mock drafts. The Jets are a different story.
There are people inside the Jets’ organization who like Rosen a lot. Some people around the NFL believe the Jets are debating whether to take Rosen or Oklahoma’s Baker Mayfield with the No. 3 pick. Rosen blew away members of the Jets’ coaching staff with his intelligence. He is viewed by many experts as the most ready quarterback to play immediately.
“I’m hoping that’s where he ends up,” Mora said. “I’m hoping he ends up with the Giants or the Jets. I want to see him go as high as possible, but I think the Jets would be a great place for him.”
Mora said he believes Rosen is cut out for being a quarterback in New York. When he said this a month ago and said Sam Darnold was a better fit for Cleveland, it caused a stir. But Mora said he did not mean that as a negative. He just believes New York fits Rosen.
“He’s incredibly smart,” Mora said. “He can handle a lot of volume. He can handle being the quarterback of an NFL team in New York City with that type of scrutiny. He can handle the workload that comes with being a quarterback in the NFL. He’s been here in Los Angeles. I don’t know which one is the larger media market, but they’re both certainly very big and very prominent. He’s been under the microscope for a long time. He’s been highly scrutinized since high school. It’s nothing new.”
Mora spent three years with Rosen at UCLA. He said some of the pre-draft criticism of Rosen has been baffling to him.
“When these people question his love of football, it bothers me,” Mora said. “He loves to play football. He loves to play the game of football. He’s committed to it. He showed me that every single day. He’s incredibly competitive. He always has been incredibly competitive at everything.”
A statement Mora made to Sports Illustrated about Rosen needing to be intellectually challenged also caused waves. Again, Mora said he believes it is a positive that Rosen is always asking, “Why?”
“This is a guy that if [Jets offensive coordinator] Jeremy Bates teaches him a play, Josh isn’t just going to sit there and take notes and say, ‘OK, this is the play.’ He’s going to say, ‘OK, why are we running this? What do you want me to do with this? What are we trying to get out of this?’ ” Mora said. “He’s going to dive real deep so he has a great understanding of the concepts so that he can go out and perform to the best of his ability and help his team win.
“He’s inquisitive because he wants to be great.”
As for some of the incidents Rosen had in college, Mora said they have been overblown, like when Rosen had a hot tub in his dorm room as a freshman. When Mora asked Rosen what he was thinking, Rosen told him that he looked through the school’s code and there was nothing about a hot tub being prohibited from dorm rooms.
“The hot tub … I thought was brilliant, to be quite frank,” Mora said. “Remember that he was an 18-year-old freshman. Let’s cut him a little slack here.”
When Rosen wore a hat with an expletive about Donald Trump and put a photo of it on social media when Trump was running for president, it took off.
“I doubt that he knew it was going to be such a big deal,” Mora said. “He does have opinions and he’s not afraid to tell people what he thinks, but I don’t hold that against him in any way. He was a young guy going through a growing process, maturing like all our kids do.”
If you ask Mora, NFL teams have nothing to worry about with Rosen.
“People are making up some negatives,” Mora said. “There really aren’t negatives.”