I've read several scouting reports on him the past couple of days. From what I've read, there seems to be a consensus that he has an extremely high football IQ. He has great mechanics and footwork and is an adequate athlete. The knocks on him were that he gets into trouble by taking too many risks. His character concerns were from his first couple of years in college, but that he had matured towards the end of college and he handled his first year in Arizona well despite the team and the offensive line being atrocious.
Here's a pretty good scouting report from a Giants website written last year.
Josh Rosen: Undeniable talent, but odd lapses ... and nagging questions
In particular, I like this exchange between Trent Dilfer and Bucky Brooks who coached hi at the Elite Eleven.
“Trent, it’s funny that you bring that up about Elite Eleven,” Brooks said. “Because as hard as you were on him, as the overall coach of the Elite Eleven, he was my quarterback on my team, and I came away with the same thing. I thought at the time, at seventeen, he was uncoachable, he wasn’t willing to listen. He was the most talented guy there, but he did the least with that talent because he just wouldn’t humble himself to learn everything.
But like last summer, I had the opportunity to be around him at that Elite Eleven, and he was different. He was humble, he was outgoing, he did things he didn’t show at seventeen. And it really changed the narrative that I had on him, because I wasn’t a big fan. I wasn’t a big fan of his mentality and how he went about it. But after that, I had a better understanding.”
“I think fit is going to be really important for Josh,” Dilfer replies. “I think you’re going to have to have an offensive staff that understands him as a person, and be willing to give him a lot of responsibility, give him a lot of stuff to learn, but behind the scenes, control how much is actually used. Now, I know that sounded vague, but here’s what I learned about Josh, you can’t bring any weaksauce, any day. You’ve got to bring your A-game. He expects you to bring your A-game every single day when you’re coaching him, and he’s going to push back if he feels like you got lazy.
Every Monday, post-game, you have to give him reasons why things happened on Sunday. On Tuesdays when you’re introducing the game plan to him, you are going to have to give him a ‘why’ behind everything. You have to systematically break down why you got to this point, and why this is the plan you’re using to face the next opponent. And then Wednesday morning, the install meetings, there better be why, versus single-high man we’re working one side, and against single-high zone we’re working another side. Why we’re chaning the protection versus this front, and why we’re ID’ing the guy as the MIKE in these fronts, with the safety profiles. He needs to know everything, because that’s the way his mind works.
That’s a good thing, by the way. I think Aaron Rodgers is very similar to that, I think Tom Brady is very similar to that. That you have to give them everything that you have, because they’re giving everything they have every single day, also. I think that’s how it plays off.
Now, if he goes somewhere where these coaches are bringing the weaksauce, and they just say ‘Do it because I told you to,’ watch out, because you might have seventeen-year old Josh resurface.”
I'm talking myself into wanting the Pats to trade for him. I want a QB who is smart and can learn the Patriots offense which is the most complicated in the league. Learning from Brady and McDaniels for a couple of seasons would be ideal. It sounds like Rosen has the intelligence to do that. And how else are we going to get a QB with his potential.
