Was Josh Rosen personally bad for the Arizona Cardinals in 2018? Or was his entire situation to blame for his struggles?

Is Josh Rosen a good quarterback? Better yet – Does Josh Rosen have the potential to be a good quarterback? After just one season in the NFL, it sounds like the Cardinals are ready to write him off.

They drafted Rosen with the tenth-overall pick in 2018, and now there’s a possibility that they could take Kyler Murray with the number one pick in 2019, leaving Rosen available for a trade at some point.

Ask the standard fan, and they will tell you that Rosen was terrible. A 3-10 record, with 11 touchdowns and 14 interceptions, resulting in a passer rating of 66.7. Not good at all. However, let’s not sit here and pretend like Rosen was the root of all the Cardinals problems

First of all, the Cardinals don’t have much talent in the passing game, outside of Larry Fitzgerald. Knowing that defenses can shift their primary focus to Fitz, who’s now limited to slot at this point in his career, they don’t need to worry about a threat elsewhere.

The Cardinals have a solid running back in David Johnson, but their offensive line isn’t exactly the strongest in the NFL as well. Not to mention, their head coach was fired after one season. So how can their abysmal season get pinned on a rookie quarterback?

Was Rosen as bad in the passing game as many make him out to be? Let’s check in with the guys over at Pro Football Focus to see how Rosen’s game was last year when things were going well in the trenches.

How did Rosen do with a Clean Pocket?

The highest passer rating from a clean pocket among rookie QBs belongs to Baker Mayfield pic.twitter.com/A2BEbpWmFX

— PFF (@PFF) March 4, 2019

As it turns out, Rosen did a solid job with a clean pocket. Granted, most quarterbacks should since nothing is ever perfect in the NFL, but this just proves that all of the offensive woes shouldn’t be pinned on the young and inexperienced passer who was thrown into the fire after the season had already begun.

Now that we got that out of the way though – let’s take a moment to realize that while 80.9 is not bad, it’s not exactly great either. Again, a lot of this can be pinned on the lack of threats the Cardinals are stocked with, but a low rating like that with a clean pocket does call for some concern.

Is Rosen’s first year struggles enough to give up on him early? Not exactly. While it makes sense that the head coach prefers one guy over the other, the Cardinals should stick to the guy that they have committed to, and upgrade in other areas. Backtracking on their initial franchise quarterback pick could just land the Cardinals two steps back at this point.

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