Taking the leader’s role
Rosier is expecting more out of himself and teammates this season
It’s a story you don’t hear enough in sports. Miami quarterback Malik Rosier, who everyone in Hurricanes camp says is different this summer, feels his game as improved after he realized this winter what a lot of people said was right.
He wasn’t good enough.
So he watched every play from last year, “for any little mistake I made,” he said. He worked on mechanical drills to improve his throwing, mainly studying his footwork.
“He’s more accurate,” receiver Jeff Thomas says. “He’s making passes he couldn’t last year.”
His reading of defenses improved with study. Case in point: Saturday’s intrasquad scrimmage, where he got to the line for what designed as a quick, red-zone play over the middle. He saw no blitz coming and a traffic jam in the middle. He slowed down the offense, changed the play to his outsider receivers.
He threw a touchdown to Lawrence Cager.
“Perfect call, perfect pass,” Cager said. “He wouldn’t have done that a year ago,” quarterback coach Jon Richt said.
It’s his team now. At least, for now it is. This offseason decided that, when no one else charged hard enough at his job. The schedule added to making it an easy decision, with the opener in Dallas against LSU on national television.
That’s not the platform to break out a new, untested quarterback, even if the battle had been closer. Mark Richt, the head coach, made the decision early in the offseason to start Rosier and put it in the simplest, Pygmalion terms.
“Saying Malik is the guy helps Malik be the guy,” he said. “You want him to be the leader. You want him to be the guy in that [opener against LSU]. Everybody knows it’s Malik. Everyone believes it’s Malik.”
Perhaps most of all, Rosier now believes in Rosier. He’s evidently become the leader coaches have encouraged him to be for a while. He’s calling out teammates in a way he didn’t last year.
Rosier laughed. “Yeah, I’ve got loud at times.”
Most every day it’s something. Rosier pointed to the last practice where he yelled at a receiver who didn’t win on a slant across the middle. Jon Richt pointed to a recent practice where the offense ran a staggering 150 plays before working on red-zone offense to finish out — and then looked too tired in the red-zone work.
“He let them have it, said, ‘This is where we’ve win,’ ” Jon Richt said. “That’s what we need from him.”
Linemen talk of this new Rosier. Running backs, too. And, well, if you’re a Miami fan this is welcome news, because college players developing from one year to the next is the most fundamental way for teams to improve.
“Last year, I’d do my job and really didn’t look too much at everyone else,” Rosier said. “Coach Richt has been on me to motivate guys more. I noticed when I got in a huddle and said, ‘We’ve got to score here, let’s go’ — something louder, maybe — that players responded. I just didn’t do it much.
And now?
“Now I’m realizing that, I’m doing it more.”
Rosier won big games with big, game-ending throws last year. He helped Miami out the gates strong. But what he remembers equally as much is the struggles down the stretch that led to a mid-game benching at Pittsburgh. He can joke with Mark Richt about that now.
“He apologizes, and I say, ‘No, I was awful,’ ” Rosier said.
For the first time since 2005, Miami cracked the preseason top 10 in the coaches poll, a team with expectations to match its No. 8 ranking. Get by LSU, and a few small schools await before Florida State. Those two games set up the season.
For it all to work, Rosier has to work. He says he’s ready and improved.
“I know I’ve got to play well for us to win,” he said.
He spent an offseason working toward that. Accuracy. Reading of defenses. Motivating his teammates. It’s a different Rosier, people who have watched him say. On Sept. 2, everyone else gets to see if the kid who realized he wasn’t good enough has become plenty good.