Rosen plays it ‘cool’ in his 1st practice
Cardinals quarterback Josh Rosen entered a huddle as a professional football player for the first time Friday, sharing the moment with the 10 other players staring back at him.
“Pretty cool, isn’t it?” Rosen said to his teammates.
The Cardinals opened a three-day minicamp for rookies and other young players, 61 in all, including those attending on a tryout basis.
Numerous mistakes were made, including by Rosen, the 10th overall pick in the draft. He missed some throws, especially early in the two-hour practice, but improved as the practice progressed. Near the end, he completed a pass of 65 yards or so to receiver Christian Kirk, the second-round pick and Rosen’s friend since the two met as high school stars on the football-camp circuit.
“You could tell he probably had some little jitters early on,” coach Steve Wilks said, “and you could see that. He’s so confident, you could see that as he went on with practice. He settled in. The throws were on time. The accuracy was there. Everything that we know about him, you saw later on in practice.”
For instance, in the first session of seven-on-seven, a passing drill against the secondary, Rosen completed just two of four pass attempts. In the second session, he was 4-for-4, including
throwing some juice on a pass that was intentionally thrown low so the receiver could avoid a defender.
“He’s not going to throw it a million miles an hour at you,” Kirk said. “You have to know when to put a touch on it, and he’s good at that.”
Rosen and the other rookies have a massive playbook to learn, and the early challenge for Rosen won’t be just throwing to the open receiver. It will be receiving the play from the offensive coordinator and repeating it in the huddle.
There were no problems with that on Friday.
“The guy is extremely smart,” Wilks said.
Rosen also has been extremely outspoken in recent years, something that allegedly turned off other teams.
The Cardinals trust that Rosen will be smart in what he says in the coming months, and they’re not going to muzzle him, Wilks said.
“I don’t want to try to control him because the kind of person he is has allowed him to be the player he is,” Wilks said. “I like his leadership. As I told you from Day 1, he’s wired a little different, and I like that.”
Rosen insisted he doesn’t dwell on what others think of him. He has an offense to learn and teammates to get to know.
“It’s only hard if you make it hard,” he said of handling perceptions. “If you’re Googling your name every other day ... yeah, you can make it hard for yourself. The only thing that matters now are the guys in the building, and I’m trying to keep it at that.”