ESPN’s announcing team for Saturday’s UCLA-Washington game raised questions about Josh Rosen’s toughness and leadership after the Bruins quarterback exited the game in the third quarter.
Rosen got hurt in the middle of the third quarter and went to the locker room with what the announcers said was a finger injury. He was replaced by Devon Modster. When he emerged from the locker room in the fourth quarter, he was in street clothes.
After the game, UCLA head coach Jim Mora offered little about the nature of Rosen’s injury.
Jim Mora on Josh Rosen: "He took some hits and he’s beat up. It’s multiple things going on."
— Ben Bolch (@latbbolch) October 28, 2017
The uncertainty surrounding his situation didn’t stop ESPN’s announcing team of Brock Huard and Bob Wischusen from questioning Rosen’s toughness. They brought up examples of other quarterbacks who have played hurt and said NFL scouts and teams would wonder about how tough the QB is if he was sidelined by a finger injury.
As if that weren’t rough enough on the QB, sideline reporter Allison Williams joined in a few minutes later by questioning Rosen’s leadership.
“I’ve been watching him down on the sidelines, and I gotta say I did not like how he responded as things went south,” Williams said during a fourth quarter report while UCLA was trailing 37-16. “At the beginning of the game he was engaged, he was asking a lot of questions, which is his trademark. And then as he started to struggle, he got quiet. And the one thing I noticed: When things weren’t going well, it wasn’t him going up to his teammates saying, ‘Hey, we’re going to be alright.’ It was his teammates going up to him saying, ‘Hey, are we going to be alright?’
“I just thought it was interesting, when things got tough, the way he got quiet.”
Rosen had by far his least productive passing game of the season, going 12 of 21 for 93 yards and a touchdown in the game. The junior is in the mix to be the first quarterback drafted if he chooses to leave school. There have been a lot of questions about his character considering some of his actions, such as his comments about school and football, his hot tub incident, and his Trump hat, among other things. On top of all that, now he has TV announcers editorializing and being critical of him too.
