It’s hard to say if Jim Mora has hurt Josh Rosen’s stock, boosted it or had no impact on it at all leading up to the NFL Draft, but some comments the former UCLA coach has made about Rosen have not come across as all that flattering.
In his weekly column for The MMQB, Peter King spoke with Mora about some of the quarterbacks in this year’s draft. Naturally, Rosen was part of the discussion. While Mora believes Rosen can be a “franchise-changer,” he also paints him as a player who is not the easiest guy to coach.
“Josh, I think, without a doubt, is the number one quarterback in the draft. He’s a franchise-changer. He’s got the ability to have an immediate impact,” Mora said. “His arm talent, intelligence, and his ability to see the game and diagnose the game is rare. He’d come to the sidelines after a play and it was uncanny — he could right away say exactly why he made every decision.
“He needs to be challenged intellectually so he doesn’t get bored. He’s a millennial. He wants to know why. Millennials, once they know why, they’re good. Josh has a lot of interests in life. If you can hold his concentration level and focus only on football for a few years, he will set the world on fire. He has so much ability, and he’s a really good kid.”
That was probably Mora’s way of challenging Rosen’s future coach more than anything, but some will take it to mean Rosen can lose focus. Mora, if you remember, recently raised some eyebrows when asked which QB he believes should be taken No. 1 overall, so his honest assessment isn’t all that surprising.
