We are roughly two weeks away from finding out if the Arizona Cardinals truly had any intention of ever pairing Kliff Kingsbury with Josh Rosen, and the team’s new head coach continues to have nothing but good things to say about the former UCLA star.
When asked this week if Rosen is the right quarterback to run his Air Raid offense, Kingsbury said Rosen is a “much better player than I was” when the coach ran the offense as the QB at Texas Tech under Mike Leach.
“Josh can move. He can extend plays more than people think,” Kingsbury said, per ESPN’s Josh Weinfuss. “He has a great tennis background, very athletic and you don’t have to be a 4.3 guy [in the 40-yard dash]. You just have to be able to move off the spot, keep your eyes downfield and extend the play enough for those guys to uncover, and when you watch the tape, he does a good job of that.”
Kingsbury went on to insist that there is no specific type of quarterback that fits the Air Raid system best, but many believe Kyler Murray would be perfect for it. There’s no debating that Murray is more athletic than Rosen, though Kingsbury insists a drop-back passer can thrive in the system just as well.
“If he can run it, [then] do things he’s good at running the football. If he’s only a drop-back passer, you better have concepts to get the ball out of his hand, [that] he knows where his reads are and [can] make quick decisions,” the coach explained. “The Air Raid, it has that, I guess, give-and-take in it, where you can make adjustments to it and be effective with different styles of play at that position.”
Even if the Cardinals are set on drafting Murray, they are trying desperately to keep Rosen’s trade value intact. Kingsbury could actually believe that Rosen would be a great fit for his offense, or he could simply be doing his part to maintain leverage in potential trade talks.
Whatever the case, Rosen has made it clear that all the Murray speculation is not going to stop him from working hard this offseason.
