Column: UCLA’s Josh Rosen proves he’s tough enough to succeed without the stats
Bruins quarterback Josh Rosen delivers a pass under pressure from Utes defensive linemen Viliseni Fauonuku in the first half Saturday.
A season rescued, a potential Rose Bowl berth saved, the UCLA football players danced joyously through the impending darkness.
All but the one who led them there.
As the Bruins rolled past their small group of shivering, chanting fans toward the visitor’s locker room after a 17-9 victory over Utah at Rice-Eccles Stadium on Saturday, one weary figure stood out.
It was Josh Rosen, and he wasn’t running, he was walking, slowly, alone, using seemingly every ounce of effort to hold his gold helmet in his right hand, raise that helmet halfway into the air, and pump it twice.
“You take shots, you get up, you keep playing,” he would say later, shrugging, as if it were nothing, on a day when it was everything.
The Utes flattened him enough to take away his breath, yet he used his arm to do the same to them. The Utes chased him from midfield into the Wasatch Mountains, yet he rumbled back down with a vengeance.
“It’s crazy to see,” said receiver Jordan Payton. “And from the stands it’s probably better.”
It’s a sight, all right, one that becomes more of a spectacle by the week, and now, of all the platitudes showered on this immensely gifted freshman quarterback, one can officially add this: The kid is tough.
He was tough enough to convert a third-down pass while getting hammered en route to leading UCLA to a touchdown on its first possession. He was tough enough to hang in there after crumpling beneath another gut slap during their ensuing field-goal drive. Then, in the third quarter, with UCLA desperate for a statement, he was tough enough to endure another third-down hit and convert another pass and lead the Bruins to their final and clinching touchdown.
“Yeah,” said center Jake Brendel. “Just a real tough kid.”
The trait was never more apparent than Saturday when, playing against the Pac-12’s most gifted defensive line, a desperate group with their season also on the brink, Rosen showed he can succeed without the stats.
His numbers weren’t great, but his leadership was flawless. He didn’t make every big play, but he survived every big moment. He spent great quantities of time on the cold ground, but in the end, even solitary and shuffling, he walked off upright with a win in the biggest game of his minutes-long career.
“The next one will be bigger, and the next one bigger, and the next one bigger,” he protested afterward.
Let’s see, for all those game to indeed increase in size, the Bruins would have to beat USC next week, then win a likely rematch with Stanford in the Pac-12 championship game in two weeks, then actually play in the Rose Bowl?
For all the Bruins’ stumbles this season, for all the defensive letdowns, for all the disillusionment, it is Rosen’s presence that can still allow them to dream. He led UCLA to all the points it needed during their best defensive game of the season against an injury-wracked Utah team, and now he stands as the biggest reason they can beat a more talented team at USC.
The Bruins have Josh Rosen, and the Trojans do not.
USC was probably quietly celebrating Saturday that UCLA also kept the Trojans’ Pac-12 title hopes alive with the win that eliminated Utah … but only long enough to dread having to face him after their defense allowing six touchdown passes to Oregon’s Vernon Adams Jr. on Saturday.
“I don’t think anybody thinks a freshman can do the things he’s doing,” said Payton.
He only completed half of his 30 passes, his second-worst percentage of the season. But that doesn’t reveal how he shrugged off several earlier hits to throw a perfect opening 28-yard touchdown pass to Thomas Duarte over two Utah defenders. And oh yeah, he still hasn’t thrown a pass for an interception since the middle of October.
“He has a gift, he can pinpoint the ball wherever he wants it, whether he gets hit or not,” said Payton.
He only threw for 220 yards, also his second-worst output of the season, but that doesn’t account for his constant successful audibles and perfect execution of plays that are changed from the sidelines. Just 11 games into his career and already he’s running around behind the line of scrimmage pointing and gesturing and screaming like an NFL veteran. The two key third-down conversions on the Bruins’ first two scoring drives were all on audibles from an 18-year-old kid who is now clearly in charge .
“We give him quite a bit of latitude for a true freshman,” said Mora.
How much latitude? In the Bruins’ cramped locker room at halftime, with his team leading only 10-6, Rosen grabbed a Sharpie and stood at the white greaseboard and diagramed a play adjustment.
“Went up, drew up a play, changed the whole thing,” Payton said with wonder. “He’s definitely not a freshman.”
Rosen also increasingly becoming a veteran in postgame interviews, mixing in bits of brutal honesty with the usual robotic answers of an average freshman. Earlier this season he referred to Oregon State’s defensive tactics as “B.S.” and then last week intimated the UCLA defense had thought the game was over before Washington State’s stunning last-gasp drive.
On Saturday, he questioned someone different, that being himself, claiming he could have stood stronger against the incessant pressure.
“There were some throws I missed because I thought I wussied it out a little bit,” he said. “Sometimes I kind of wimped out. …I’ve got to stand in the pocket, take a licking.”
Wussied? Wimped? Really? But Rosen has already learned to stifle all ego, defer all praise, and hide any aches.
“He’s very hard to fluster, and if he is flustered, he doesn’t show it,” said Mora. “He’s learned how to mask his pain. We talked about it earlier in the year. He took a shot, I sat down by him and told him, ‘In your position, you can’t ever let them know you’re hurting.”’
Rosen said if anything is barking now, it’s not his muscles, it’s his team, who he claimed can “absolutely” beat USC and who he hopes everyone will discount.
“We like it when people doubt us, we have a fighter mentality, we have a lot of dogs on this team, all we want to do is fight,” claimed Rosen.
So says the puppy who has already become their biggest dog of all.
Twitter: @billplaschke
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