Miami Dolphins: Benching Josh Rosen renders trade useless

Miami Dolphins head coach has benched Josh Rosen once again in favor of Ryan Fitzpatrick, which makes trading for the youngster ultimately useless.

Josh Rosen needed to see the bench in the Miami Dolphins‘ Week 6 loss to the previously winless Washington Redskins. The second-year quarterback was experiencing one of the worst outings of his career, which is saying something considering his year in Arizona. As such, head coach Brian Flores putting veteran Ryan Fitzpatrick in late was the right move to stop the bleeding.

More importantly, though, it seemed as if the Dolphins were going to make the right move and stick with Rosen as the starter. Flores said as much after dropping to 0-5. Yet, he didn’t stick to his word. On Wednesday, he named Fitzpatrick the Week 7 starter for a matchup against the Buffalo Bills, meaning Rosen heads back to the bench.

Even before the Dolphins entered their full-blown teardown to rebuild phase, they were not going to be a very successful football team. However, I was in favor of the Rosen trade no matter what. They were getting a top-10 pick from the 2018 draft for the price of a late second-round pick. Thus, he was always going to be worth a look.

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Of course, acquiring Rosen came with some caveats. First off, his rookie year with the Cardinals was about as disastrous as possible. Coming out of UCLA, Rosen should not have been thrown into the fire, especially as part of an awful offensive in Arizona. Thus, the Dolphins needed to give him time to develop, kick bad habits and simply progress as a young player.

Flores and Miami seemingly did that early on by naming Fitzpatrick the Week 1 starter. However, the embarrassing losses mounted and they made the move to Rosen. However, the sophomore signal-caller seemed ready to perhaps take a step forward and show some value.

Given the talent around Rosen, no one was expecting him to put up big numbers. But it was about him putting enough good things on film for either the Dolphins to believe in his long-term potential or to make another team believe in that potential so Miami could trade the quarterback at some point.

In benching Rosen at this point, though, that becomes seemingly impossible. The Dolphins clearly don’t believe in him now or for the long term, other teams around the NFL see the situation and recognize what’s happening and, perhaps most of all, Rosen’s confidence gets completely blown to smithereens in the process, thus further stunting his development as a player.

When I was in favor of the Rosen trade, it was with the notion that they had a plan for the young quarterback and how they would handle him moving forward. But it’s become clear that they either have no plan for him or have no faith in him.

No matter which it is, though, it makes the Josh Rosen trade completely useless for the Dolphins. Rather than potentially developing a valuable asset, they’ve wasted an asset to acquire a player that will ultimately serve no purpose in Miami. That’s disappointing for the Dolphins and for Rosen as both are worse for the wear due to how things have played out.