Don't Forget About Josh Rosen Amid Hype Surrounding Sam Darnold, Baker Mayfield

Every rookie quarterback must cope with pressure, expectations, the speed of the NFL game, complex play terminology and a dozen other issues when making his preseason debut.

But most of them can at least count on accurate shotgun snaps from their centers.

Josh Rosen is the least talked-about of the first-round rookie quarterbacks after the opening week of the preseason. That's partly because his 6-of-13, 41-yard stat line isn't the stuff of banner headlines, partly because an Arizona Cardinals rookie is never going to attract the same amount of attention as a New York Jets rookie and partly because Rosen, well, wasn't all that spectacular this past weekend.

But low snap after low snap arriving at his ankles like knuckleballs also had something to do with it. That must have been like having someone kick your computer's power cord out of the wall over and over on your first day of a high-stress office job.

Rosen's snaps were off-target because practice-squad multiposition lineman Daniel Munyer was his center. Rookie Mason Cole is now the Cardinals' starting center, as veteran A.Q. Shipley is on injured reserve with a torn ACL.

No one thinks much about third-string centers as we warm up rookie-quarterback-hype amplifiers in mid-August. We focus on the Baker Mayfield touchdown highlights, followed on Monday by whispers of Browns coaches turning on one another like pirates who just dug up a treasure chest. We literally deify Sam Darnold on the back pages of tabloids after a handful of sharp throws against unknown defenders. We drool over Lamar Jackson jukes, and Josh Allen's transatlantic overthrows get so-bad-they're-good reviews.

Low snaps? Timing issues on progressions? You can't build a television segment around stuff like that. So Rosen is already slipping in the rookie quarterback conversation, just as he slipped on draft day.

You remember draft day, right? Mayfield's reputed personality defects were forgivable, but Rosen's weren't. Darnold's fumbles and mechanical flaws were fixable, but Rosen's were more troublesome. Allen's tendency to bounce passes off sideline equipment was charming, but the number of cars that fit in the Rosen family garage was somehow a scouting point.

Rosen fell to the Cardinals with the 10th overall pick. Among the top-rated quarterbacks, only Jackson fell further, because some evaluators are still holding on to old prejudices from 1978.

Rick Scuteri/Associated Press/Associated Press

Rosen is now exiled to a desert from which little news escapes, taking second-team reps behind Sam Bradford and snaps from a guy who looked on Saturday night like he had never snapped before.

Cardinals head coach Steve Dilks acknowledged the low snaps caused problems with Rosen's progression. It can't be easy reading a defense for the first time while looking down to scoop up a snap that rolled to your feet.

Not that we should lay all of the blame for Rosen's lackluster debut on that poor third-string center. And Rosen, who is still peeling that predraft "bad teammate" label off his jersey, didn't point fingers at the shoestring snaps.

"I think what makes you a good quarterback is the resolve to not let the little things phase you like that," he told reporters after the game. "It was no big deal."

"I thought I did some good things, some bad things," Rosen also said, accurately, according to the Arizona Republic's Kent Somers.

Rosen threw a would-be pick-six that bounced off a defender's chest, and the snap on that play was right on the money. "The almost-pick-six goes into the 'bad' category," he said, reported AZCardinals.com's Kyle Odegard.

There were also throws behind receivers and into crowds of defenders, an ill-advised throw to a blanketed receiver while defenders dragged him to the ground and a delay-of-game penalty.

In other words, there was rookie stuff. Mayfield floated some head-scratchers, too. Allen ran around in circles on one fourth-down play before attempting what looked like a sky hook. Jackson's Hall of Fame Game debut was mostly bloopers. And Darnold's Hallelujahs were built on a lot of one-yard dump-offs in the flat.

Rosen delivered a few highlights, too. He deftly sidestepped a pair of pass-rushers to deliver a 20-yard strike to Gabe Holmes. He fired off a near-perfect back-shoulder throw to Greg Little, but the receiver whom the Browns gave up on four years ago couldn't quite get both feet down.

Two highlights and a major lowlight is par for the rookie-debut course. Everything else is usually scrambles, short dump-offs, incompletions that look pretty in the air, slider-in-the-dirt shotgun snaps and either mythmaking or hand-wringing. Rosen is only missing out on the mythmaking/hand-wringing at the moment.

Is that such a bad thing? The messianic billing can't be great for the 21-year-old Darnold, nor can it benefit Mayfield much if his rise becomes an HBO prestige drama about a coaching turf war. Neither Allen nor Jackson are as bad or as good as we make them look, either, when we form-fit their performances to match our opinions of them.

Rosen, branded by the draft-insider sewing circle as too privileged, intellectual, millennial or whatever to fit the NFL culture, could benefit from being as far from the limelight as possible while he goes through his growing pains.

Rosen has taken some first-team reps, and Dilks plans to give him more. That means more opportunities to throw to Larry Fitzgerald instead of guys who were out of the NFL last year. It means taking snaps from Cole, or from whichever veteran center the Cardinals will grab to compete with Cole if Munyer's snaps keep sailing low and away.

Rosen is also behind Bradford, the established NFL starting quarterback most likely to collapse into a cloud of dust by mid-September. The Browns have made keeping Mayfield on the bench their mission statement, the Ravens are still tinkering with the Jackson Wildcat and the Bills are stashing Allen behind a pair of placeholders until he learns to do more than launch Apollo moon rockets. The Jets will probably soon name Darnold their Week 1 starter, and golly, who can imagine that turning into a too-much-too-soon scenario?

That's one more reason not to talk about Rosen: There's no drama in a quarterback competition that will sort itself out naturally the moment Bradford gets hurt. And drama-free preseasons are excellent for quarterback development.

Watch the same few dozen preseason plays over and over again, reread the same coach's quotes and sideline camp reports in search of insight about Rosen or any other young "storyline" player, and you will either: a) pass out from boredom; b) achieve absolute enlightenment; c) decide that some six-yard completion is proof that you have discovered the next John Elway (a combination of "a" and "b"); or d) throw up your hands and scream "It's only preseason!"

Option "d" is the healthy, rationale choice. Yet here we are. It's just human nature, and the nature of being a sports fan, to rank the five first-round rookie quarterbacks against each other, meaningless as those rankings may be.

Rosen ranks fourth or fifth in preseason accomplishments and dead last in attention. But that has almost nothing to do with Rosen and will have no impact on his career or the Cardinals.

Given some accurate snaps and better receivers, Rosen could be Mayfield or Darnold. But that doesn't have much to do with anything, either.

It's only preseason. Feel free to throw up your hands and scream, but don't forget that one of the most intriguing rookie quarterbacks may also be the one you aren't talking about yet.

Mike Tanier covers the NFL for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter: @MikeTanier.