Browns V.P. of player personnel Alonzo Highsmith had plenty to say on Monday about how the team settled on quarterback Baker Mayfield. Highsmith also shared some insights on why the Browns didn’t settle on quarterback Josh Rosen.
“I was at an airport,” Highsmith said Monday at the Pro Football Hall of Fame Luncheon Club, via the Canton Repository. “UCLA’s volleyball team was in front of me. You heard so much about Rosen. He’s this or that. We all know how people talk.
“So I asked one of the volleyball coaches, ‘What’s Rosen like?’ He said, ‘Aaaa, you should probably ask his girlfriend. She’s one of the players. She’s over there.’
“I’m like, ‘All right coach. That’s good enough.’ . . . I don’t know what all this means, but there was something about him that bothered me.”
Surely, Highsmith based his conclusion on more than an airport encounter with a volleyball coach. The bottom line is that, after Highsmith and the Browns did all the work they needed to do, one o the team’s top executives sensed “something about [Rosen] that bothered [him].”
Maybe, in time, more facts will emerge regarding the basis for Highsmith’s conclusion. For now, the candor regarding Rosen, who was taken 10th overall by the Cardinals, is definitely an eyebrow raiser.