Former Washington Husky, Roger Rosengarten is now one of the top lineman for the Baltimore Ravens. As a rookie he is already playing meaningful snaps, logging 19 on Sunday against the Kansas City Chiefs. There are some fans that are already begging for him to start in the upcoming games.
He was a starting offensive lineman for the Washington Huskies the last two seasons and in the final season was an anchor that helped lead UW to the National Title game and his OL unit won the prestigious 2023 Joe Moore Award, for the best offensive line in all of college football.
LT Stanley
— JD (@RavensFanJD) September 9, 2024
LG Vorhees
C Linderbaum
RG Cleveland
RT Rosengarten
We need to try this next week. Raiders DL is tough. Gotta establish run early.
The bottom line is, he's a stud and an amazing offensive lineman with a long NFL career in front of him. For now, though, he's a rookie in his first NFL game.
Rookies often will have a "Welcome to the NFL moment" in which they realize they are playing with the actual best football players on the planet. The strongest and fastest men in the world are on these 32 NFL rosters.
As an offensive lineman, your job is to stop some of the fastest, strongest, and genuinely freakish defensive linemen from man-handling your quarterback. You also have to push these huge human beings forward to allow room for your running back to run.
So the task is ginormous and as a rookie, it's even harder.
Kansas City Chiefs star Chris Jones welcomes former Washington Husky OL Roger Rosengarten to the NFL
Now imagine you're that rookie that now has to go up against the best defensive tackle in the league, on your first NFL snap. Yes, poor Rosengarten, that's exactly what happened to him, and he officially had his "Welcome to the NFL moment."
poor Roger Rosengarten's first NFL snap came against the league's best defensive tackle and it went exactly as well as you'd expect pic.twitter.com/70o9PX33h7
— Christian D'Andrea (@TrainIsland) September 6, 2024
.@mikegolicjr on #Ravens OL: "They're all so green. Poor Rosengarten, Chris Jones came over on his first snap + decided he was going to baptize him in his church..Having mulitple TE formations/a mobile QB/Derrick Henry all help the OL. They have the pieces to make the OL better."
— Glenn Clark (@GlennClarkRadio) September 9, 2024
This is a tough way to start your NFL career but the good news for Rosengarten and for us, his fans, is that he had a pretty impressive debut despite that moment. His other snaps looked a lot more solid, sure there were some green moments and learning opportunities but it's literally all going to get better from here.