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49ers Sign Josh Rosen

Now the 49ers have two healthy quarterbacks.
Grant Cohn|
49ers Sign Josh Rosen
49ers Sign Josh Rosen

Now the 49ers have two healthy quarterbacks: C.J. Beathard and Josh Rosen.

The 49ers signed Rosen Tuesday off the Tampa Bay Buccaneers practice squad, according to ESPN's Adam Schefter.

The 49ers needed to sign Rosen, because Nick Mullens is out for the year with an elbow injury that could require Tommy John surgery, Jimmy Garoppolo is on Injured Reserve with a high-ankle sprain and Josh Johnson is on the Reserve/COVID-19 List.

That means Rosen will backup Beathard Saturday when the 49ers play the Arizona Cardinals. Which is interesting, because Beathard and Rosen faced each other twice in 2018 when Rosen was the Cardinals quarterback, and Rosen beat Beathard both times.

Rosen is only 23-years old. He was the 10th pick in the 2018 draft, and he went to UCLA, where he threw for 9,340 yards and 59 touchdown passes in three seasons. When he left UCLA, scouts considered him the prototypical pro-style quarterback prospect.

But the league has changed the past few years, and teams want mobile quarterbacks now. And Rosen isn't mobile. He's a pocket passer, and not a particularly good one, it turns out. His career quarterback rating is just 63.5, and he has thrown 12 touchdown passes and 19 interceptions. And so he has played for three teams -- the Cardinals, the Dolphins and the Bucs.

Ideally for the 49ers, he wouldn't have to play for them. They signed him as insurance in case Beathard gets injured. But Beathard certainly might get injured. He's playing behind one of the worst offensive lines in the NFL, an offensive line that already has gotten two quarterbacks injured this season.

Good luck, C.J. 

And be ready, Josh.

Published
Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

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