Cleveland Browns vice-president of player personnel Alonzo Highsmith has drawn a bizarre connection between the future NFL career of quarterback Josh Rosen and the UCLA women’s volleyball team. Speaking at a Hall of Fame Luncheon Club event on Monday, he shared a story about why the Browns made a controversial decision to choose Oklahoma quarterback Baker Mayfield as the #1 overall selection in last week’s draft. After complementing Mayfield and explaining why he had Mayfield as his top pick rather than Sam Darnold, the consensus best quarterback in the class, he launched into a diatribe against Rosen.
“I was at an airport,” he said. “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, ‘Aaaaa, 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.”
Rosen is dating UCLA rising-senior libero Zana Muno, who led the team in digs-per-set (4.97) last season and ranked 41st nationally in the same category. A year earlier, when she was not the team’s starter at libero, she actually averaged .87 kills-per-set and .38 blocks-per-set as a 5’10” defensive specialist.
Rosen wound up being drafted at #10 by the Arizona Cardinals.
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