Sage Thoughts

It was barely a blip on the football screen but quarterback Sage Rosenfels announced his retirement from the NFL. No big press conference or team announcement. Instead, Rosenfels announced that he was calling it quits on facebook. That's what happens when you have only twelve starts over a ten-year career. He had a nice little NFL career but certainly not the career that he envisioned.

After starting for two years at Iowa St., Sage Rosenfels was a fourth round pick of the Washington Redskins in the 2001 NFL Draft. He spent his rookie season carrying a clipboard. The Miami Dolphins traded a seventh round pick for Rosenfels just before the 2002 season. Then Dolphins VP of Player Personnel, Rick Spielman, clearly saw something in the quarterback. Their paths would cross again. And again. This four-year stretch with the Dolphins would be Rosenfels' longest with one team. He signed with the Houston Texans as an unrestricted free agent in 2006. He finally got his chance in 2007 when Texans starting quarterback Matt Schaub was injured. Rosenfels led the Texans to a 4-1 record for his five games as the starter. It took Schaub the remaining eleven games to match that win total. Still, Rosenfels remained a backup. He was back on the bench in Houston for the 2008 season. As VP of Player Personnel for the Minnesota Vikings in February 2009, Rick Spielman traded a fourth round pick to the Texans for Rosenfels. The quarterback was finally going to get his chance to start. Rosenfels and Tarvaris Jackson were going to compete for the Vikings quarterback job. That plan was blown up six months later when Vikings head coach Brad Childress brought in Brett Favre. There, of course, was no quarterback competition after that. Suddenly, Rosenfels was third string again. A year later, he was traded to the New York Giants to be the backup to Eli Manning. He kept that gig for about a year. Considering Rosenfels' football luck it should be no surprise that the Giants released him in October of the year, 2011, that they would eventually win the Super Bowl. He was without a team for only a couple of days before the Dolphins brought him back to Miami. The Dolphins released him two months later. Rick Spielman brought him back to the Vikings before the end of the 2011 season. Rosenfels started the 2011 season with the eventual Super Bowl champion and ended the season with a 3-13 team. Nice. He was with the Vikings through their 2012 training camp but was released before the season started. He hasn't played with an NFL team since. So, his retirement now comes at no surprise.

That's the bouncy career of Sage Rosenfels in one paragraph. It leaves out a lot. When he actually got a chance to play, Rosenfels was a terrific quarterback. I really have no idea why he never started for the Dolphins during his first stop with the team. Gus Frerotte was the starter for a part of that time so it wasn't like the team had some great thrower standing in the way. He was never going to get a chance to start in Houston with Schaub entrenched there. Rosenfels outplayed Schaub in 2007 and it made no difference. I really thought that he'd be the Vikings starter in 2009 and I was actually pretty excited about it. That all changed with the entrance of Favre. It's impossible to dispute that move as the Vikings had a terrific 2009 season. That season just epitomized the career of Rosenfels. He was so close to finally starting but was sent to the bench again. It's true of all positions but most of all quarterbacks that some players are simply pegged as backups. Nothing that they do will change the opinion of the decision makers that they can be an every down player. They really need someone like Bill Walsh to believe in them. Walsh comes to mind because I don't think that he ever gave a shit about what others might think of a player. If he saw something, he'd give that player a shot. Rosenfels needed someone to believe in him as a starting quarterback. The only person that really seemed to believe in Sage Rosenfels was Rick Spielman. Unfortunately for Rosenfels, Spielman was never the one to decide on the starting quarterback. Personally, I think that Rosenfels showed enough to deserve the shot that he never got.

Fortunately, Rosenfels seems to view his career with grace. He must think about what his career could have been but he doesn't seem bitter. There's a lot of luck in a football career. Being in the right place at the right time often plays as much of a role as football talent. I liked Sage Rosenfels and I wish that he had gotten the shot that he deserved.