Rosier finished the game 15-of-34 for 187 yards and two touchdowns. The offense struggled to find a rhythm and Rosier was pulled from the game with ten minutes remaining in the fourth quarter.
“A lot of it starts with me,” Rosier said. “I missed multiple receivers and that is something I have to fix and have thick skin. It can’t happen next week. The big thing is to just learn from this experience. There are multiple times where we play lackadaisical in the first half and in the second half we come out and explode. That just didn’t happen this week. That is something I have to fix and motivate those guys in the first half so that the second half doesn’t have to be a miracle.”
When Rosier was pulled from the game, he admits he wasn’t surprised.
“I knew that if I kept making mistakes, I was going to get pulled,” Rosier said. “He wound up pulling me. I felt like it was one of those moments as a starter where I haven’t lost yet and I guess I got complacent. I was just out there to be out there. I was just going through my reads and not dialing in and focusing on every snap. After that, it put the football game in perspective that at any moment I could get pulled.”
Even though Rosier knew his poor play could lead to him getting benched, the quarterback admits that the move still hurt when he had to watch Evan Shirreffs lead the offense for a drive with the Hurricanes down 17-7.
“It hurts,” Rosier said. “I had a lot of guys walk up to me and tell me that I was fine. It was hard not to get emotional because these were the guys that I had been with for four years now. The fact that I got pulled put football in perspective for me.”
After Shirreffs went 0-for-2 and took a sack, Rosier asked if he could go back in as the quarterback to try and engineer a comeback.
“[Coach Richt] pulled me, then he said we are going to put you back in, and then he said no we are going to keep Evan in, and after the first drive that Evan had, I came up to him and told him I wanted a chance to lead this team back,” Rosier said. “These are my guys and he told me that I would have to wait until next week. Later on, he put me back in…That was big. Once Richt told me that I could go back in, I knew that they still had trust in me and still had faith in me. That was big.”
When Rosier came back into the game as the quarterback, he led the Hurricanes a two play, 66-yard touchdown drive that took 41-seconds and cut into Pittsburgh’s lead, 24-14.
“That drive is how the whole game should have been,” Rosier said. “[Pitt] didn’t really mix their coverages and throughout the game, I didn’t hit the open receivers. We can’t wait that long to drive down the field, especially against a team like Clemson. They are a great defense and they are not going to give you those opportunities.”
Following the game, Richt tweeted that Rosier would be the starting quarterback in the ACC Championship Game against Clemson. Rosier believes that the Clemson game can serve as a wake up call for himself and the rest of the offense.
“This week, I have to push the tempo and talk more to the guys,” Rosier said. “If we have dropped balls, I have to tell them hey, lets repeat the play. I have to take charge and take control of this team. If I don’t, we might have the same result and that would be bad.”