Neil Rose - The Man Who Fitz Sat Behind At Harvard

Did he see NFL future for Jets quarterback?

- Brian Heyman

Ryan Fitzpatrick began running with the outcome already in hand and the ball along for the ride. Then the quarterback was about to meet up with a defensive back, but he wasn’t about to slide. The QB took on the DB and knocked him out of the game.

“The game was in the bag and he’s fighting for every yard,” said Neil Rose, Fitzpatrick’s teammate at the time. “He puts his head down and shoulders down. It was as if he was doing the hitting and not the defensive back. I still remember being on the sideline and everyone kind of looking at each other after that happened.”

That happened when Fitzpatrick was a freshman at Harvard, a backup quarterback in 2001. Even then, he was making an impression.

Rose was the second-year starter at quarterback, a redshirt junior at the time. In fact, he was on his way to leading the program to its first perfect season in 88 years.

He couldn’t tell then or the next season that Fitzpatrick definitely had the ability to make it in the NFL, let alone last into his 12th season. Fitz- patrick’s freshman year with the Jets in 2015 resulted in a franchise-record 31 touchdown tosses, and he threw three more over the first two games of this season.

But Rose, still the owner of more passing records than any quarterback in Harvard history, could tell during their two seasons as teammates in Cambridge, Mass., that he had a lot going for him. Fitz- patrick then took over in 2003. And in Rose’s eyes, he ultimately put Harvard on the college football map in a whole new way.

“I think one of his legacies is he’s changed the way that young recruits look at Harvard,” said Rose, who went into finance instead of football and has lived on Bainbridge Island in the state of Washington for about the last four years after spending much of his life in Hawaii.