Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1545675
8 0 A U G U S T 2 0 2 6 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M / / / / / / / 2 0 2 6 F O O T B A L L P R E V I E W / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / C ristiano Rosa figured his college football career was over. He hadn't just been thinking about walking away from the game. He had gone ahead and done it. A muscle strain had ended Rosa's fresh- man season at Central Connecticut State after just one game. Months later, his leg still wasn't feeling any better. With the Blue Devils having scuffled to a 2-9 fin- ish, the young placekicker found himself wondering whether he even wanted to attempt a comeback. Maybe he'd be bet- ter off giving up the sport and focusing on school. When Rosa returned to campus for his sophomore year, that's exactly what he did. The former first-team all-state spe- cialist from Shelton (Conn.) High enrolled as a regular student in 2023, believing he had no more football left in him. Rosa had good reason to feel that way. A few months after suffering his muscle strain, the team's medical personnel de- cided they needed to take a closer look since he wasn't healing as expected. That's when they discovered what had really happened. Rosa hadn't just pulled a muscle — his hip flexor had been ripped almost entirely off the bone. "It wasn't a full tear, but it had torn off most of the way," he recalled. "At first, they thought it was just a strain, but then through months of me not even really get- ting close to coming back, we knew we had to take a deep dive into what's really going on here. I did that, and then I medi- cally retired after my freshman year." That might have seemed like a defini- tive ending, but instead it turned out to be merely an unplanned detour, one that ultimately led him to Penn State, where he heads into his redshirt senior season as the potential successor to Gabriel Nwosu as the Nittany Lions' kickoff specialist. Looking Elsewhere It took so long to figure out what was wrong that Rosa didn't have surgery. Over the course of his sophomore year, his leg began to feel better, so he started kicking again. After the 2023 season, he transferred to James Madison with a plan to focus on kickoffs. Over the next two seasons, he played in 27 games for the Dukes. In his first year, he averaged 63.9 yards on his 69 kickoffs, 52 of which (75.4 percent) were not returned. Last season, playing for a team that scored 37.1 points per game to rank ninth in the FBS, he averaged 63.0 yards, with 62 touchbacks on 90 kickoffs (68.9 per- cent). He had 9 touchbacks in a single game, a 63-27 win over Old Dominion in October. After the season, which ended with 51-34 loss to Oregon in the first round of the College Football Playoff, Dukes coach Bob Chesney headed to UCLA. Rosa gave some thought to following him, but the Bruins were bringing back a talented all- purpose kicker in Mateen Bhaghani. "They didn't really have a need for my skill set because they already had some- one else who could do that," Rosa said. "That led to me looking elsewhere." One of the places he looked was Penn State. Nwosu had just wrapped up his ca- reer after three-plus years spent largely neutralizing opposing kickoff return- ers; only 42.3 of his career kick- offs were returned, and the Lions didn't surrender any touchdowns in the kicking game during that span. PSU's special teams coordinator, Jus- tin Lustig, saw Rosa as someone who could compete with redshirt freshman returnee Matthew Parker for the job. "Gabe obviously did so much for us last year, and we wanted to solidify that spot," Lustig said. "But we also feel like we've got depth there. Matthew Parker is a guy who could handle the kickoff role as well, so he'll be challenging for that spot, too." Trials And Tribulations Rosa had other opportunities in the portal. He could have gone to a program where he might have been able to do the placekicking as well as handle kickoff duties. He's unlikely to get that chance with the Nittany Lions, given that redshirt junior Ryan Barker is firmly established as the field goal and PAT specialist. But there were other considerations that strongly influenced Rosa's choice. "The opportunity to play at Penn State is once in a lifetime," he said. "It was re- ally hard to turn that down." He'll get one year with the Nittany Lions and will look to end it the same place he ended last year — in the playoff. He had 2 touchbacks W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M Career Reboot A serious injury sent kickoff specialist Cristiano Rosa down a different path M AT T H E R B | M AT T. H E R B @ O N 3 . C O M