We don’t know who is going to pick Joey Bosa in the NFL Draft. We do know two things: It’s probably going to happen in the first five picks, and when selected, Bosa is probably going to shrug.
A history of NFL Draft prospect Joey Bosa’s signature shrug celebration
When Joey Bosa destroys you, he responds with a ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Tommy Gilligan-USA TODAY Sports
This is Bosa’s signature celebration. It’s so famous in the college football world, the dang President of the United States did it when Ohio State visited the White House after their 2015 College Football Playoff win.
The celebration doesn’t have some epic genesis -- “it just happened,” Bosa told Cleveland.com. His sophomore year in an early-season game against Cincinnati, he sacked QB Gunner Kiel for a safety. And then he shrugged. Here is that shrug:
It’s a funny way to react to destroying an offensive lineman and then a quarterback -- “huh, I didn’t know I could do that!” -- and it blew up around him. Soon, Bosa had a reputation to uphold.
“I guess a bunch of people liked it so I feel obliged, like I have to do it every time I get a sack.”
Michael Jordan famously once shrugged after a big bucket against the Blazers, but, surprisingly, the crying basketball man is not the meme person who inspired Bosa.
Bosa said the shrug is modeled after the “little emogi. The little face like that.”
He means this:
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
My favorite part of the shrug emoji is the welp-y facial expression, and I gotta admit, Bosa nails it.
Bosa’s celebration caught on with teammates as well. After Bosa was kicked out of the 2016 Fiesta Bowl, his final game as a Buckeye, fellow top draft prospect Ezekiel Elliott commemorated his ejected teammate with a shrug:
I think the question isn’t so much whether Bosa shrugs, but whether he can get Roger Goodell to shrug with him.
(All photos via USA Today Sports.)
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