The Washington Football Team has decided that for the time being last year’s first-round pick Dwayne Haskins is no longer suited to be their starting quarterback.
As he did a week ago after making the move, Washington head coach Ron Rivera insists that doesn’t mean he’s given up on Haskins.
“Again, as I said, I have not quit on the kid as far as his development,” Rivera said, via Ethan Cadeaux of NBC Sports Washington. “This is an opportunity for him to continue to learn and grow and develop.”
Haskins made four starts for Washington this season before the team pivoted to Kyle Allen for last week’s game against the Los Angeles Rams. Haskins was inactive for the game due to an illness that has kept him away from the team this week as well and not available to play when Allen was injured. Alex Smith took over for the remainder of last week’s 30-10 loss instead.
Even though Washington is 1-4 through the first five weeks of the season, they find themselves in the thick of the NFC East race because the division is horrendous. The best team so far, the Dallas Cowboys, just lost their starting quarterback for the season in Dak Prescott as well. So a 2020 season that appeared to be a full-on reset for Washington as Rivera tries to patch up the moribund franchise has instead turned to hopes of winning now. For that task, Allen - who was with Rivera in Carolina - appears the preferred option.
“The thing that we’ve done is we’ve looked at where we are and said: ‘Hey, these guys give us a better chance to win right now because they know what we do, they understand the system and they’ve been in the system,’” Rivera said.
But it’s a bit of a raw deal for Haskins in the interim. While he certainly hasn’t seized hold of an opportunity to start as Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson, Justin Herbert and even Gardner Minshew has over the past few seasons, he hasn’t been set up to succeed either. The head coach and front office that drafted him last year are already gone and if Rivera wants to find a new quarterback to tie his tenure to, he’ll likely be given the latitude to do so as Kliff Kingsbury was in Arizona with Kyler Murray.
For now, it means that Rivera will continue to say they believe in the future of Haskins in Washington. Even if doing so is to keep the price tag for a potential trade of Haskins as high as possible.