Anatomy of a Failure: How to Ruin a Quarterback in 6 Easy Steps
October 14, 2020
by Steve Thomas
The Dwayne Haskins Experience has come to an end for The Team Formerly Known as the Washington Redskins. You shouldn’t believe for a minute any hints from Ron Rivera or anyone else that it’s not over and that if Haskins works hard enough, he could get the starting quarterback job back. Haskins’ time in Washington is at an end; it isn’t going to work out here in DC. How did this happen, though? How did we go from a highly drafted mid-first round pick who was inexperienced but had a load of natural talent and a bright future to third string and on his way out of town in just a year and a half? How does that possibly take place? Well, don’t worry, folks, because I have answers.
Before I get started, please understand that the purpose of this column is not to defend Dwayne Haskins. He’s at fault here too, and he’s responsible for his own actions and results on the field. Maybe Haskins was never good enough. Maybe he doesn’t have the mental fortitude to be an NFL starter. Maybe the unsourced rumors that came out after his benching about his study habits were true. Certainly, him being “ill” for the Rams game was a bad look. This column is not an apology for him or an attempt to absolve him of wrong doing, so relax. The point is that football teams have an obligation to support and try and develop their draft picks, particularly quarterbacks, and Washington has failed to do this time and time again. Without further ado, here’s how to ruin a quarterback in six easy steps:
Step 1: Burn a first round pick on a quarterback for a lame-duck coach
Here’s a pretty good rule of thumb for building an NFL team, in case you’re ever in a position to take on such a task: don’t draft a rookie quarterback in the first round if your current head coach is on his way out. The coach, in this case Jay Gruden, has little motivation to play or even try to develop this young quarterback, and when he leaves, the quarterback then needs to learn a new system from a new coach who may or may not be a fan. The ideal way to do this is to hire the new coach first, then let the new coach find his quarterback, then build the roster around that quarterback’s strengths and weaknesses. Because this is Washington, they did it backwards (again) and put Haskins in a precarious position from day 1. Unsurprisingly, Gruden acted like he didn’t want Haskins around at the beginning of last year and appeared to fail to support or help him in any way. Interim head coach Bill Callahan, who replaced Gruden after his firing after week 5, tried, but ultimately (1) had an offense from 1974, and (2) was gone at the end of the year. This was a bad situation for Haskins from the moment he was drafted.
Step 2: Hire a new coach who isn’t committed to the new quarterback
With the benefit of hindsight, it seems pretty clear that new head coach Ron Rivera was never really sold on Haskins. Sure, he said the right things during the offseason, for the most part, but he also brought in his preferred quarterback from Carolina. That should have been a sign to everyone of Rivera’s true intentions. Washington was stuck with Haskins as “the man” since he was a first round pick, but since they did this head coach – quarterback routine backwards, Haskins wasn’t necessarily “Ron’s guy”, and ultimately proved not to be. I’m not saying hiring Rivera may not be right – my point is that if Rivera wasn’t sure that Haskins could effectively run his offense, then hiring Rivera was another step towards wasting the draft pick. The best thing to do might have been to analyze the quarterbacks strength and weaknesses and design a system around him rather than simply putting him into an existing system. Once again, for the slow people in the back, this doesn’t mean hiring Rivera was a bad idea or that he should be fired; it just means that Rivera’s presence contributed to the problem, not make it better.
Step 3: Take away the workhorse running back who’s been keeping the offense alive
You know what’s the single best thing to help a young and inexperienced quarterback? A running game. You know what Washington had last year? A running game featuring a solid, if aging, workhorse future hall of famer in Adrian Peterson. I realize that Washington’s intent is to promote their rookie, Antonio Gibson (who I like alot), and feature J.D. McKissic in plays favored by Rivera and offensive coordinator Scott Turner in their Carolina days. However, did anyone stop to think that having Peterson reliably getting more than 4 yards per carry for 20 carries a game just might give Haskins the type of security blanket he needed to settle into the job? Apparently not. Instead, we now have perhaps the statistically worst running game in the NFL that’s mostly a liability, not an asset. Cutting their workhorse running back in favor of a rookie with all of 33 collegiate carries took away a security blanket from Haskins that could’ve helped him settle in.
Step 4: Fail to provide a league average offensive line
A whole lot went into Trent Williams’ ultimate departure from the team – a suspect medical diagnosis from the team’s medical staff, an egotistical dumpster fire of a former team president, Williams’ own stubbornness, and other things. However, did anyone stop and think (for the second time) that if Washington was going to bring in a new rookie quarterback, then perhaps the team ought to go all out to convince their elite left tackle to stay? Personally, I doubt it, and I doubt that the former front office ever even tried. By the team Rivera arrived, the damage was already done. Newsflash: young quarterbacks have a better chance if they are protected by a 7x Pro Bowler than if they aren’t. Then, to compound the problem, the team – i.e., Rivera – chose to do nothing to fix the problem except start the 2018 third round disappointment who was already here and draft a guy who fell for character reasons and has been hurt the entire time he’s been here. Failing to provide a decent left tackle creates pressure and doesn’t bode well for the run game. Plenty of competent vets were available in the offseason.
The rest of Washington’s offensive line is a mess as well. Morgan Moses has seemingly made a decent turnaround and has been a solid in unspectacular fixture at right tackle this year, and Chase Roullier is a quality center, but other than that, this offensive line is a hot mess that continually made life more difficult for Haskins. Yes, Haskins contributed to the protection problem somewhat, but ignoring the line’s role in what happened is both disingenuous and incorrect. The lack of talent and protection scheme problems weren’t his fault. This was yet another factor that contributed to Haskins’ downfall.
Step 5: Fail to provide talented receivers
It’s not exactly a revelation for me to suggest that life has been much harder for Dwayne Haskins as a result of a lack of quality pass catchers except for Terry McLaurin. I mentioned the running game above; the same thing applies to the receiver and tight end groups. At no point since Haskins was drafted has the team had even a league average tight end or an impact veteran receiver. This made life much more difficult and certainly didn’t help with Haskins’ growth. In fact, what this situation did is put even more of the burden for offensive success on the quarterback, when the best thing for a young and inexperienced player like Haskins is the opposite – please, team, try to make things easier for him, not harder. The team did try to sign Amari Cooper this past offseason, but when that failed, they made no further effort to try and bring in another, better receiver, or a proven tight end.
Step 6: Impatiently bench the quarterback after just 4 games
I would postulate that if two coaching staffs have noted that a rookie – any player, but particularly a quarterback – isn’t ready to play, then perhaps that player should have sat and learned behind a veteran for a year or two before being handed a starting role. This especially applies to quarterbacks, in particular one who only has one year of collegiate experience. I was fine with Haskins sitting for all of 2019. He got 7 starts last year amidst a turbulent time for the franchise, and then just 4 games for the new guy. How can a career be judged in so few starts? That’s a woefully inadequate period of time to evaluate a quarterback drafted in the first round in the best of circumstances, but particularly one in which said quarterback is already on his third head coach. I’m sorry, but I just don’t accept the idea that Rivera “saw enough” because he was in some zoom meetings with the guy in the offseason and watched him in practice for 2 months. That’s ridiculous. My view of the matter is that Ron Rivera never wanted this kid but agreed to give him the minimum shot necessary in order to satisfy the owner before playing his own guy, Kyle Allen. Rivera has been giving mixed signals about the importance of winning now in the short term, and I don’t buy it.
It didn’t seem to occur to Rivera and his staff that some of Haskins’ problems can actually get better with time – his footwork problems are correctable, and it’s possible that he will start to see the field better as he plays more. Call me crazy, but players can develop and get better.
There are a few examples of quarterbacks drafted in round 1 between 1999 and 2019 (i.e., in the past 20 years) who started 12 or fewer games in the first two years of their careers, but not many. The success stories are Rex Grossman (Bears, 2003), Philip Rivers (Chargers, 2004), and Aaron Rodgers (Packers, 2005). Rivers sat behind future hall of famer Drew Brees and Rodgers sat behind hall of famer Brett Favre. The failures were J.P. Losman (Bills, 2004), Brady Quinn (Browns, 2007), Jake Locker (Titans, 2011), Johnny Manziel (Browns, 2014), and Paxton Lynch (Broncos, 2016). Losman was behind Drew Bledsoe in his rookie year. Chad Pennington (Jets, 2000) is also in this group, but I’ll give him a pass because injuries ruined what could have been a solid career. I’m going to throw Manziel out of this bunch, because he was on drugs, should never have been a first round pick, and was obviously not an NFL-quality player almost from day one. The Giants’ Daniel Jones is the final one. Jones’ stats aren’t much better than Haskins’ stats, but the Giants haven’t even contemplated taking him out. Rivera basically immediately put Haskins in the Losman/Quinn/Locker/Lynch crowd. Just four games and no preseason is an incredibly short period of time to make such a determination. The point is that very, very few highly drafted quarterbacks get as short of a shot as Haskins. Most teams understand that young quarterbacks need time.
I want to reiterate that the point of this column is not to absolve Haskins of responsibility for his failure here. He is responsible for his performance, like everyone. What’s clear to me, though, is that this franchise made success much more difficult for Haskins than it had to be and the result is that yet another draft pick has been wasted. Maybe Kyle Allen is good enough to be the team’s long term starter; it seems unlikely, but now that Haskins is out of the way, he deserves his chance to prove himself. Haskins didn’t need to become the next Peyton Manning in order to be successful – many teams do well with an efficient game manager at the helm. Now we’ll never know whether could have been his destiny. It might not have had to end this way if the team had made better choices, and that’s what is most distressing. History has repeated itself in Washington, again.