With the NFL Trade Deadline now in our rearview mirror, it’s clear that Washington’s former starting quarterback Dwayne Haskins isn’t likely to be switching teams any time soon. After being benched before the fifth game of the season, the former first-round pick was thought to have his career in Washington ripped away from him, with a lot of people thinking that he would likely not get another shot to play until finding a new team.
According to head coach Ron Rivera, that isn’t exactly the case.
“It’s funny, I benched the guy and it’s like everybody thinks his career is over here in Washington. It’s not. There’s potential, there’s opportunity. The kid has an NFL arm, it’s just a matter of him developing,” Rivera said this week on The Rich Eisen Show.
Whether that opportunity will come this season or next is yet to be seen, but it’s clear that Rivera still has some belief in the young QB, which he said was “probably somewhere in the 70s.”
So what does this mean going forward? It’s hard to tell, but it’s starting to feel a bit like Washington could go back to Haskins as the QB1 to start the 2021 season, or involve him in the quarterback competition at the very least. With the team making a run at the NFC East division title this year, it would seem that they’ll be out of the running for a top quarterback in the NFL draft, and there may not be many players on the open market that they wish to sign and hand over the keys to. So is there a chance that between now and then, Haskins is able to develop enough to turn into the QB1 that everyone hoped he would be? Of course, it’s possible, but as Rivera has said repeatedly…
“He’s got a lot to learn.”
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