Dwayne Haskins’ fall from grace is one of the most precipitous in NFL history. Less than two full years after he was selected 15th overall in the 2019 draft by the then-Washington Redskins, Haskins was released by the now-Washington Football Team due to a multitude of factors — mostly his sub-par performances, and relative inability to get with the program in a mental or motivational sense. To put this in perspective, Haskins played in 16 total games for his first NFL team, while Ryan Leaf and JaMarcus Russell, generally considered to be the two worst quarterback busts in NFL history, managed to hang on with the Chargers and Raiders for 21 and 31 respectively, while Haskins could manage just 16 before the plug was pulled.
It’s not surprising, though, that the Steelers gave Haskins another shot at the NFL by signing him to a one-year deal on Thursday. It’s common for other teams and other coaches to take shots on first-round picks, even if they haven’t proven themselves to be first-round talents.
The Steelers are a team in serious flux on offense. Ben Roethlisberger did not have a great season in 2020 for the most part, and the “dead arm” narrative proves out on tape 90% of the time. After the firing of Randy Fichtner, a longtime Roethlisberger confidante, the team currently has no offensive coordinator in name. Per OverTheCap.com, Pittsburgh has a salary cap shortfall of minus -$34,011,664 coming into the 2021 league year, which means that a whole lot of decisions will have to be made, and there will be precious little room to do anything to improve the offense in free agency.
So, in the short term, whether Haskins is a bona fide rehabilitation project isn’t the biggest thing on the to-do lists of general manager Kevin Colbert or head coach Mike Tomlin. But in the long term, here’s how whoever’s running the offense can at least mitigate the on-field damage Haskins has done to himself and others in his brief NFL career.