Reports suggest Redskins coach Jay Gruden didn’t want Dwayne Haskins

There had been rumblings that the Redskins had gone against Jay Gruden’s preferences by selecting Dwayne Haskins in the 2019 NFL Draft. Now, those rumblings are growing louder.

Washington Redskins head coach Jay Gruden has been hesitant to commit to his rookie quarterback Dwayne Haskins since the start of training camp. On the team’s first depth chart, Haskins was listed as the No. 3 signal caller. In preseason, despite displaying consistent growth from week to week, he was not given a shot at the starting job. And now, after the team already inserted him into the lineup, Gruden is thinking about taking him back out.

It comes as little surprise that reports are now surfacing, detailing Gruden’s lack of faith in the rookie. Gruden is very particular about the types of quarterbacks he can insert into his schemes, hinting at a lacking adaptability that has doomed his head coaching career. According to several sources, Gruden didn’t view Haskins as the quarterback for his scheme, and opposed his selection in the NFL Draft.

To outsiders, Gruden has perhaps tried to hide this, but according to Les Carpenter of the Washington Post, “a person close to [Dwayne Haskins] said that Haskins has sensed this to be the case”. Pro Football Talk’s Michael David Smith doubled down on the rumors.

It’s been said many times, in many different ways, but it was incredibly negligent, on the part of the Redskins front office, to create a conflict of interest by keeping a lame duck head coach, and hand-picking a quarterback against his input. Turning the page only halfway never works; it simply tears the page, and that is what Washington has done with this botched transition.

As long as Gruden is still the head coach, it seems unlikely that Haskins will see the field, as long as either Colt McCoy or Case Keenum is healthy. There are benefits and negative externalities that come with this. On one hand, Haskins can continue to sit, and avoid the risks of being on the field, in a bad situation, with a temporary scheme. But on the flip side, Haskins will lack the on-field reps needed to develop and adjust to the pace of the game.

Haskins should be the priority of the franchise at this point; they invested a first-round pick in him, and they need to put him in the best position to succeed, so that they can try and get a return on that investment. It’s becoming more and more clear that, simply by keeping Jay Gruden week to week, Washington’s front office is betraying that necessity. And it could lead to more consequences along the way.