Redskins negligent in situation of rookie quarterback Dwayne Haskins

Where it ends

I wrote after the Giants game that the time to assign Haskins a certain status was not now. And that day will not come for some time. A quarterback never sees out the entirety of his developmental curve in his first year. It sometimes takes several years for a quarterback’s heralded potential to come to fruition. Haskins has franchise potential, but in his current situation, his growth is being stunted.

At this rate, it’s hard to know when the Redskins might start Haskins in 2019, or if they’ll even play him at all. The Dolphins game would have been a very sensible debut for Haskins, but Washington instead prioritized winning a meaningless game, over the development of their rookie quarterback, in order to win meaningful games in the future. Judging by the franchise’s actions thus far, that trend doesn’t seem likely to end.

And if the Redskins somehow decide to “pull a Rosen”, trade Haskins and draft another quarterback, they’ll just run into the same problems, because they don’t understand what the real problem is.

So where do we go from here? Like many questions asked of the Redskins, there doesn’t appear to be an answer. Not yet. The Redskins current coaching staff hasn’t yet made the necessary accommodations for Haskins, and chances are, they won’t for the rest of the year. In 2020, Dan Snyder and Bruce Allen can choose a better coach for Haskins, if you trust them to do that (I don’t). But by then, Haskins will already be behind a season, and in his second campaign, he’ll still need to adjust to the speed of the NFL.

Dan Snyder’s Redskins have ruined quarterbacks before. That’s not to say that Haskins’ story will end the same way. In this context, one must remember what kind of prospect Haskins was. He was smart, he had arm talent, and he had more than enough traits to succeed in the right situation. But in the wrong situation, he’ll be mismanaged, to the point where he’s rendered a scapegoat for larger, more dire institutional pitfalls.

So far, Washington has proven to be the wrong situation. And there’s only so much time to make it right.