Washington Football Team: Final roster projection before cut day

Quarterbacks (2)

Dwayne Haskins, Kyle Allen

This position group comes with one big question mark. Is Alex Smith going to be healthy enough to start the season on the active roster? He has been removed from the PUP list, so Washington has only two choices with him now.

First, they can decide to stash him on IR. This would either afford him an opportunity to continue to recover before resuming his comeback ahead of the 2021 season or it would give him a chance to return to the roster midway through the year.

The second option is to keep him on the roster and leave him inactive until he can officially return to the field.

At the point, both options seem possible, and it truly is unclear which path that Washington will take. Smith has made remarkable strides in his comeback and recently worked in 11-on-11 drills, so I think he’ll have a chance to make the team. But if the team is stuck making a difficult roster decision, I think Smith will end up on IR and he can continue to work his way back from there.

It wouldn’t surprise me if Washington decides to keep Smith on the active roster to give him more practice reps and have him around to mentor Haskins and Allen, who are certainly roster locks at this point. For now though, it seems more likely that the team would try to stash him and use the available roster spot to carry more depth at a position of need.