Washington Football Team: Three keys to Dwayne Haskins’ improvement

No. 1 – Stop staring down his receivers

Despite not throwing a single interception over his previous five starts, Sunday in Cleveland showed Dwayne Haskins’ luck begin to run out in this aspect, and his eyes were a big reason why.

This has been an issue from start No. 1 for Haskins. Whether it be unfamiliarity in the offense, rushing to get the ball off due to inconsistent line play, or a lack of trust in his wideouts, Haskins has struggled immensely with this on the field.

You saw this in games against the Giants where he made his initial debut, and especially in the game against Minnesota in 2019. In what’s been registered as a “trademark” Dwayne Haskins play, a throw to Adrian Peterson in the third quarter through a very small window was almost picked by Eric Kendricks, as he identified quickly that Haskins was going for the check-down. This happens often from the snap of the ball.

Sunday’s game against the Browns saw Dwayne Haskins throw three interceptions, two as a result of this wrongdoing. An issue like this can take your team out of many games and put your offensive coordinators in a bind, forcing them to include various disguises and motions to keep defenses on their heels.

As you see here in these clips provided by The Athletic’s Mark Bullock, Dwayne Haskins’ inability to go through his reads with patience, and his quick trigger to lock onto one target, bit him here.

As you see in these clips, Washington favored matchups against Cleveland’s suspect linebacker crew in the passing game, but linebackers Malcolm Smith and B.J. Goodson ended Sunday’s contests with picks. In both man and zone, Haskins was unable to take advantage of this matchup and gave them a one-way ticket to winning the turnover battle by giving plays away.

This issue also doesn’t let offenses attack mismatches from their skill positions. In the NFL, guys are always a step ahead, and for the ones who aren’t, you attack them until the defensive coordinator finally blinks. Staring down your receivers doesn’t let you take advantage of mediocre coverage linebackers and defensive backs, it plays into their strengths. It gives them an ability to read your offense and know what’s coming.

When you lock onto targets, it immediately makes your offense vanilla, easy to identify, and caps out what you can run throughout a game. Nothing can be run that’s long-developing, and even for the short passing game, it gets to a degree of difficulty that even great quarterbacks would struggle to overcome.

The shallow crossers, the slants, and hook routes all become irrelevant because once the cornerback reads the QB’s eyes, all that’s needed from the DB is an average play on the ball and you have either a pass breakup or a pick.

The level of ineffectiveness and inefficiency from your offense due to staring down receivers is a nightmare many offensive coordinators don’t want to have. But from Dwayne Haskins, at this point, it’s a reality.

If he’s unable to go through his progressions or even stick to the one-read system, and also incapable of deceiving defenses with his eyes and his body, this Scott Turner offense will be running through the mud for the next several weeks.