Washington Football Team: Parallels between Ron Rivera and Ted Lasso

Benching a Star

In the show, Lasso has a young star player named Jamie Tartt, who was loaned to the team from another franchise. He was one of the best scorers on the team but was very “me-focused” and it rubbed his teammates the wrong way.

Instead of passing the ball to wide-open teammates during games, he would take the shot himself to get the glory. Not only did this rub the coaches the wrong way, but it was causing division in the locker room.

During a game, after his teammate gets hurt, Tartt doesn’t bother to check on his teammate, which annoys Lasso. In spite of Tartt scoring a goal to tie the score in the game, Lasso decides to bench him to teach him a lesson. The team goes on to win the game without Tartt to pick up their first victory of the season.

The next day at practice, Tartt tells the coach that he can’t practice because he’s injured, but what’s really injured is his ego. Lasso lets him know that it’s fine if he can’t practice during his injury but rails on him in front of the team with a speech inspired by Allen Iverson’s practice rant.

He then has Tartt set up cones for the starters since he is unable to practice. When asked in a press conference if he plans to continue keeping Tartt on the bench, Lasso says, “Well, that depends on Jamie. He knows what we need from him.”

At the next practice, Lasso puts another player, Dani Rojas, in Tartt’s position to further challenge him.

If you don’t see parallels between the Ted Lasso-Jamie Tartt relationship and the Ron Rivera-Dwayne Haskins relationship for the Washington Football Team, you must not be paying attention.

With Haskins, there were reports saying the team was unhappy with his stat bragging after the blowout loss to the Ravens. There were also comments on his preparation in practices and how it translated to the games, which eventually led to Haskins’ benching.

It seemed like Rivera had to make a quarterback change to initiate the disciplined culture he was trying to develop within the team and to prevent losing the locker room.

With Kyle Allen’s injury, it reopens the door for Haskins to potentially get some playing time this season if he’s learned from Rivera’s challenge earlier this season. According to Les Carpenter of The Washington Post, it seems like Haskins is making progress and Rivera is encouraged by his development and happy that he will get to learn from Alex Smith.

"There are signs that things have changed. While Haskins was described as being devastated by the demotion, he began coming to the facility early and doing extra work in the weight room. In recent days, Rivera has said Haskins has worked harder in practice, maximizing reps in drills that the quarterback hadn’t before. This week, the coach seemed happy that Haskins would get to see Smith — a quarterback long regarded as one of the league’s most diligent workers — preparing for games."

If Haskins takes the backup role seriously, he will prove to the coaching staff that he may deserve another look. Rivera has said he hasn’t given up on Haskins and the Washington Football Team didn’t trade him at the deadline, so this will be an interesting situation to watch unfold.