Washington Football Team studs and duds from Week 14 win vs. 49ers

Dud No. 1 – Washington Football Team’s quarterback situation

I like to use speculative language sometimes, but I won’t do that on this slide. There’s no sugarcoating the Washington Football Team’s quarterback performance on Sunday. Two quarterbacks played. And both were terrible.

It was clear from the start that Alex Smith was having an off game, after having been steady for the majority of his returning run this season. Smith was inaccurate from the pocket, skittish against pressure, and when plays collapsed, he had no creation ability. Smith left the game at the half, having completed just eight of 19 passes for 57 yards and a pick.

Much-maligned backup quarterback Dwayne Haskins would come in to replace Smith, and he wasn’t much better. The stats were a better reflection on Haskins — he completed seven of 12 passes for 51 yards (Yes, that’s better) — but Haskins didn’t show much diagnostic growth in his first on-field appearance since Week 4.

Haskins’ mentality might have been improved on Sunday, but his play was not. Haskins’ first two throws were solid and crisp, but after that, he devolved back into the mechanical nightmare that had been benched ten weeks earlier. His footwork was frighteningly unpredictable on a down-to-down basis, and he still missed high a number of times, including on one instance that should have been a pick. If fans hadn’t given up on Haskins yet, his lack of tangible progress Sunday could feasibly be a tipping point.

What’s even worse — it didn’t seem like the supporting cast was all that bad. The offensive line didn’t give up constant pressure, and it cleared lanes fairly well in the running game. There weren’t too many egregious drops, and in several cases, pass-catchers bailed out inaccurate passes. The poor performance of the quarterbacks on Sunday was almost solely contingent on the quarterbacks themselves. That’s a big problem.