Alex Smith out, Dwayne Haskins to start for Washington Football Team vs. Seahawks

Dwayne Haskins will start for the Washington Football Team in wake of Alex Smith’s calf injury.

The Washington Football Team will once again be on to a new starter. Against the Seattle Seahawks, Dwayne Haskins, who began the year as the team’s starting quarterback, will re-enter the starting lineup. He will replace Alex Smith, who is dealing with a leg injury.

Smith suffered a calf strain in his surgically repaired leg last week against the 49ers and missed half the game. While there was originally optimism that he would play, he wasn’t able to do much at Friday’s practice. As a result, Washington elected to declare him inactive and will go back to Haskins.

Haskins has largely struggled for Washington this year. He had one nice drive in relief of Smith against the 49ers, but all told, he only managed 51 yards while completing 7-of-12 passes. Most of his production came on the opening drive of the second half, and he led Washington to just three offensive points.

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In his four starts this year, Haskins has averaged 234.8 passing yards, one TD, and 1.3 turnovers per game. He has struggled with his accuracy (three games with under 58 percent completion rate) save for when he looks short, but that capped the upside of the Washington offense when on the field.

The main question for Haskins is, will he look to attack the Seahawks secondary, which has allowed a lot of yards to receivers, or will he settle for checkdowns and avoiding mistakes? Haskins has the arm talent to suggest the former strategy would work better, but that will require him throwing with downfield accuracy, something that hasn’t been all too common this year.

Perhaps some time on the bench will have helped Haskins improve, but his spotty performance against the 49ers was less than encouraging. Either way, Washington will miss Smith’s presence as a veteran leader, and one who has made few mistakes during the Washington Football Team’s four-game winning streak.

It will be interesting to see who backs up Haskins in this contest. Washington has two QBs on the practice squad, Steven Montez and Taylor Heinicke. Montez has been with the team all offseason after signing as an undrafted free agent out of Colorado while Heinicke, a veteran, signed a couple of weeks ago but has experience in Scott Turner‘s offense. Montez will probably get the first crack at being the backup, but this is still certainly worth watching.

It’s also worth noting that Washington will be without Cole Holcomb, Kevin Pierre-Louis, and (potentially) Antonio Gibson in this game. That’s four key contributors when factoring in Smith’s injury. Haskins will need to step up and take charge of the Washington offense. Otherwise, it could be a long day against the Seahawks.