It’s official: Haskins will be running the offense
After coach Ron Rivera made the obvious official by naming Dwayne Haskins the starting quarterback Wednesday afternoon, he explained the timing of the decision.
Even though he had wanted a true competition between Haskins and Kyle Allen, the lack of preseason games made that impossible — and everyone, including the players, knew it.
Really, though, the roots of this decision lay in mid-January, when the quarterback and new coach first met. Publicly, Rivera declined to anoint Haskins the starter, and privately, he told the 23-year-old that to do so, he needed to see Haskins improve his intangibles, such as leadership, preparation and commitment. Eight months later, Haskins was slimmer and making better decisions on the field.
The situation reminded Rivera of a decade ago, when he committed to a young quarterback in Carolina. He remembered telling Cam Newton, “I’m choosing you because I believe in you,” and added, “That’s really how I feel about Dwayne.”
“He’s lived up to his part of our conversation in January,” Rivera said. “Because of that I’m living up to mine. He deserves the opportunity. He’s going to get my support. Hopefully we can ride it as long as I rode it with Cam.”
Though Rivera declined to name the backup — Alex Smith or, likelier, Allen — the news reflected the coaching staff’s larger goal Wednesday: start the regular season. Two days after camp finished, Washington began the daily, game-week routine it will live in for the next four months. Installing Haskins was an extension of that thought process.
All offseason, the quarterback built a base. He remade his body and learned a new system. He developed chemistry with receivers. He gave himself everything he needed, and as offensive coordinator Scott Turner told him at practice Wednesday, “Now the real work starts.”
In Turner’s offense, Haskins must know when to attack and when to play it safe. The scheme is a variant of “Air Coryell,” an old offensive philosophy named after former San Diego Chargers coach Don Coryell.
The vertical attack spurred the development of NFL passing games in the late 1970s, and Turner’s father, Norv, ran a version of it when he coached Washington in the 1990s. Now Turner has brought it back with some modern twists.
The scheme puts a lot of responsibility on Haskins. Because it stretches the field defenses often counter by covering up deep routes, and in Carolina the Turners exploited this by attacking underneath. Yet this carries an inherent challenge for a quarterback: go long or take what the defense is giving?
Initially, the complexity of this choice seemed to give the edge to Allen, a third-year quarterback who played for Rivera for two seasons in Carolina. But Haskins, Washington’s 2019 first-round pick, showed promise, and it didn’t take long for him to convince Turner he had what it took.
“He impressed me just with his natural ability to throw a football,” Turner said of Haskins. “He’s a natural passer. He’s got a quick trigger. He doesn’t need a lot of space to do it. Some of the plays he made in tight quarters throwing the ball, that’s what jumped out to me over the course of this camp.”
Rivera saw it too. After Haskins started picking up the playbook, Rivera chose to have him work almost entirely with the first-team offense in camp to provide him as many reps as possible before the season.
Rivera has leaned on Turner and quarterbacks coach Ken Zampese to help Haskins develop.
“Those two guys did a nice job bringing Kyle along,” Rivera said. “You want to see the development of your young guys.”