QB Haskins has support, with a catch, of Rivera

Less than a day removed from his team’s loss in Cleveland, Washington Football Team coach Ron Rivera reiterated his support of Dwayne Haskins but offered the strongest critique yet of his quarterback and acknowledged his developmental period will have a finite end point.

“As I said, the thing at some point is, he’s going through this process — he’s growing, he’s developing— but we’ve got to continue to see positive growth,” Rivera said Monday in a video conference with reporters. “We can’t see a regression. And the one thing he has to understand, is there a certain point where you’re no longer a rookie. To me, he’s still learning and growing, but there is a point where, ‘Hey, you know what? You should be more positive with your plays.’”

Against the Browns, Haskins committed four of the team’s five turnovers — three interceptions and a fumble — all of which turned into points for Cleveland. Over the last two weeks and for much of its season opener, Washington has squandered positive plays with mistakes, including inaccurate passing, poor decision-making, running the wrong routes and getting flagged for costly penalties.

Haskins, in only his first year as a full-time starter, was declared the No. 1 quarterback after a true competition in training camp with Kyle Allen failed to materialize. In the weeks since, Rivera has preached patience. Haskins is learning, Rivera has said, and he reiterated his support of Haskins after Sunday’s game, saying he’s going to take his “lumps” with Haskins and that he’s “not going to pull the plug on him just because something like this happens.”

Though Rivera didn’t waver from his stance Monday, his assessment of Haskins’s play was a little more blunt. When asked if it

will become harder to sell the other Washington players on the prospect of Haskins being the long-term answer at quarterback if he can’t correct his mistakes, Rivera didn’t hedge.

“There were a lot of guys that put their heart out on the field and, truthfully, they deserve better,” he said. “When you look at the way Daron [Payne] played and Jonathan [Allen] and Montez [Sweat], guys like that are leaving it on the field. Jon Bostic. Guys played hard. Then you turn around to the offensive side and you look at those guys on the offensive line [who] were battling and fighting too, and the things that the backs did and the receivers and the tight ends. I mean, you have to say at some point there is, and I’ll cross that bridgewhen I get there.

“There are guys in that locker room that are playing well enough for us to win, and again, we have to make sure everybody is playingwell enough for us to win at that point. And there is a cutoff point for me. There is.”

But the unanswered questions are when and how Rivera and his coaching staff will know whether Haskins’s mistakes are byproducts of his inexperience (only 24 combined starts in college and the pros) or issues that will need more time to fix. Even though there’s no one-size-fits-all development plan for quarterbacks, Rivera mentioned some weekly trends he hopes to see from Haskins, and issues he needs to be resolved. During a normal game week, for instance, Rivera expects the last practice of theweek to be fast, fluid and mistake-free.

He wants Haskins’s mechanics that appeared problematic on certain throws to be cleaned up. And perhaps most pressing, he wants Haskins to improve the finer details of his progressions, taking the appropriate amount of time for each read so as not to give away tells to the defense.

Haskins’s tendency to stare down his targets was brought up by veteran linebacker Thomas Davis during a trainingcamppractice, and broadcast in a “Mic’d Up” video shared by the team. After the workout, Davis went up to Haskins and said, “You gotta stop staring, bro.”

A commentator on the FOX broadcast sawthe same: Haskins stared down his targets on a couple of his interceptions, allowing Cleveland defenders to read his eyes and jump the routes.

Haskins denied doing so when asked about it postgame, but Rivera’s explanation for the differing takes was simple: Haskinswent through his progressions, but did so too quickly.

“He got to the read too soon, and because he got there too soon, he ends up staring,” Rivera said. ” … He’s got to slow his mechanics down, slow his reads down, stay on his initial a little longer and really go to where you need to go.”

Even on some plays that proved successful, Haskins compensated for an error. On one of his touchdown passes to Dontrelle Inman, Rivera said, Haskins started his progression from the wrong side, but ended up where he needed to be.

“Everything is being put in for him,” Rivera said. “Now he has to learn it. Well now is his continuation of his education and growth. Again as I said, we’re looking for positive growth.”