Commander Country

Vomit & 3 Better Choices: Inside The WFT Drafting Of Dwayne Haskins

The moment inside the Washington Football Team NFL Draft war room in 2019 was intense. Some stories have come before this. Now ... another vomit-inducing chapter

Chris Russell

ASHBURN, Va. -- The Washington Football Team finally shut the door on Dwayne Haskins and another miserable experience with a quarterback thought to be the savior of a franchise that has been terribly mismanaged for a quarter-century.

Haskins cleared waivers on Tuesday, sticking the WFT with a hefty dead-cap charge and revealing a message from the other 31 teams that even at very low base-guaranteed salaries, nobody's excited to take a chance on developing the former first-round pick.

READ MORE: Dwayne Done Messed Up!

And why?

Maybe it's because Haskins should have never been one. 

WFT faithful know part of the background by now: Owner Dan Snyder - not the Washington Football coaches and/or personnel staff - made the ill-fated pick.

To pull back the curtain from that NFL Draft night: Washington Football on SI.com has visited with multiple league sources for two years about the situation that night. ... a situation that builds up to today.

Bruce Allen apparently tried desperately to stop the madness of Dan Snyder. We haven't heard that in the hard-core way it is painted in the Washington Post, but we've heard their was a push from the deposed team president to prevent Snyder from taking Haskins ... all of which created an enormous divide.

READ MORE: Doug Had Nothing To Do With Dwayne

ESPN's Diana Russini reminds us that a coach was literally sick to his stomach and ready to throw up at the thought of Haskins. To some, that seemed a laughable exaggeration, but we're told that on-the-verge-of-vomit situation was indeed the case.

What we have also heard is this: As the Washington pick at No. 15 drew closer, there was not much discussion and banter in the tense war room. Kyle Smith, then the director of college scouting and now the vice president of player personnel, had three players to select at the Washington spot, according to sources.

Three names. "Haskins'' was not among them.

READ MORE: Dwayne: "I Didn't Meet The Standards" 

Montez Sweat, who Washington would later trade back up in the first round for with Indianapolis, was one of the players. Sweat later cost a 2019 second-rounder and then what turned out to be the No. 34 overall pick this year to move back into the first round. 

What's more is, Smith apparently waited and waited as the clock and picks started to inch closer to Washington's choice ... and then he started to take some command of the room.

Smith started to ask questions on what the choice was going to be. Sources described to us a tense silence. Smith asked the room specifically: Is the organization really thinking of taking Haskins?

At that point, one voice chimed in. It was the owner's voice, confirming that Haskins was going to be the choice.

His choice.

More silence ensued in the moments around the pick and with the pick made, Smith pushed himself up from the table and unloaded on the room - a speech that was described as "fiery and passionate'' about the pick and how much he disagreed with the selection.

Smith then sat down. Some in the room that night have told us since that they thought he would be fired immediately. Maybe he sat down just in time to retain his job?

Last January, coach Ron Rivera engineered Kyle Smith's promotion. Since then, Rivera has been the singular power-broker in the organization, gaining the respect of all, even Snyder ... and this week, flexing his muscle by singularly making the decision to cut Haskins.

Dan Snyder realized too late that his decision was wrong - and that the other people in that room, Smith and others, were right. Any one of the other three choices on the WFT board would've been superior to Dwayne Haskins. And any scout/coach reaction to a pick, would've been superior to vomiting.

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Chris Russell
CHRIS RUSSELL

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