Washington Names QB Dwayne Haskins As Starter Vs. Panthers
ASHBURN, Va. - With starter Alex Smith still hampered by an injury ahead of their matchup with the Carolina Panthers, the Washington Football team named Dwayne Haskins as the starter on Sunday morning.
Haskins has been under center for WFT since Smith went down with a calf injury against the San Francisco 49ers in week 14, and made the start in last week's 20-15 loss to the Seattle Seahawk.
Washington was hopeful that Smith would be able to go after a promising week of rehab but according to a report from NFL.com's Ian Rapoport, he was not quite ready.
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Optimism here is an elusive thing and is hard to gauge. Every time the Washington Football Team feels that Smith is fine or getting closer to returning - and everything Smith himself expresses positivity - it seems something happens.
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Maybe it's all about the tricky nature of any calf muscle injury or really any leg issues (hamstring, groin, knee).
A sign that Smith was still not right came on Saturday when Steven Montez was elevated from the practice squad to the expanded gameday roster, joining Dwayne Haskins and Taylor Heinicke.
We say it wouldn't have made sense to start Smith if he couldn't make it through the practice week without a setback. The last time he played (in Arizona), he was feeling something was awry during the week, wasn't on the injury report, and then early on in the game against San Francisco, felt it tighten up again.
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That put coach Ron Rivera in a no-win situation - a tough place to be in a pretty-much must-win game. Starting a quarterback in Haskins that he stripped of his captaincy this week because the QB was ignorant, immature, and self-absorbed is no way to march into a football battle.
Yet, the NFL is a tricky business, and with a division title and a playoff birth still on the line, Rivera simply had to go with Haskins here.
We still believe that Haskins probably would have faced a tougher fate if Smith was completely healthy or if Kyle Allen wasn't already on injured reserve - that is to say, more than a moderate fine and a maybe-benching.
Instead, Haskins received a symbolic punishment, and the head coach was forced to have faith and take the criticism bullets for not being harsher on Haskins.
The Washington season doesn't end with a loss on Sunday night. But it would be impossible to have a high level of hope and confidence with that result moving forward and specifically in Philadelphia for Week 17. And now we are about to see if it is possible to have a high level of hope and confidence without Alex Smith, and Haskins once again taking Sunday's snaps.
