The blame for Washington’s uninspired, inexplicable loss goes far beyond just Dwayne Haskins
Haskins #Haskins
This wasn’t just about Dwayne Haskins, though when listing the contributing factors to the debacle produced by the Washington Football Team on Sunday, he ranks first, second, third and maybe sixth through eighth, too. Yet this was a team-wide performance that fit into the fabric of a franchise. This was a lifeless dud that shows how difficult Ron Rivera’s task remains.
The obituary of Haskins’s Washington career can now be written, but if you couldn’t see that coming, you’re probably maskless in a crowded private room at a restaurant at the moment. The takeaway here is larger, because the stakes that were in play and the response that was delivered fits how this team has operated for years. Haskins and Rivera are just the men in the important chairs at the moment.
“Can’t really put into words how I feel right now,” Haskins said.
Join the club. To review: By the time Washington took the field for what became a dreadful 20-13 loss to the Carolina Panthers at FedEx Field, everyone with the team — players, coaches, equipment staff, grounds crew — knew that a win would deliver the NFC East title. The performance that followed toggled between uninspired, which is inexplicable, and uneven, which speaks to the work-in-progress nature of Rivera’s program.
That’s on Haskins, the quarterback who was at first wretched and eventually benched — probably too late. But it’s on Steven Sims Jr., who just flat muffed a punt that resulted in Carolina’s first touchdown. It’s on a defense that has an enormous amount of game-changing ability but allowed the Panthers — limited without star running back Christian McCaffrey — to completely control the clock, low-lighted by a 10-play touchdown drive in the first half that included exactly zero passes.
Four takeaways from Washington’s 20-13 loss to Carolina
And it’s on Rivera. He botched the week by not benching Haskins for the quarterback’s shenanigans — attending an indoor party without a mask in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, a violation of the NFL’s health-and-safety protocols, not to mention a violation of common sense. Rivera also botched the game by not benching him at halftime — by which time the quarterback had thrown two interceptions and fumbled away another possession, all while racking up a passer rating of … wait, what? Really? Yep, a passer rating of 8.3.
But there are other elements in play here that have nothing to do with the particulars of this game on this Sunday in this hellacious year. In addressing the Haskins situation on Wednesday — when he said the quarterback would be stripped of his captaincy and fined, but not suspended — Rivera at least appeared to compromise his morals to fit the situation. Since he arrived here nearly a year ago, he has talked about building a team that has great character. Doing that requires not looking the other way when someone demonstrates less than that.
Haskins had put himself and his teammates — not to mention his head coach, who is currently overcoming cancer — in danger by not following public-health guidelines for the second time. That’s not worthy of a benching? Given the win-and-we’re-in circumstances, apparently not. With starter Alex Smith still hampered by a calf issue, Rivera needed a quarterback with which to win the division. That he got Haskins’s three-turnover performance in return certainly fits.
But Rivera also became annoyed at the number of questions about Haskins’s transgressions asked during his virtual news conference Wednesday. He threatened to end the exchange if reporters didn’t concentrate on the game against Carolina. If only he could have gotten his team to do the same.
Rivera’s money line that day? He repeated it Sunday.
“Again, what’s important and not what’s interesting as we go forward,” Rivera said.
What’s important in Rivera’s mind is beating the Philadelphia Eagles in the season finale, a result that would salvage the title in this putrid division. A 7-9 division champ still gets to host a playoff game, and if Smith is healthy and the defense is its disruptive self, well, stranger things have happened than a postseason Washington victory.
But catchy as that line might be, don’t let it throw you off the scent of what’s both interesting and important. Haskins’s actions were actually more important than they were interesting because they demonstrate that he can’t be trusted — on or off the field. That’s obvious.
More than that, the most important development around the Washington Football Team this week had nothing to do with Haskins. Rather, what’s important about this week — for the future of the franchise — is The Washington Post’s revelation that the Football Team paid a $1.6 million settlement to a former female employee who made an allegation of sexual harassment against owner Daniel Snyder. Dwayne Haskins was never going to determine the course of this franchise. That development — which will be included as part of the NFL’s ongoing investigation into the culture Snyder created — absolutely could.
The Haskins situation somehow overwhelmed the Snyder story line.
“I don’t think it impacted the game,” Rivera said afterward, which is highly likely.
Then what did impact the game? What allowed a team with a division title at stake against a 4-10 opponent to look so unprepared? This wreaked of the 2016 finale, when all Kirk Cousins and Washington had to do was beat the already-in-the-playoffs New York Giants for a postseason spot of their own. Cousins threw two picks, and Washington lost, 19-10.
That’s the thing here. For every clunker produced on a given Sunday and every nefarious off-field development, there’s something that matches it — and often trumps it — from the past. Think it’s odd that Taylor Heinicke, the quarterback who replaced Haskins in the fourth quarter Sunday, was studying for virtual finals at Old Dominion last month (sample class: “applied numerical methods”) when Washington called offering a job? Well, I’ll raise you the play-caller hired midseason to take over that task from the head coach who, the week before his employment, had been calling Bingo games at a retirement home. (True story.)
This is Snyder’s team with Snyder’s stench, and it gets ever harder to imagine a true transformation with the owner in place. That has nothing to do with Haskins’s irresponsible behavior and everything to do with using what we know about 21 years of history to predict what might happen in the future.
Which kind of bums you out. Despite his mishandling of this week and this game, there is so much to like about what Rivera has done in just one year under extraordinary — even unprecedented — circumstances, coaching through both cancer and a pandemic. There are things to like about his team, not least of which is rookie defensive end Chase Young, who created two turnovers and provided what little heart Washington had Sunday.
“We know we still have an opportunity to do everything that we want to do,” Young said. “We got to put this behind us and get locked in on Philly. I feel like that’s the only way.”
After Sunday, Haskins gets the headlines. But the state of this franchise isn’t Haskins’s fault. He is a symptom, not the disease. Rivera’s job ahead is a hard one, whether he beats Philadelphia or not.