Dwayne Haskins's Washington career was abruptly euthanized, as the Football Team released the former Can’t Miss Kid today. He’d become too toxic and damaged for even this toxic and damaged franchise to keep on the roster heading into a win-and-they're-in Week 17 game.
There’s no use defending Haskins's play in D.C. Everybody else who Washington put in at quarterback during his nearly two seasons here made him look unprepared and wholly expendable. The latest and last exposure came Sunday at the hands of some guy named Heinicke, who provided WFT’s only spark and lone touchdown pass in a horrendous 20-13 loss to Carolina. My 11-year-old son, who never says anything mean about anybody, called him "Trashkins" during the Panthers game.
There were rumors, from 2019's draft night on, that then–head coach Jay Gruden wanted to use Washington’s first-round pick on somebody other than Haskins, but Dan Snyder overruled him because the Ohio State star had gone to Bullis, the same prep school as the owner’s son (and Henry Rollins, too). Forcing a quarterback on a coach is right in Snyder’s wheelhouse, but in fairness to the owner, Haskins’s stats in his one year as a starter at Ohio State were otherworldly (70 percent completion percentage, 4,831 yards, and 50 TDs for a QB rating of 174.1). Turns out numbers come easier when all 11 guys on your side are better than all 11 guys on the other side. Based on his highlight tape, everybody Haskins ever threw to in college was wide open. That wasn’t the case when he got to the NFL.
Haskins's run in Washington was amazingly highlight-free. If he’s remembered at all around D.C., it will be for fucking up off the field, not for for plays he made on it. He fucked up his relationship with old fans of the team after the draft by pressuring local legend Joe Theismann to let them unretire jersey No. 7, which Theismann had worn while quarterbacking Washington to the team’s first-ever Super Bowl win after the 1982 season. He fucked up what would be his first win as a pro by running to the grandstands to snap selfies with fans instead of waiting until he was no longer needed on the field.
His final fuck-up with WFT came after last week’s loss to Seattle, and also involved photos: Haskins was snapped partying and maskless—his second COVID-19 protocol violation this season—while surrounded by young women wearing that No. 7 he fought for. The photos came reportedly while he was at a strip club, but as he leaves town Haskins is still arguing that he was at a restaurant, not a nudie joint. Wherever the shots were taken, the party’s over.
