Washington Could Draft Tua Tagovailoa and Still Spare Dwayne Haskins
If Washington is indeed evaluating all options and considering the selection of a quarterback at No. 2, thus cementing Dwayne Haskins in the same isolated vulnerability that Josh Rosen felt a year ago, here’s hoping that they opt for the path of most humanity.
The good and brave thing about the Cardinals selecting Kyler Murray in 2019, a year after drafting another quarterback in the first round, was that it broke from years of destructive league practices. Oftentimes teams sink themselves by trying to legitimize previous bad decisions instead of simply admitting fault and moving on. It takes years of plotting and maneuvering, roster asset allocation and other wasted coaching changes and draft picks, for them to realize what everyone else had a long time ago.
The bad and unfortunate thing last spring in Arizona was that during the process, a person and his lifelong body of work twisted in the wind. Josh Rosen was no stranger to the anonymous character destruction mill during the pre-draft process. We heard all about his perceived standoffishness. How, somehow, his desire to prevent the earth from melting was offensive. And as it became increasingly obvious that the Cardinals were going to take Murray with the No. 1 pick, Rosen was shelved while the rest of the football world wondered if all the vague, anonymous criticisms were meaningful—if Arizona’s choice was more than an indication that Murray was simply a better fit for new head coach Kliff Kingsbury’s offense.
We bring this up on the off chance that this year’s draft is headed in a similar direction. A few weeks back, radio personality Doug Gottlieb tweeted that a “Dwayne Haskins was so bad with the playbook that the previous staff was concerned he was dyslexic (he is not).” Outside of the general unease the comment radiates, it feels like the springboard for a defense, should it be necessary to draft another quarterback—one that can just be left to linger out there as the organization pivots away. Washington head coach Ron Rivera, for his part, complimented Haskins’s work ethic during his combine press conference while maintaining the club’s interest in bettering all positions.
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Rivera is more than likely operating on a more standard level, just refusing to tip the organization’s hand and inviting the possibility of another quarterback-needy team to trade up and inject Washington with some much-needed draft capital. There is a reason he is thought of among the league’s good souls. That is the fine line so many coaches and general managers with high picks walk every year without a modicum of grace.
And really, all of it could be meaningless. Who knows why someone was motivated to anonymously criticize Haskins or if it had anything to do with legitimizing or paving the way for another quarterback. One source told The MMQB’s Kalyn Kahler that Washington owner Daniel Snyder wouldn’t move on from Haskins anyway. This could ultimately be one of those tidbits of pre-draft minutiae that we spend our time arguing about only to realize how silly it was from the very beginning.
But it’s worth remembering that if a team is going to switch first-round quarterbacks after one year that there is a human element at stake that is commonly ignored. Blindly maneuvering these pieces for the ultimate goal of subterfuge has its costs and sinks careers before they have the chance to blossom.
In a perfect world, if Washington were truly interested in Tua Tagovailoa, there would be a message crafted with the goal of making one player what he actually is: Just better for the moment, and not the emergency replacement for someone who is damaged goods.
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