After another lackluster performance from the Washington offense, many fans are asking if Dwayne Haskins, the No. 15 overall pick from a year ago, can get the job done at quarterback in the NFL?
The main problem: Haskins hasn’t shown enough to truly end the debate. He is a young quarterback who remains just ok at the best of times.
Haskins did not have any glaring mistakes in the 30-15 defeat to the Arizona Cardinals -- a strip-sack in the first quarter was largely the fault of poor offensive line play -- but he had no ‘wow!’ plays either.
"Unfortunately early on he missed some opportunities," head coach Ron Rivera said about his QB. "When you get chances, you can’t miss them and unfortunately we did. That’s the truth about it. We did not play very well."
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The question remains: Is this the fault of the team not being good enough or is this a sign of the best Haskins can do?
For Haskins, ball placement and accuracy is a big issue. In Week 2 completed just 57.6 percent of his throws, but his expected completion percentage was 66.5 percent, per NFL Next Gen Stats. His -8.9 differential was second-worst for the week, behind Kirk Cousins.
Through two weeks, the second-year passer his -10.6 completion differential is worst in the NFL.
And in nine games during his rookies season, Haskins’ -4.6 expected completion percentage to actual completion percentage differential was third-worst in the league.
"The biggest thing is that we have to come in each week knowing that we have to be the best that we can be, as long as we’re accountable and everyone owns up to their mistakes," Haskins said after the game. "It wasn’t perfect by any means, but it’s part of the game. There are lessons that we can learn from today, from last week and how we started, and we can try and make the changes for next week.”
The issue for Washington’s signal-caller is throwing down the field.
Against Arizona, Haskins’ deep accuracy left a lot to be desired. On passes 10 yards down the field, Haskins completed just two of his 12 attempts. (Haskins was 17/21 on routes 9 yards down the field and under.)
"Start of the game, we were just trying to figure out how we wanted to attack the defense,” Haskins said Sunday. “In film, we saw a lot of cover 3 and cover 4. In the first half of the game, I saw a lot of man coverage, so I had to figure out how we wanted to attack them.”
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One thing the stats tell us, Rivera and offensive coordinator Scott Turner are interested in throwing the ball down the field and trust their quarterback to make the throws. Haskins is in the top half on intended average intended air yards with 8.4. However, his average air yards completion is only 4.4 and the -4 differential puts him as the second-worst in the league.
However, there may be a reason for his rough start: Haskins ranked as the QB with the lowest average time to throw of all 34 qualified quarterbacks (minimum 15 attempts): 2.32 seconds.
This means Washington is getting the ball out of Haskins' had very quickly. Some of that may be by design, some of that may be pass rush forcing Haskins into throwing quicker than he wants.
And the numbers show when Haskins has under 2 seconds he struggles mightily. (However, his completion percentage isn't too high regardless of how much time Haskins has to throw.)
Against Arizona in Week 2, Haskins was sacked four times after being sacked three times in the season opener.
But answering the big question on the Haskins remains difficult. It is evident he has the raw skills to make it in the league, but after two games in 2020 it is clear he isn’t the biggest problem facing this offense.
Washington has no weapons aside from wide receiver Terry McLaurin, an offensive line that nobody feels comfortable in pass protection, and no reliable running game. None of that is on Haskins to fix. Nor is he, or any other quarterback in the league going to do much with those raw marterials.
"This is a process, and we want to win and aren’t going to quit at all," Haskins said. "But we have to trust in each other, trust in the scheme and trust in what we are doing.”
Trust comes first, but results have to follow.
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