In the end, Dwayne Haskins' immaturity and work ethic proved to be instrumental toward his undoing in Washington, a point well articulated in an anecdote from JP Finlay of NBC Sports Washington.
"My former colleague Rich Tandler always said, 'Never listen to what they say, watch what they do,' and I think Dwayne Haskins was really, really good at saying the right things," JP Finlay told 106.7 The Fan's Pete Medhurst. "He painted a picture of somebody that was always in the playbook, watching film, going above and beyond, and there's enough people that will just tell you that's not the case — both from a film room standpoint, playbook standpoint, all of those things."
"I mean, you just watch the games. He never looked like the most prepared quarterback," he said. "He never gave me the vibe that he was in total command at the line of scrimmage or in the huddle. And really [on Sunday] against the Panthers, he was so indecisive at times... Rivera always talks about regression. I don't know how you could watch that game [Sunday] night and not think he had regressed significantly, even from the week before."
Thoughts inside the building, as we so often learn, don't always match the rhetoric outside it. Reporters are often left to parse bits and pieces, searching soundbites for significance and reading between the lines of what wasn't said.
If you listened carefully, plenty of people close to Haskins were blaring warning signs about his work ethic all offseason, namely Washington Senior VP of Player Development Doug Williams, who at a team function in February, said, "He's got to stay in the facility until they run him out of the building."
Some days later Williams reaffirmed the sentiment, telling SiriusXM's NFL Radio, "I just try to tell him what he has to do to get him out of that mentality that I can just gallivant all over the place [in] the offseason, when really, you need to be here, trying to figure out what I need to do for the season."
Shawn Springs, another close confidant of Haskins, was curiously non-committal when asked in an April 106.7 The Fan interview whether Haskins is a "hard worker."
These same sentiments were expressed by the previous coaching regime during Haskins' rookie season as well. The trend ultimately became untenable.
The anecdote below is nothing new. As Finlay reminds, he's uttered it on the radio before. But it takes on more meaning now that Haskins has been released and many are left to collect the bread crumbs leading to the bigger picture.
"I also think there's a bit of a gap in what's real and what's perceived," said Finlay. "Because I believe that Dwayne thought he was putting the work in to be an NFL quarterback, but I think if you look at what other NFL quarterbacks do, there's a gap there."
"Tuesdays are the NFL off day. Guys don't have to come into the facility," he said. "The quarterbacks always have to come into the facility, and that was something that Dwayne didn't always understand. And eventually when he got it, it was like, 'Well why didn't anybody tell me this?'
"And, in a way, that's almost the problem, is that you should just know it because you're an NFL quarterback. And it's a bit of a catch-22, a lot of this is. It's like, well, we expect you to know it, so we're not gonna tell you. And how are you supposed to know it, then?
"But at some point, some of these things need to be inherent and obvious," Finlay added. "And I don't think they ever became that."
Maturity and work ethic are almost inseparable qualities for NFL quarterbacks. If you question one, you're likely to question the other. Haskins didn't possess enough of either to justify holding his roster spot any longer.
Breaking COVID-19 protocols was just the final straw.
