Dwayne Haskins finally made his first start for the Washington Redskins. He had an average outing in another forgettable game for his team.
The Washington Redskins are, how do I put this, not good.
After pretending that Case Keenum was getting it done at quarterback, the team finally made the move to start Dwayne Haskins today. The end result was a 24-9 loss to the Buffalo Bills to drop to 1-8 on the season.
But Haskins didn’t have a terrible outing. He went 15-of-22 for 144 yards and did not throw an interception or lose a fumble. Those are the only real positives.
He did spread the ball around to eight different receivers and only took four sacks. Unfortunately for Haskins, he is probably not going to have much success this year.
The rookie lacks real weapons and even though Adrian Peterson rushed for over 100 yards to bring balance to the offense, the defense couldn’t stop an average Buffalo offense. Josh Allen only went 14-of-20 for 160 yards so it wasn’t like Haskins was completely out-dueled in his first start.
The rest of the year is all about development for the first-year quarterback. Limiting mistakes is a good first step. Doing so against a tough Buffalo defense shows that Haskins at least has some sense of protecting the ball.
The Redskins have a bye next week before taking on a New York Jets squad that just lost to the Miami Dolphins. That game will be the real barometer of how good Haskins can be for the rest of the year and moving forward.
He will have two full weeks to prepare to take on one of the worst teams in the league. His defense may let him down, but he can still show his abilities and have a 300-yard performance with a few touchdowns if the play-calling allows it.
If he instead looks bad and throw a few interceptions against a lowly Jets squad, the team may be looking to the draft once again for a quarterback. That would be a bold move, but one that may have to be done if they don’t believe Haskins is the right guy to lead the franchise.
Yet as of right now Haskins had himself a not great but also not terrible first start. It’s not like he has a ton of weapons on offense to help him.
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