Raise your hand if you had no idea when you woke up yesterday that Dwayne Haskins would be somehow relevant to your life. For the record, I have my hand up, but now I am producing articles on choosing the draft for the first round of 2019 that just signed a contract with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
While this is a virtually risk-free move, the background obviously makes the story much bigger than it should be, and of course it has the power to make it as big as it wants, as long as it performs well and does everything what is required of him.
The Washington Football Team didn’t think so, so he was dismissed, despite the fact that he has a strong coach in Ron Rivera and a very experienced veteran presence around him as a quarterback in Alex Smith – he will also have in Pittsburgh with Mike Tomlin and Ben Roethlisberger . Smith recently spoke about his former teammate on the Yahoo Sports NFL Podcast.
“The first thing I hope with Dwayne – and I told him that – is that you don’t stand a chance until you have eliminated many distractions that happen in your life,” he said. “It is difficult as a young player, as a young choice in the draft, certainly as a defender with a lot of weight and expectations”.
“You have a lot of voices saying different things. At the end of the day, it’s all about playing well on the field, ‘he added. “You have to be able to eliminate everything else, because none of that matters if you can’t go out there and play at a high level. You will never be able to develop as a player, in your potential if you don’t eliminate all these things too. So, my hope for Dwayne is to do that. “
It’s not always that a team gives up on a first-quarter quarterback in two years without at least getting something in return for it in the form of trade compensation, and needless to say, it’s always a big red flag when that kind of thing happens.
Haskins’ chances of actually becoming the Steelback franchise quarterback are pretty low, let’s just put that out. But it certainly wouldn’t be a bad thing if he managed to become an adequate backup – or, at least, someone that another team would like to sign to give them a compensatory choice.