FAREWELL to the NFL Dwayne Haskins QB Ohio State

[volsmet]

Haskins release is very similar to Watson’s.

 

Day loves DH.

 

 

 

[Skinsinparadise]

 

Dwayne Haskins made a number of impressive throws while he was on the field, and while Case Keenum had his share of good passes too, the rookie shined. Even on the surface: Haskins looks the part of a franchise quarterback, standing 6-foot-3 and 230 lbs. Keenum is listed at 6-foot-1 and 215 lbs, but that seems fairly generous. 

When Haskins throws the ball, it zips through the air. He can go deep and has touch on his underneath routes. Keenum gets the ball where it needs to be, but there's a difference in velocity. 

Let's be crystal clear, however, that one OTA session in May will not determine the starting quarterback job. While Keenum and Haskins are both learning the Redskins offense, Keenum has proved he can stand in the pocket of an NFL game and make plays. Haskins has never seen the size or speed of NFL defensive linemen. 

"It’s a long process and I think they both handled it well today," Redskins head coach Jay Gruden said. "Hopefully we’ll do better tomorrow and the next day and so on and so forth and I’m sure it will be a good, lengthy competition with some great players going at it."

A few, unexpected things stood out with Haskins.

Though he has a long windup on his throws, the ball gets out plenty fast. He also seemed quicker in the pocket than some of his NFL Scouting Combine numbers would suggest. Haskins certainly isn't fast, but he's not a plodder either. That said, Keenum does seem to have the advantage in squirting through the line of scrimmage and keeping plays alive. That's something Gruden really likes in his passers.

https://www.nbcsports.com/washington/redskins/watching-dwayne-haskins-and-case-keenum-one-quarterback-definitely-stands-out

[Skinsinparadise]

 

 

[KDawg]

Probably important to remind people:

 

Lots of good stuff coming out of Skins OTAs RE: Haskins.

 

That's great to hear. But you're not going to hear a ton of bad right now. This is the time of year where optimism is at its highest and live shots aren't being fired at the players. Hearing what we're hearing about Haskins is definitely encouraging, but let's try to contain the hype for Haskins' sake

[BRAVEONAWARPATH]

11 minutes ago, KDawg said:

Probably important to remind people:

 

Lots of good stuff coming out of Skins OTAs RE: Haskins.

 

That's great to hear. But you're not going to hear a ton of bad right now. This is the time of year where optimism is at its highest and live shots aren't being fired at the players. Hearing what we're hearing about Haskins is definitely encouraging, but let's try to contain the hype for Haskins' sake

Do as you like but personally, I encourage the hype.

 

Dwayne Haskins Jr is a future HOFer! 😀

[Skinsinparadise]

Yeah agree to an extent since you almost always got hype coming out of training camp.  Heck I recall in the 2015 camp beat guys and some fans were saying RG3 was killing it.  Cooley put cold water on that I remember saying he watched camp and he doesn't know what all the hype was about because to him it was same old same old for RG3.

 

I plan to see some camp myself this year.  As I've mentioned before when I went to camp in 2017, you could see somethings just via the naked eye such as Colt's arm strength versus the other QBs -- the WP reporters among others were saying Colt's arm strength was reborn after all this time healing from his college injury from way back coupled with some exercises he was doing to strengthen it.  It wasn't hard for me to see that was all BS by watching camp.  Among other observations. 

 

Having said that Haskins to me is one of the more interesting watches because he's a dude with mega potential.   Colt's ceiling for example was low.  Haskins has a high ceiling IMO.  So if they can work out some of those kinks in camp or discover certain concerns are unfounded -- that would be tremendous.  

 

The reason why I've been saying post draft that i am agnostic about Haskins is because I see him somewhat as a boom-bust prospect.  So I can see it go either way.  So if the beat guys or whomever are selling the boom -- I'll enjoy the optimism.  So I'll lean boom.  I've bought into the hype of every young QB we've drafted going back to Shuler so now my optimism is much more measured after being burned so many times.   

 

But I'll promote the sunshine whenever I see it -- mainly because of Haskins' potential.  If he was more of a high floor-low ceiling guy like IMO Ryan Finley or someone of that ilk I'd be more measured about any optimism.   As for Haskins I am very intrigued by live arm, release, accuracy.    I am concerned about his footwork in the pocket, ability to make plays on the move, and dealing with pressure.      I do like the combination of O'Connell and Jay working with him.   It should be an intriguing summer at the very least. 

[Llevron]

I think what I like most about him is that he is ultra confidant in not only his abilities but his mind, yet still understands he has so much further to go before hes the guy he thinks he can be. And that this is all exactly what he expected. 

 

More "talented" QBs have come here and failed. Dude knows. 

[Fresh8686]

Haskins looks noticeably faster to me while watching him roll-out at OTA's vs his cut-ups (the Penn state game is what I watched specifically to compare). I wonder how much of that is because he's no longer playing with a brace on and how much is just good old progression? He also looks a little bit leaner than when we picked him on draft day.

I'm loving that the mental load isn't overwhelming him. The first test for me was how he handled absorbing the load and complexity of the playbook and that's looking good but still TBD. Next test is internalizing improved technique and then after that is showing how well he holds onto that new technique while under pressure vs. regressing to past habits which won't cut it in the NFL.

Stevemcqueen1 called him a prodigy on draft day IIRC and while it's way to early to come to any definitive conclusions, what he has shown so far along those lines is promising.

[Califan007 The Constipated]

I originally didn't want Haskins simply because I believed he would need a lot of time and development before he could succeed as a starting QB and I wasn't confident that we had the coaching talent to pull it off, and if we did I wasn't confident that coaching talent would still be with the team next year.

 

Right now, though, I'm glad we drafted Haskins because it feels really good knowing we have legit franchise QB prospect on the team instead of trotting out journeyman QBs and hoping we suck bad enough to maybe get a QB down the road if things break right. 

[Skinsinparadise]

23 hours ago, Califan007 said:

I originally didn't want Haskins simply because I believed he would need a lot of time and development before he could succeed as a starting QB and I wasn't confident that we had the coaching talent to pull it off, and if we did I wasn't confident that coaching talent would still be with the team next year.

 

Right now, though, I'm glad we drafted Haskins because it feels really good knowing we have legit franchise QB prospect on the team instead of trotting out journeyman QBs and hoping we suck bad enough to maybe get a QB down the road if things break right. 

 

I am in a similar place except I did-do think we have the coaches to coach him up.  I had a different list of players I wanted at 15.  But considering they got one of the guys I wanted at 15 later in the first round -- that eased things for me some.  And yeah having a young QB brings some juice and hope and intrigue.    I figured it would be a good PR boost at a time when they desperately needed one.  But it's been an even bigger PR boost than I expected -- its fun for me to tune into a national TV sports show and actually see the Redskins mentioned for a change.  I am out to dinner with my kids for example and I point up and say check out who they are showing on TV and its Haskins.  We've not had that since 2012.

 

I didn't realize it so much at the time but I think oddly the Kirk contract kept the team relevant nationally because there was so much talk about it.  Once that went away -- this team has been mostly an afterthought nationally.  As I've talked about before -- our team was a punchline of all things on a national show when they covered the subject of why they talk about teams like the Cowboys, Patriots and others repeatedly but not other teams - so one of the hosts go hey we can talk about teams that fans don't care about like the Redskins or Titans but our ratings would crater.  And that line gathered a laugh with all the co-hosts.    That for me was a low point.  Because under Dan they haven't been a good team for the most part but they were at least relevant nationally.  It's a flagship franchise.  But that seemed to me oddly in danger.  

 

So that's my long winded way of saying I am enjoying all this Haskins attention.  I am a little more optimistic about him than before.  But like I said in another post I've been burned too much where I can't fully buy into the hype until the real movie plays out.  But I'll say one thing for sure is a home run and that is it made the Redskins relevant for now.   Granted it's all about winning.    But for me it does bug me to be lumped in with teams like the Titans as one that no one cares about.  So I do like the bonus of relevancy for now. 

[Califan007 The Constipated]

25 minutes ago, Skinsinparadise said:

 

... its fun for me to tune into a national TV sports show and actually see the Redskins mentioned for a change.  I am out to dinner with my kids for example and I point up and say check out who they are showing on TV and its Haskins.  We've not had that since 2012.

 

[...]But like I said in another post I've been burned too much where I can't fully buy into the hype into the real movie plays out.  But I'll say one thing for sure is a home run and that is it made the Redskins relevant for now.   Granted it's all about winning.    But for me it does bug me to be lumped in with teams like the Titans as one that no one cares about.  So I do like the bonus of relevancy for now. 

2

 

To the first point: I clicked on some link to an article about all the weakest links in all 32 teams in the nfl, and the main image at the top of the article was a photo of Haskins at rookie minicamp lol...I did laugh out loud, by the way, when I saw it. It did hit me that the Skins are indeed relevant at the moment, even used as a selling point on non-Skins articles. (the team's weakest link was deemed the WRs, by the way).

 

To the 2nd point, Foster's injury was a hard slap in the face that I should continue to temper things even though I'm still intrigued and slightly more optimistic than back in February. 

[RandyHolt]

He did it!

 

Chris Russell‏ @Russellmania621 23h23 hours ago

Just one play in 7s for the #Redskins but Dwayne Haskins dropped perfectly from under center & as his back foot planted, fired a seed to a TE over the middle with a LB tight in coverage. Looked good. Was first time I've seen him drop from under.

[mistertim]

As others have noted, it's always nice to hear good things about new players (especially rookies) in OTAs, etc. But I always take it with a grain of salt as we've heard that stuff before and it's much easier to look good doing drills in shorts when nobody can hit you or really pressure you than it is when the bullets are flying. One of the big issues with Haskins is his ability to deal with pressure and how his lower body mechanics tends to break down quickly when that happens. I'm curious how it will look when training camp rolls around. That being said, it's certainly good to hear that he's not struggling with anything at this point.

[Llevron]

I do remember them saying how well RG3 was doing in practice but they were "only showing the media" limited playbook and thats why it looked so basic. When in reality we only saw him running from pressure at practice and in games he couldnt outrun them like that. I always felt then that is why he got hit so much. He thought he could out run them cause they couldnt rip him to shreds at practice. 

 

Im going to continue to hope that isnt what we are seeing here on any level. But I will be skeptical until he does it for a few games in a row. 

[Skinsinparadise]

50 minutes ago, Califan007 said:

 

To the 2nd point, Foster's injury was a hard slap in the face that I should continue to temper things even though I'm still intrigued and slightly more optimistic than back in February. 

 

Sad story about Foster.  But he's been injury prone in his first two seasons.  He had injury concerns coming into the draft.  Hoffman hinted in a segment weeks back that they have some concerns about him off the field but are working on getting it right -- I presume that had something to do with the program he enrolled with via the NFL.   Not that I expected a catastrophic injury in addition to that but to me Foster was a wildcard this whole time.   Keim even ironically days back said Jay used the term wildcard when it came to Foster.

 

My only thing about the Foster injury is that I hope it's not a portent of things to come.  One of my points last year was just because they were injured so much the year before doesn't mean that it won't happen back to back considering if anything injured players tend to be more vulnerable (not less vulnerable) coming off of an injury. 

 

Playing off of the same point, yeah to me its not that far fetched that we don't end up one of the most injured teams again.  Scherff is coming off of a major one.  Trent always seems to get hurt.  Richardson has only been healthy one season in his career.  Jordan Reed is injury prone.  We talk about Foster's injuries but Sean Dion Hamilton has had major injuries in college.  Dunbar is coming off of those nerve injury.  Moreau tore his pec before the draft.    Every team gets injuries but we seem to have more than our share and some of our key players alas do have some injury history.   To me more than anything we can't get that standard Trent injury this time -- not with Flowers backing him up this time versus Ty. 

 

That's one of the things (knock on wood) that I like about Haskins.  The dude is built like a tank.  I liked Murray a lot but part of me would worry about injuries with him especially considering our luck on that front. 

[HTTRDynasty]

@Skinsinparadise Have you heard anything about Jay getting another year to "prove it" if we have devastating injuries once again this year?  To be fair to him, it's not his fault the FO keeps drafting/signing all these injury-prone players.

 

EDIT: Plus, firing Jay next year could be disastrous for Haskins' development, unless they promoted KOC, which would be tough to pull off, because, like McVay, I don't think KOC would take the job if Gruden is fired.

[volsmet]

2 minutes ago, HTTRDynasty said:

@Skinsinparadise Have you heard anything about Jay getting another year to "prove it" if we have devastating injuries once again this year?  To be fair to him, it's not his fault the FO keeps drafting/signing all these injury-prone players.

 

From what I know, Jay Gruden wanted Foster badly - both on draft day & off the ww. Foster & Derwin were the guys he was highest on at the places we drafted Allen & Payne — and this year Sweat was his guy, or so those in the know would have me believe.

 

[HTTRDynasty]

1 minute ago, volsmet said:

 

From what I know, Jay Gruden wanted Foster badly - both on draft day & off the ww. Foster & Derwin were the guys he was highest on at the places we drafted Allen & Payne — and this year Sweat was his guy, or so those in the know would have me believe.

 

 

Yeah, I heard that as well.  And he's also the reason we have Iaonnidis apparently.  But my point is moreso the sheer quantity of injury-prone guys we have is absurd, and most of that is not on Jay.  I wonder how much blame Snyder will put at his feet if we are among the league leaders in adjusted games lost once again this season.  And even so, Snyder needs to take into account the impact on Haskins that firing Jay will have.  Snyder's never been much of a long-term thinker though, so I don't have much hope of Jay sticking around if we only win 4-7 games this year. 

[volsmet]

49 minutes ago, Llevron said:

I do remember them saying how well RG3 was doing in practice but they were "only showing the media" limited playbook and thats why it looked so basic. When in reality we only saw him running from pressure at practice and in games he couldnt outrun them like that. I always felt then that is why he got hit so much. He thought he could out run them cause they couldnt rip him to shreds at practice. 

 

Im going to continue to hope that isnt what we are seeing here on any level. But I will be skeptical until he does it for a few games in a row. 

 

Absolutely. It would be troubling if Haskins didn’t look impressive in this setting. Haskins struggled with pressure, he struggled when needing to move & he struggled with the ball down the field when things weren’t clean — he also saw less pressure than any power 5 QB — now he’s going to be forced to learn at warp speed, Jay will be *put to the test. 14 starts, with less pressure than any QB in the country — it’s tough to project how he’ll respond, but the arm, release, work ethic & mind give him a chance. 

[wit33]

4 hours ago, Skinsinparadise said:

Yeah agree to an extent since you almost always got hype coming out of training camp.  Heck I recall in the 2015 camp beat guys and some fans were saying RG3 was killing it.  Cooley put cold water on that I remember saying he watched camp and he doesn't know what all the hype was about because to him it was same old same old for RG3.

 

I plan to see some camp myself this year.  As I've mentioned before when I went to camp in 2017, you could see somethings just via the naked eye such as Colt's arm strength versus the other QBs -- the WP reporters among others were saying Colt's arm strength was reborn after all this time healing from his college injury from way back coupled with some exercises he was doing to strengthen it.  It wasn't hard for me to see that was all BS by watching camp.  Among other observations. 

 

Having said that Haskins to me is one of the more interesting watches because he's a dude with mega potential.   Colt's ceiling for example was low.  Haskins has a high ceiling IMO.  So if they can work out some of those kinks in camp or discover certain concerns are unfounded -- that would be tremendous.  

 

Curious to why the boom/bust is attached to Haskins in your view?

 

It seems his floor would be that of a middling QB— His football IQ and ability pre snap eliminates bust. QBs 10-25, IMO never reach higher levels due to an inability to  manage chaos consistently or enough (whatever that means), especially against better teams or when game plan isn’t solid that day. 

 

Not an argument I’m sold on, just my impressions early in the process. Still open minded lol

[clskinsfan]

59 minutes ago, mistertim said:

As others have noted, it's always nice to hear good things about new players (especially rookies) in OTAs, etc. But I always take it with a grain of salt as we've heard that stuff before and it's much easier to look good doing drills in shorts when nobody can hit you or really pressure you than it is when the bullets are flying. One of the big issues with Haskins is his ability to deal with pressure and how his lower body mechanics tends to break down quickly when that happens. I'm curious how it will look when training camp rolls around. That being said, it's certainly good to hear that he's not struggling with anything at this point.

 

I agree with all of this. Lets see what happens when he is allowed to be hit. Haskins was my number one QB in this years draft based on his arm, release and most importantly his brain. The guy knows offenses, defenses and most importantly protections. And is good at diagnosing a defense pre snap and taking advantage of what a defense is giving him. Will he struggle early on with defensive coordinators disguising blitzes? Yep. Every rookie does. But Haskins  is extremely intelligent and not the kind of guy who wont learn from his mistakes. There will be growing pains for sure. But i truly believe that Haskins will end up being a real franchise QB in the NFL. He has everything you want out of one.

47 minutes ago, Llevron said:

I do remember them saying how well RG3 was doing in practice but they were "only showing the media" limited playbook and thats why it looked so basic. When in reality we only saw him running from pressure at practice and in games he couldnt outrun them like that. I always felt then that is why he got hit so much. He thought he could out run them cause they couldnt rip him to shreds at practice. 

 

Im going to continue to hope that isnt what we are seeing here on any level. But I will be skeptical until he does it for a few games in a row. 

 

That is a benefit Haskins has though. Not being a real threat to run has made him develop his passing ability far beyond anything RG3 ever had. RG3 probably has a better arm overall. But he doesnt have the touch or accuracy that Haskins has.

[volsmet]

50 minutes ago, clskinsfan said:

 

That is a benefit Haskins has though. Not being a real threat to run has made him develop his passing ability far beyond anything RG3 ever had. RG3 probably has a better arm overall. But he doesnt have the touch or accuracy that Haskins has.

 

 

 

RG had it, before he didn’t. 

 

 

[Bishop Hammer]

43 minutes ago, clskinsfan said:

That is a benefit Haskins has though. Not being a real threat to run has made him develop his passing ability far beyond anything RG3 ever had. RG3 probably has a better arm overall. But he doesnt have the touch or accuracy that Haskins has.

 

 

Its like a striker who has knock out power; he builds everything around that one big punch, ignoring fundumentals and basics.  Essentially becoming a one trick pony.  The problem is when his trick doesn't  work anymore they are incapable of adapting and has no other tools to suceed with.

 

Contrast that with a guy who has power but not one punch ko level, so they have to develops good footwork, defenese, and crisp combos and all the subtleties and nuances of their craft.  They will get more wins because they are better at landing hits and even if they don't register a knock out they have other strategies and weapons they can implement.  In the long run he will be the superior combatant.

[volsmet]

11 minutes ago, Bishop Hammer said:

 

 

Its like a striker who has knock out power; he builds everything around that one big punch, ignoring fundumentals and basics.  Essentially becoming a one trick pony.  The problem is when his trick doesn't  work anymore they are incapable of adapting and has no other tools to suceed with.

 

Contrast that with a guy who has power but not one punch ko level, so they have to develops good footwork, defenese, and crisp combos and all the subtleties and nuances of their craft.  They will get more wins because they are better at landing hits and even if they don't register a knock out they have other strategies and weapons they can implement.  In the long run he will be the superior combatant.

 

Haskins is Ali.

 

[Vanguard]

I like everything I’m hearing. The only thing is we have to rely on Jay to make the right decision. 🙄