D6 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 , 2020
NFL WEEK 1
JONATHAN NEWTON/THE WASHINGTON POSTThe Washington Football Team takes the field to start the 2020 season against the Philadelphia Eagles at FedEx Field. After a slow start, Washington began the season with a surprising comeback victory.
camp in excellent shape and
instantly struck those
teammates who hadn’t seen
him in months as an adult who
walked with certainty as
opposed to a kid who looked
overwhelmed by the NFL, no
one could know until there was
a test. No one could know until
Washington was down 17-0 to
the Eagles.
Just before halftime, Haskins
led Washington on a
touchdown drive following an
interception that at least left
everyone feeling as if they were
still in the game. Then, at
halftime, with Rivera out of the
locker room getting an IV feed
that the coach had planned
with the team’s training staff,
Haskins stepped into the
middle of the room and started
talking.
He told the team about its
first game last year, against
these same Eagles in
Philadelphia, in which
Washington led 20-7 at halftime
only to fall apart in the second
half and lose by five points. It
was a defeat that sent the team
spiraling into a 3-13 disaster
and led to Rivera’s hiring two
days after the season’s end.
“Find a way to win,” Haskins
told them.
“Got everyone riled up,”
Rivera said.
“Like a leader, he gave a
speech,” cornerback Fabian
Moreau said.
“I felt that we were in kind of
a lull,” Haskins later said. “We
were trying to do as much as
we can, but I tried to find a way
to motivate the guys in the
second half.”
During training camp, there
were days when Haskins didn’t
look like the team’s future
quarterback. His throws were
too long or too short. But
Rivera never seemed to mind
much. Haskins was throwing
the ball to the right place, the
coach said. He was making the
right reads. In the end, those
right reads were the final
pieces of evidence that
encouraged Rivera to give his
team to Haskins.
Then, on the first day, they
both ignored the early bad
passes and found a way to do
something that hasn’t been
done around here much lately.
They won a game.
[email protected]they would believe in. At the
time, Rivera must have
assumed they would work on
this together, with the
quarterback stopping by the
team’s facility for regular talks
and bonding sessions that
would run through offseason
workouts. But then came the
novel coronavirus, and all in-
person contact stopped. For
months, Rivera had to hope
Haskins was growing into the
man the coach envisioned. But
he couldn’t be sure until
training camp.
And while Haskins came togave” and “making plays when
he had to.” Then he used a word
he often uses when describing
what he hopes this team will
come to have as it builds this
thing forward. He said Haskins
showed “resilience.”
“I was proud of him,” Rivera
added.
Back in the winter, Rivera
challenged his quarterback to
be the team’s most important
player. It wasn’t as much of a
physical demand as a mental
one. He wanted Haskins to
show he was someone other
players could follow, the one“It did validate [my
decision],” Rivera said after the
game. “But, again, this is a
league of what have you done
for me lately, so next week he’ll
be judged again.”
Rivera didn’t smile, but it
was clear he loved what he saw
from Haskins on Sunday
afternoon. He liked the way
Haskins didn’t rattle when
nothing went right for the
game’s first 1^1 / 2 quarters and
Philadelphia built a 17-0 lead.
He said he liked the way
Haskins “responded after the
first quarter, taking what theythree wins.
In many ways, Haskins’s
performance was very much
like one of Smith’s — rugged
and durable, without turnovers
and filled with quick, simple
completions and scrambles for
first downs at just the right
moment. It was a game won not
with highlights — because
there might not be one play
Haskins made Sunday that begs
to be shown on the postgame
shows — but with the one
thing everyone had questioned
most about Haskins:
leadership.Back in the
spring, when Ron
Rivera was still
new as
Washington’s
football coach
and wasn’t sure what he had
with his team, he could have
made an easy decision to try to
quickly ignite the winning. His
old team, the Carolina
Panthers, was about to release
Cam Newton, the quarterback
with whom he had won
division titles and earned a trip
to the Super Bowl, the one
quarterback he knew he could
trust.
While Newton had been hurt
for much of the previous two
seasons, Rivera would have
understood better than anyone
how close Newton was to being
strong again. Given what
Dwayne Haskins had been as a
rookie quarterback last season,
given how far he had to go to
be the leader Rivera needed to
begin the rebuilding here,
signing Newton would have
made so much sense.
But Rivera must have seen
something in Haskins that
might not have been obvious to
everyone else, something that
made him ignore the wayward
throws and the uncertainty of a
rookie who looked far from
ready to lead. He must have
seen someone who reminded
him of the quarterback who
had arrived with him in
Carolina in 2011, a young man
who he believed would take his
team to the playoffs. He must
have seen his next Cam
Newton.
Then, on Sunday, as
highlights of Newton in New
England Patriots blue kept
dancing on the giant video
boards that loomed behind
FedEx Field’s end zones,
Haskins played as big a role as
anyone in Washington’s 27-17
season-opening victory over
Philadelphia. It was not, by any
statistical measure, a brilliant
performance. Haskins
completed just 17 of 31 passes
for 178 yards, coincidentally
matching the number of
passing yards Alex Smith had
in each of his final three
victories as Washington’s
quarterback back in 2018. He
threw for one touchdown and
no interceptions, just like
Smith did in each of his last
Haskins shows he can be the reliable quarterback Rivera needs for this rebuild
On
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CARPENTER
JONATHAN NEWTON/THE WASHINGTON POST
Washington Coach Ron Rivera has shown confidence in Dwayne Haskins, and on Sunday the second-year quarterback was a steady leader.