5 CRITICAL NFL TRAINING CAMP BATTLES PART 5

BY ADAM GREENE

It’s not been the happiest offseason for the Washington Football Team. They’ve had some issues, to be sure. You would think that suffering a corporate branding revolt on your racist team nickname would be the lowlight of said period between the Super Bowl and the kick off of the 2021 season, but Washington tossed in a systemic, organization-wide sexual harassment allegation to boot. Now, the team’s minor owners are publicly pressuring majority owner Dan Snyder to sell the team. It’s been a bad time.

But, thanks to the NFL instituting safety protocols league-wide and teams adhering to them as if their livelihoods depend on it (because they do), there will be an NFL season this year and training camp battles are happening all over the country.

Sometimes those battles are between first round picks and the guys they’re destined to replace. Others are open competitions as the team tries to field the best 11 personnel on both sides of the ball.

They’re undertaking those competitions after the strangest offseason in history, where teams could not hold a single rookie camp, mini camp, OTA or (approved) workout. Everything literally started when players reported at the end of July.

Which is why Washington’s preseason is about to get a whole lot weirder as they pick a quarterback in their own battle that no one is talking about.

DWAYNE HASKINS vs KYLE ALLEN (AND MAYBE ALEX SMITH)

While it may have flown under the radar, the training camp competition between Haskins and Allen was going to be real. Allen is head coach Ron Rivera’s hand picked guy. Rivera won five games with him last year with the Carolina Panthers and had no issues handing the kid the keys to the team once Cam Newton went down. With (and without Rivera), Allen had a solid season statistically. He started 13 games and completed 62 percent of his passes for 3,322 yards, 17 touchdowns and 16 interceptions.

Contrast that to Haskins, who started just seven games and completed 58.6 percent of his passes for 1,365 yards, seven touchdowns and seven picks.

The conventional wisdom is that Washington was coming into the season with Haskins, a 2019 first round pick out of Ohio State, as the presumptive starter. Don’t fall for that at all. Rivera specifically wanted Allen added to the roster and worked a trade for a fifth-round pick. Rivera likes Allen. He can win with him and the kid can play. And if you just looked at their stats last season, paying no heed to draft position or pedigree, you’d not be wrong to assume Allen was already seen as the starter.

But he’s not. Haskins is penciled in, but that eraser isn’t far away from the page. Throwing a wrench into the whole thing is the incredible recovery of quarterback Alex Smith. Smith nearly had his leg torn off two years ago in a game with Houston Texans and went through a gruesome recovery process. I will not link any articles or photos here, but feel free to Google sometime when you’re not eating.

The fact that Smith has come back from that and been cleared for any football activity is outstanding. The fact that he still wants to play at all is even more remarkable. Rivera has made it clear that if Smith is healthy, he is in the competition.

Only a healthy (in body and mind) Smith means there’s not really any competition. He’s better than both Allen and Haskins and had a very weak 2018 Washington team at 6-4 before he nearly got his leg forcibly removed. A former No. 1 overall pick himself, Smith has not recorded a losing record as a starter since 2011 and has led teams to double-digit wins four times. If his brain is in it, if his heart is in it and his body cooperates, the Washington Football team has its QB and will be better than any of us have expected this season.

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