Dwayne Haskins did not play in Week 17 after sustaining an ankle injury two weeks ago against the New York Giants. However, we shouldn’t let the unfortunate way his season ended overshadow how well he was playing against New York. Prior to the injury, he was not only on pace to have his best game of the year, but to have one of the best games played by any quarterback this season.
Prior to his injury, Haskins was performing well on multiple metrics
Haskins’ statistics before the injury are already impressive. In just over two-quarters of play, he completed 12 of 15 pass attempts for 133 yards and two touchdowns. But if you extrapolate those statistics to represent an entire game, they look even better. Given the fact that Haskins averaged approximately 28 pass attempts per game across his six starts before Week 16, we can estimate what his final statistics would have been if he had played for a full 60 minutes: 22 of 28 passing, 222 yards, and four touchdowns. That would be a great day for any quarterback, and it would be Haskins’ best statistical performance on the season by a wide margin.
Haskins also graded incredibly highly on PFN’s own Offensive Share Metric (OSM), which measures how much of a player’s production was the result of their own play, rather than the play of their teammates. In Week 16, Haskins received a grade of 57.3, his highest of the season by a 20-point margin. It was also the third-highest grade of any quarterback this season, only ranking behind two performances by likely 2019 MVP Lamar Jackson. Haskins’ high grade indicates that not only did he have good numbers, he was also directly responsible for a large percentage of those statistics, especially when compared to other quarterbacks this season.
Explaining the statistics behind Haskins’ OSM grade
When you examine how Haskins performed on the advanced metrics used in calculating the OSM, it rapidly becomes clear why his grade was so high. To start with, the NFL calculates a metric that they call intended air yards (IAY). Simply put, the metric measures how far a quarterback throws the ball downfield before it is either caught by a receiver or hits the ground. Across his 15 pass attempts, Haskins threw the ball an average of 11.2 yards downfield. When looking only at completed passes, the average was just slightly lower, at 9.7 yards, nearly a first down per completion. Both averages were the third-highest of any quarterback in Week 16. Haskins also threw into tight coverage on 40% of his pass attempts, more than any other quarterback that week.
Taking these factors into account, you would probably expect Haskins to have had a low completion percentage. And that isn’t an unreasonable assumption. Using advanced metrics, the NFL calculates what percentage of their passes a quarterback should complete during a game. Based on the difficulty of his passes, Haskins’ expected completion percentage was just 58.9%. However, as you probably already noticed, his actual completion percentage was significantly better than that, at 80%, 21.1% higher than expected. That is a remarkable level of efficiency, considering how challenging the passes he attempted were, and show just how dominant Haskins was in a short timeframe.
Reasons for caution when examining Haskins
There are a few caveats that must be mentioned when examining Haskins’ performance. First, it would be disingenuous to present Haskins’ statistics without bringing up the fact that we only have a relatively small sample size from this game to examine. Although we can make educated guesses as to how Haskins would have played in the second half, it’s impossible to know for certain what would have happened if Haskins had avoided injury. His statistics might have fallen off in the second half, and our perspective on his performance would be completely different.
Additionally, the Giant’s pass defense is one of the worst in the NFL, and it’s essential to keep that in mind when praising Haskins’ performance. It’s worth noting here that the Redskins backup, Case Keenum, played well after Haskins was injured, receiving a more than respectable OSM grade of 29.03. That said, good players are supposed to play well against bad teams, and that is exactly what Haskins was doing before he was forced to leave the game.
Haskins’ future in Washington post-injury
Because of Haskins’ injury, his Week 16 performance was the last time we will see him play before next season. However, it was undoubtedly a strong note to end his rookie season on. If he can continue trending upwards, the Redskins might have found their franchise quarterback of the future. Then again, Washington doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to quarterbacks.
It wasn’t so long ago that Robert Griffin III and Kirk Cousins were having excellent seasons for Washington, and neither player stayed with the team in the long-term. In the last two seasons, the team tried to solve the problem by signing Alex Smith and Case Keenum, but neither move panned out. Hopefully, owner Dan Snyder and whoever he hires to fill the vacant head coach and general manager positions will learn from those past mistakes, because Haskins is clearly a promising player. It would be a shame if the franchise’s incompetence ruined him.