Many Washington fans may have held strong in the belief that they had no need for another quarterback coming out of the 2021 NFL Draft, but the recent happenings under Ron Rivera might have changed the tides quite a bit on that one.
After former first-round pick Dwayne Haskins was benched after Week 4, Rivera decided to go with the make-shift option at QB, sticking both Kyle Allen and Alex Smith under center. It seems fair to assume that neither of those players will be the franchise QB that Washington needs, so the belief that the team will look for a signal-caller in the first round of the 2021 NFL Draft is well-founded.
Luckily for Washington, it seems likely that they will have a valuable pick in the draft, and there are a number of passers that fit the mold of franchise QB. In the latest mock draft from CBS Sports, Washington is pegged to take yet another quarterback from Ohio State, this time in Justin Fields.
When your second-year QB, one you drafted 15th overall, has gone from starter to inactive in the span of a week, and there appears to be no change to that status barring injury … well, then it’s probably safe to assume the ol’ Football Team is in the market for its next franchise quarterback. Fields succeeded Dwayne Haskins at Ohio State but he’s considered a much better prospect, at least at this stage of their respective college careers.
Fields is a 6-foot-3, 230-pound quarterback who started his career at the University of Georgia before transferring to OSU. In his first year with the Buckeyes, he threw for 41 touchdowns with just three interceptions and rushed for 484 yards and 10 touchdowns. He finished third in the 2019 Heisman Trophy voting, placing behind Joe Burrow and Jalen Hurts.
Could Fields be the guy that Washington thought they were getting when drafting Dwayne Haskins? It’s possible. Aside from that, though, it’s clear that Washington will need to draft a QB with their first-round pick next year, and aside from Trevor Lawrence, it would be hard to do much better than the fellow former-Buckeye.
