While the success of the football team is directly hindered by Washington’s inability to find and keep a quarterback under center over the past decade or so, one of the more frustrating things the carousel has led to is the underachieving of players elsewhere in the offense.
Without consistently solid quarterback play, it’s hard to ask any wide receiver or running back to be productive when they continually have to develop a connection with a new signal-caller. The person who has been affected by this the most over the past two years in WR Terry McLaurin, who is still one of the top young pass-catchers in the league despite dealing with five quarterbacks in his 19-game career. The thought is that with even a little bit of stability — think of DK Metcalf in Seattle, or AJ Brown in Tennessee — his ceiling would be so much higher.
The truth of the matter is that this is nothing new for Washington, a team that has been helplessly searching for their “franchise quarterback” for two decades now.
#WashingtonFootballTeam WR Rod Gardner, the team's first-round pick in 2001, caught a pass from 5 different QBs in his first 19 games: Jeff George, Tony Banks, Kent Graham, Shane Matthews & Danny Wuerffel. This crap's been going on forever. https://t.co/vMyBgoSMk1
— Dan Daly (@dandalyonsports) October 12, 2020
Rod Gardner, a first-round pick for Washington in 2001, played five seasons with the team, hauled in just 22 total touchdowns, and never made a Pro Bowl. Would he have been better with legitimate quarterback play buoying him? It’s possible. Is McLaurin in for a similar fate? Hopefully not.
Regardless, this quarterback problem in Washington is far from a new issue; it’s been going on for two decades now, and it’s gotten to the point where an inability to fix it has become impossible to ignore.
