The perplexing history between Ron Rivera and Dwayne Haskins gets a baffling new chapter

No one would have blamed Rivera if he cut Haskins the moment the pictures emerged of him partying maskless in a room full of people just hours after Sunday’s loss to the Seattle Seahawks. But handed the opportunity to rid himself of a player who seems to perpetually aggravate him, Rivera pulled back.

“He was truthful,” Rivera said of Haskins during his virtual news conference Wednesday.

“He apologized to everyone in person,” Rivera added.

“We had a very straightforward conversation,” Rivera also said.

On a team that has managed to dodge the coronavirus outbreaks that have staggered other locker rooms, the coach, who is recovering from cancer and at greater risk himself, refused to unload on a player who violated the NFL’s virus protocols for the second time. While some might view the $40,000 fine Rivera gave Haskins along with the stripping of the quarterback’s captain status to be a severe punishment, it was a far lighter sentence than Haskins could expect given the offense and the careless negligence shown toward his teammates’ pursuit of an NFC East title.

Rivera came to Washington vowing to change the losing culture that has been festering around this franchise for more than a decade. He talked a lot about accountability and responsibility and how men who play football for a living need to act like men. But with Haskins, the second-year quarterback he inherited, he has been nothing but perplexing, shifting from handing Haskins the starting quarterback job to yanking it away to overlooking one protocol breach to handing Haskins another chance after an even bigger protocol violation.

Asked Wednesday why he would give Haskins another opportunity, Rivera said it was because Haskins didn’t lie when Rivera called him Monday after the pictures of Haskins surfaced on social media. Rivera said he “appreciated” Haskins’s “honesty.” The coach said they talked “five or six times” Monday and Tuesday and described those chats as “really good conversations.”

“The thing that I appreciated is that he took responsibility and was very forthright,” Rivera said. “Going forward, that’s the thing we look for. If you make a mistake, you have to step up and you have to take responsibility.”

He went on to describe how Haskins apologized in front of the team and said it appeared as if there was “supportiveness” in the way the players responded.

And yet the answers were a struggle. When Rivera is certain about something — and Rivera is often certain about a lot of things — his explanations are sharp, precise and easy to follow. But when a decision seems to make less sense — at least from the outside — he almost appears to be talking himself through, searching for the conviction that frequently guides him. He grows irritated. Sometimes he snaps.

On Wednesday, he snapped.

“Don’t make what’s interesting important!” he growled.

“What’s important for this franchise right now is that we’re going forward, we play on Sunday,” he continued, emphasizing the words “forward” and “Sunday” as if spitting them out would make everyone forget what happened the previous Sunday evening.

“I want to get that really clear. We play on Sunday. The game on Sunday, to me, is more important than what has happened. What has happened has been dealt with. There have been consequences.”

It’s hard to know exactly how Rivera truly feels about Haskins. He raved about his quarterback in August, then appeared to be angry and offended when Haskins wasted his opportunity as the starter in early October. He has talked about Haskins’s growth while also looking flustered when Haskins made mistakes in the past two games filling in for the injured Alex Smith. He has refused to trade Haskins even after demoting him to third string and even sent signals that he hopes to continue to develop him.

But Haskins’s latest mistake was no accidental misstep. Nothing about the photos of Sunday night’s party look like it had been thrown together at the last minute, an intimate gathering that got out of control. He had to go knowing he was violating every expectation the team had for him — not just as a player but as a captain and leader.

Still, Rivera praised him for his honesty and said the biggest punishment was “holding him accountable,” even though the accountability was coming after breaking what should have been a sacred pact to not put himself in danger of contracting and spreading the coronavirus to the team.

With Smith suggesting he will be able to play Sunday, Rivera’s wavering on Haskins can’t be about the simple need for a quarterback to help him win a division title. There had to be a bigger reason, one he seemed unable or unwilling to explain.

During a year in which Rivera has done a magnificent job of steering his team through a minefield, bringing it to the verge of an improbable NFC East title, he wavered when given a chance to send a clear message to his players. And he couldn’t say why.

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