Alex Smith hopes Dwayne Haskins can ‘cut a lot of distractions’ from his life

Raise your hand if you had no idea when you woke up yesterday that Dwayne Haskins would end up being relevant to your life. For the record, I have my hand up, but now I’m producing articles on the 2019 first-round pick who just signed a contract with the Pittsburgh Steelers.

While this is a virtually risk-free move, the context obviously makes the story much bigger than it needs to be, and of course, it has the power to make it as big as it needs to be. wish it, provided it works well and does. whatever is asked of him.

The Washington football team didn’t feel it, and so he was let go, despite having a solid head coach in Ron Rivera and a very experienced veteran presence around him at quarterback in Alex. Smith – which he will also have in Pittsburgh with Mike Tomlin and Ben Roethlisberger. Smith recently spoke about his former teammate on the Yahoo Sports NFL podcast.

“The first thing I hope with Dwayne – and I told him – is that you don’t stand a chance until you eliminate a lot of distractions in your life,” he said. declared. “It’s difficult as a young player, as a young draft pick, certainly as a quarterback with a lot of weight and expectations.”

“You have a lot of voices telling you different things. In the end, it all comes down to playing well on the football field, ”he added. “You have to be able to cut out all of that other stuff, because none of that matters if you can’t play at a high level. You can never become the player, your potential if you don’t eliminate all of that as well. So my hope for Dwayne is to do so.

It’s not often that a team gives up a first-round quarterback within two years without at least getting something back for him in the form of trade compensation, and needless to say, that’s always a signal. major alarm when this sort of thing happens.

The chances of Haskins actually turning into a quarterback for the Steelers franchise are pretty low, let’s just say that. But it certainly wouldn’t be a bad thing if he could develop into a proper save – or at least someone another team would want to sign to give them a compensating choice.