Washington owner Daniel Snyder assured Ron Rivera that he would have roster control when Rivera accepted the team’s head coaching job last offseason, and it does not sound like that agreement was breached with the Dwayne Haskins situation.
Rivera told reporters on Wednesday that he is the one who made the decision to waive Haskins this week. He said Snyder was supportive of the move.
“I felt it was time to make the move. I made the decision,” Rivera said, per Nicki Jhabvala of the Washington Post. “I informed the owner of my decision. He was supportive and it was just something I felt we had to do. It was something I felt was in the best interest of both parties.”
One report claimed Rivera wanted to release Haskins last week but was talked out of it by Doug Williams, Washington’s senior vice president of player development. Williams denied that, and it sounds unlikely that Rivera would have been forced into keeping a player in his first season on the job.
Haskins was benched multiple times this season for his poor play. The former first-round pick was also stripped of his captain role recently for violating COVID-19 protocols by attending a party maskless.
Rivera may have ultimately made the decision, but there can’t have been much opposition. We learned on Tuesday that Haskins’ behavior was part of a troubling pattern.
