Report: Ron Rivera made major admission to Tua Tagovailoa in Redskins meeting

If one new report is to be believed, the Washington Redskins’ interest in Tua Tagovailoa is very real.

According to Safid Deen of the South Florida Sun Sentinel, Redskins coach Ron Rivera told Tagovailoa that he wants to bring the Alabama quarterback to Washington to compete with Dwayne Haskins.

“They felt like Dwayne was not the guy right now,” a source told the Sun Sentinel. “They want to bring in Tua, just get it going and compete.”

A quarterback competition between two young players would certainly be unorthodox, and there’s reason to be suspicious of this report. It could be a smokescreen, and there are various reasons for that. Washington may be interested in trading the No. 2 pick and looking to drive up the price. If Washington did take Tagovailoa, however, it would certainly change the complexion of the draft, with Chase Young falling and quarterback-needy teams looking at their backup plans.

There have been a lot of rumors about how well Tagovailoa’s meetings are going. He’s likely to go high in the draft, but we’re certainly getting a lot of mixed signals about where. Clarity is unlikely to come soon.