The Zach Smith Affair Should Be Good For Dwayne Haskins

Every player is compared to players before them. As we get closer to the NFL draft, I started scrolling a long list of players to find a comparable to Dwayne Haskins of our beloved Ohio State Buckeyes. The name I came up with was Ben Roethlisberger.

Both are big. Both have a strong arm. Both went to school in Ohio. Both are athletic, but not particularly mobile. Truth be told, I think Dwayne looks more accurate in college, against better competition. On those levels, I would be confident to take Dwayne, because he compares favorably to Ben on those tangibles.

Ben is a Hall of Famer. His big knock is “that”. “That” being off the field stuff. I am not going to get into Ben’s off the field stuff. There are plenty of articles and threads for that. This article is about Dwayne and the speculation of his upcoming NFL career. Dwayne throws a mean, hard, accurate ball. He makes pretty good reads in his first season as a starter, at least throwing the football. Who cares about the run option in the NFL? So the next big question would be character.

Ohio State is a city, not a college town. They are one of the biggest stories in college football, so they receive plenty of national attention. Then, this year, they got all the attention of the Zach Smith thing. Again, I am not going to get into that. Where both of those scandals relate to this particular article is that the entire OSU program was under a microscope in Dwayne Haskins’ year as the starter.

Nothing.

The only thing we know about Dwayne Haskins outside of being Ohio State’s quarterback is that he was a cocky little grade schooler that proclaimed he would be the starting quarterback at Ohio State, which he did, in fact, accomplish. He also put up some big numbers and looked like an NFL quarterback. I promise you the media has looked to find off the field stuff for teenage and early 20s Dwayne. They found nothing.

Obviously giving someone 10s of millions of dollars can change them, but I would be confident in giving Dwayne a chance, in light of the light that has already been shone upon him.