Sport: Football
Born: May 3, 1997
Died: April 9, 2022
Town: Highland Park, New Jersey
Dwayne Haskins Jr. was born May 3, 1997 in Highland Park, NJ. Big and fast with a powerful arm, he gravitated to football and was a huge fan of the New York Giants and their quarterback, Eli Manning. Dwayne began his high-school football career at the Bullis School in Potomac after his family moved to Maryland in 2011.
Dwayne lit it up as a sophomore, emerging as a national-caliber recruit by his junior season for the Bulldogs. He led the Bullis varsity to conference titles three straight years and was named first-team All-Maryland as a senior after throwing for 20 scores and 2,200 yards. Dwayne graduated with 54 TD passes and 5,308 passing yards. Heavily recruited as a junior and senior, he initially picked Maryland over Rutgers, but then opted for Ohio State when the Terrapins fired their coach. Former Buckeye and Redskin Shawn Springs, who had been instrumental in getting the family to move south, also talked him into switching schools.
By the time Dwayne started his freshman season he stood 6’3” and weight 220 pounds. He red-shirted 2016 and sat for a year behind starter J.T. Barrett in 2017, attempting just 57 passes. As a sophomore in 2018, Dwayne seized the starting job and put up record-smashing numbers. He threw for over 300 yards in 8 of Ohio State’s 12 games, and added a 499-yard day with 5 TDs in the Big Ten Championship win over Northwestern. In all, Dwayne completed 70 percent of his 533 passes for 4,831 yards and 50 touchdowns—becoming just the sixth Division I player to throw for 50 scores. Both numbers set conference records. He was one of three finalists for the Heisman Trophy, finishing behind quarterbacks Kyler Murray and Tua Tagovaiola. In the way of a consolation, Dwayne beat out these two for the Sammy Baugh as the NCAA’s best passer.
All told, the Buckeyes went 13–1 in 2018 and beat Washington 28–23 in the Rose Bowl. The lone loss was a stunning 49–20 upset by Purdue, in which the Buckeye defense yielded four fourth-quarter touchdowns to the Boilermakers. After the Rose Bowl, Dwayne declared for the NFL Draft, and many expected that he would be the first quarterback taken—possibly as an understudy to his hero, Manning.
The Giants surprised everyone by taking Duke’s Daniel Jones with their pick. The Washington Redskins then snapped up Dwayne with the 15th pick in the first round. They installed Dwayne as the backup to veteran Case Keenum, and he saw his first NFL action against the Giants in a blowout loss at the end of September. Dwayne completed 9 of 17 passes in his debut, but also threw three interceptions.
In November, with Washington’s record standing at 1–7 and Jon Gruden fired, new coach Bill Callahan anointed Dwayne the starter. After losses to the Bills and Jets, Dwayne guided the ’Skins to back-to-back victories over the Lions and Panthers. His first pro TD pass was a 45-yarder to Derrius Guice in the Jets game. Dwayne’s two best performances of the year came in his final games of 2019—though both were losses—against the Eagles and Giants. He tossed a pair of touchdown passes in each, completing a total of 31 of 43 passes, with no interceptions. Dwayne’s season came to an end late in the Giants game when he injured his ankle. His final numbers in 9 games (7 starts) were 119 of 203 pass completions for 1,365 yards, with 7 touchdowns and 7 interceptions.
Dwayne began 2020 as the team’s starting QB, but lost the job in October due to a combination of poor results and less-than-stellar off-field decision-making. His unwillingness to mask up during the Covid pandemic cost him nearly $50,000 in fines and eventually Washington released him.
Hoping to resurrect his career, Dwayne sign with the Steelers as a third-string option in Ben Roethlisberger’s final NFL campaign. He went unused that year but the Steelers signed him in 2022 and invited him to training camp for another look.
In the spring of 2022, Dwayne was in Florida to train with a group of Steeler teammates. In the early morning of April 9, his rental car ran out of gas on I-595 and he attempted to cross the highway on foot to reach a gas station. He was clipped by a truck and then staggered into the path of an SUV that had swerved to avoid him. His death was ruled an accident, however an autopsy revealed three times the legal limit of alcohol in his bloodstream, along with ketamine.