Washington Extends Taylor Heinicke

Taylor Heinicke briefly lit the NFL world on fire with his electric performance in a wild card playoff loss to the Bucs, and Washington isn’t about to let him walk out the door. Washington has given Heinicke a two-year extension worth $8.75MM to keep him around, sources told Ian Rapoport of NFL Network (Twitter link).

Rapoport adds that there are “also incentives depending on how many games he starts.” Washington’s quarterback situation is very unsettled, so it makes sense why they’d want to at least have Heinicke as a fallback option. Alex Smith is sounding like he wants to keep playing and is under contract for 2021, although the team can get out of it and they probably don’t want to pay him his hefty salary.

Heinicke has one of the most remarkable stories we’ve seen in some time, as just a couple of months ago he was out of the league and taking classes at Old Dominion, where he starred in college. He hadn’t been with an NFL team since training camp of 2019, when Washington signed him to their practice squad on December 8th.

An injury to Smith put him on the active roster, and then Dwayne Haskins was so ineffective he was benched for Heinicke in Week 16. He played surprisingly well, but Smith returned for Week 17. Washington got the win to get them in the playoffs, but Smith’s calf still wasn’t right, leading to Heinicke getting the postseason start.

He very nearly pulled off a massive upset, keeping them close against eventual Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay the entire way. He had previously only made one start, a spot start in 2018 with the Panthers in place of an injured Cam Newton. His familiarity with Ron Rivera and OC Scott Turner from those Panthers days ended up paying off for him, and that gutsy performance against the Bucs flipped him from working a day job to making millions as an NFL quarterback.

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