The Washington Football Team is in some trouble at the quarterback position. While it was known starting signal-caller Alex Smith was battling a calf injury and that it was likely head coach Ron Rivera was going to use two quarterbacks for Saturday's Super Wild-Card Weekend matchup against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, not many were expecting for Washington to be without Smith completely. Unfortunately, that worry became a reality on Saturday afternoon, when Smith was officially ruled out. Taylor Heinicke will be Washington's starting quarterback, but who will back him up?
Washington's new backup quarterback is Steven Montez, a 23-year-old rookie who has not taken a snap under center all season. Montez was born in Oakland, California and his father, Alfred, was a college quarterback who played at Texas Tech and Western New Mexico before spending one season in the NFL with the Oakland Raiders in 1996. Montez followed in his father's footsteps and became a college quarterback. According to the 247Sports Composite, Montez was rated as a three-star pro-style quarterback, and he committed to Colorado as a member of their 2015 class.
In four seasons at Colorado, Montez completed 62.4 percent of his passes for 9,710 yards, 63 touchdowns and 33 interceptions. He went undrafted in the 2020 NFL Draft, but did get a chance with Washington as a free agent. He was waived prior to the start of the regular season, but did enough to earn a practice squad spot. Montez has been on Washington's active roster for the last three weeks, but he is now directly in line for playing time should something unfortunate happen to Heinicke.
One team in this matchup has arguably the greatest quarterback of all time starting in Tom Brady, while the other team has two former undrafted free agents ready to roll. It should be an interesting matchup to say the least.
