Washington had the ball near midfield down 10 points early in the third quarter. Then the wheels fell off the kirk cousins bandwagon.
The newly-anointed franchise quarterback threw three interceptions in a span of five passes in the third quarter, had a fourth one picked off in the fourth quarter, on top of a first-quarter fumble that set up an early touchdown, and the Redskins were manhandled, 45-14, by the New York Giants Thursday night.
So much for the kirk cousins Is Better than RG3 Theory, which lasted all of one and three-quarters games. After lighting up Jacksonville, and honestly, you or I could light up Jacksonville, Cousins put up big numbers in a 37-34 loss to Philadelphia that saw Cousins wilt in the fourth quarter with the game on the line.
And then came Thursday Night on CBS. With a national-TV audience full of fantasy football players watching their waiver-wire pickup for the first time, Cousins crapped the bed to the point where Washington fans took to Facebook en masse to plead for Colt McCoy to get the ball.
It’s not all Cousins’ fault, to say the least. The Redskins have plenty of weapons on offense (Alfred Morris, DeSean Jackson, Pierre Garcon, et al). What they don’t have is an offensive line that can prevent opposing front-sevens from imposing their will, and any sense of identity on the offensive side of the ball. To wit: a look at the box score shows that Washington ran for 5.1 yards per carry, but still gained only 86 yards on the ground, because the Redskins only ran the ball 17 times.
You could say to that point, Yeah, well, they lost by 31 points, they probably had to throw the ball, but the game was still a 10-point game early in the second half, right before the INT barrage turned the game into a rout.
Defensively, the Redskins looked like a JV team against the new Eli Manning version of the West Coast offense, which is clearly starting to hit its stride. Manning finished 28-of-39 passing for 300 yards on the nose, four touchdowns and a somewhat dubious interception in the end zone in the third quarter on a ball that was deflected off a receiver’s hands a millisecond before it would have been his fifth TD pass.
How bad are these Washington Redskins, then? Remember how good the Joe Gibbs teams of the mid-1980s that had Joe Theismann, John Riggins, Mark Moseley, Dexter Manley and the Smurfs were? These Redskins are as bad as those teams were good.
A friend pointed out to me on Facebook toward the end of the game that Washington has already beaten Jacksonville, and that there isn’t another win on the schedule, making Washington the 31st-best team in the NFL. I countered that Alabama and Texas A&M might challenge for 31st.
– Column by Chris Graham
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