Redskins' offense carried Cousins, not the other way around
Matt Williamson is a former scout for the Cleveland Browns, and spent the last 10 years at ESPN as a scout and co-host of "The Football Today Podcast."
Scot McCloughan has done a remarkable job rebuilding the Washington Redskins. Washington’s pass defense should now be very good with a wealth of edge pass-rushers, a decent defensive line, and the addition of Josh Norman at corner. There is a clear plan in place on the offensive side of the ball as well, and it mimics the one Jay Gruden had success with in Cincinnati: Surround a limited quarterback with a big, powerful offensive line coached by Bill Callahan, a strong running game, and an abundance of receiving weapons.
But a strange thing happened about midway through last season. Despite an improved offensive line, Washington’s running game wasn’t strong enough to carry the offense and make quarterback Kirk Cousins a peripheral piece rather than its focal point. Collectively, the Redskins' non-offensive linemen are very bad run blockers. But more than that, Matt Jones' debut as a lead back was checkered at best - one of the biggest shocks of this past offseason is that Washington didn’t bring in a running back to at least challenge Jones.
So, by default, Washington turned things over to Cousins - and things went well, at least on the surface. Before their wild-card loss to the Green Bay Packers, Washington finished the season on a four-game winning streak. In the second half of the season, it won six of its final eight games.
A win is a win in the NFL, but those six victories were against the Saints, Giants, Bears, Bills, Eagles, and Cowboys … not exactly great defenses. And while the stats say differently, Cousins wasn’t that good during that span.
Worrisome signs
From the Week 10 victory over New Orleans on, Cousins certainly delighted his fantasy owners. But after much tape review, it's clear that Cousins' success should largely be credited to very good line play and exceptional work from his pass-catchers. Cousins benefited much more from his supporting cast than the other way around.
Few seem to realize just how good Jordan Reed and DeSean Jackson truly are, while Jamison Crowder and Pierre Garcon are pieces any team would love to have. Now the Redskins have Josh Doctson, a first-round selection that some may have found shocking. But why did they take him? Because Cousins needs receivers who can consistently win. He needs receivers who can bail him out. Cousins needs open guys to throw to more than upper-tier passers do.
More dishearteningly, he should have thrown far more interceptions than he did. He was lucky in this regard, but by far, the No. 1 criticism of Cousins before this season was that he threw way too many interceptions. In fact, he was historically horrible in that department.
Remember, before the Week 10 contest against the dreadful Saints pass defense, Cousins’ touchdown to interception ratio was 10-to-9 (the same as it was for the entire 2014 season), and an extremely high percentage of his throws were very short and not difficult to complete.
All of a sudden, has a weak-armed quarterback with a penchant for throwing the ball directly to the opponent changed his stripes? The answer is no, and by no means is Cousins gifted enough to have a high interception percentage as if he were Brett Favre (or even Jay Cutler for that matter). He has to be a game manager in the mold of Alex Smith or Andy Dalton, with a lot of play action mixed in and a strong running game to lean on. Eight games is just not a big enough sample size to convince that someone who's historically turned the ball over as frequently as Cousins is finished giving gifts to the opponent.
He also isn’t an accurate or effective deep passer. While he only threw two interceptions during that eight-game stretch, quite a few more easily could have ended up in the other team’s hands - and probably should have. This was even truer in his uninspiring playoff game against Green Bay, the last time we saw Cousins.
What does Cousins' future hold?
The fans in Washington seem to love Cousins. Maybe it's just because he isn't Robert Griffin III. Maybe it's because he is a very hard worker and the Redskins had success with him leading the team the second half of last season. He is easy to root for.
What does management think of him, though? Cousins was given the franchise tag, but the Redskins haven't worked out a long-term deal to keep him around as their starter. However, the team didn’t draft a quarterback high either.
Quarterbacks are obviously extremely hard to find - even middle-of-the-road starters. But Cousins still has a long way to go before even earning that distinction. McCloughan did the right thing by giving Cousins this season to see if he can build on the second half of 2015, albeit against a much more difficult schedule.
Though McCloughan has done a very good job of bringing Washington back to respectability, he's likely about to learn the most difficult piece of the puzzle to find still isn't in the building.