ANALYSIS/OPINION:
When asked last week about facing future Hall of Fame quarterback Aaron Rodgers, Washington Redskins quarterback Kirk Cousins said, “Aaron Rodgers is Aaron Rodgers.”
Rodgers was every bit Aaron Rodgers on Sunday, leading the Green Bay Packers to a 35-18 win over the NFC East champion Redskins and ending Washington’s season before more than 81,000 at FedEx Field, completing 21 of 36 passes for 210 yards and two touchdowns.
Kirk Cousins, though, is no longer Kirk Cousins — at least not the Cousins who was benched last season and started this year on shaky ground, despite the declaration of his coach, Jay Gruden, that “this is Kirk’s team” before the season started.
That was nothing to be proud of in the first game of this season, with a two-interception performance and a 38.2 quarterback rating in a 31-21 loss to the Miami Dolphins at home. It didn’t get much better — until his team was down to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 24-0, at halftime in week seven.
That’s when Cousins became a different guy.
He led his team to a remarkable 31-30 win — the largest comeback in franchise history — and punctuated it by yelling into television cameras after the game as he walked toward the Redskins locker room, “You like that!”
It became the team motto and came to define the new Cousins. If you are a Redskins fan, how can you not like what you saw in the last two months of the season — 19 touchdowns and just two interceptions and named NFC Offensive Player of the Month for December as he led the Redskins to a 6-2 record and the division title.
He’s not Rodgers — at least not yet. He showed that Sunday, and he may never be.
But Cousins — who completed 29 of 46 passes for 329 yards and one touchdown — showed he is clearly the best option for the Redskins moving forward.
“We had high hopes, obviously,” Gruden told reporters last week. “He’s our starting quarterback and we have a lot of weapons around him. I think once our weapons got entirely healthy we felt good about our offense and our scheme. Kirk has probably done a little bit better than a lot of people have thought. But, in-house, I think a lot of people around here have a lot of confidence in what he can do with the football.”
The progress that Cousins showed this year validated Gruden’s decision to name him the starter over Robert Griffin III — who will likely be released soon — and with that move will come the end of the RGIII story in Washington.
With a full season under his belt as a starter, going into the offseason with no doubt who the team’s quarterback is — providing it gets Cousins’ contract status settled, as he is set to become a free agent, the best may be yet to come for Cousins, who said Sunday that he “wants to be where he is wanted.”
Cousins has proven he has learned from his mistakes and also has proven that those mistakes no longer define him. Sunday’s loss to the Packers, ending the Redskins’ season, will not likely define him moving forward, either.
“Every experience that he had, he’s going to benefit from — every situation that he was in throughout the course of the season, and there was a lot of them, we’re going to study very diligently in the offseason and a lot of situations that happened throughout the season on other teams,” Gruden said following Sunday’s loss. “We’re going to study to make him better and get him better. It was a great experience for him — and for the entire team, for that matter. A lot of the young guys got some quality work this year, and it’s only going to make them better moving forward.”
Rodgers sat behind Brett Favre in the first three years of his career in Green Bay, and, when he finally started in his fourth year, performed well — 28 touchdowns, 13 interceptions, 4,038 yards and a 93.8 quarterback rating — but the best was yet to come.
Cousins finished the fourth season of his NFL career, his first as a starter, with 29 touchdowns, 11 interceptions, 4,166 yards and a 101.6. And the best may be yet to come.
“We’re building something for the future,” Gruden said.
So is Cousins.
⦁ Thom Loverro is co-host of “The Sports Fix,” noon to 2 p.m. daily on ESPN 980 and espn980.com.
• Thom Loverro can be reached at tloverro@washingtontimes.com.
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