OPINION:
Kirk Cousins sat in front of his locker in the Redskins dressing room, the last locker before one of the exits.
If it has been up to him, he would have probably preferred to get up and walk out that exit, still in uniform, and not answer questions about his disappointing performance in Washington’s spirit-crushing 27-23 loss to the Dallas Cowboys at FedEx Field.
But he couldn’t. He had a responsibility to answer for Sunday. He had no answers, though. No one did, save for perhaps a possible alarming conclusion.
Kirk Cousins is not a franchise quarterback.
He’s getting paid like one — the well-documented $20 million franchise price tag the Redskins are paying him this season. And he will likely play better this season than he did Sunday against the Cowboys.
Franchise quarterbacks, though, win games like Sunday for a team coming off a 38-16 beating six days earlier on the same field by the Pittsburgh Steelers. They win games against division rivals led by a rookie quarterback on fields designated to be their home stadium, which technically, is FedEx Field.
AUDIO: Redskins defensive lineman Dave Butz with Thom Loverro
Franchise quarterbacks don’t let their team, defending the division title, fall to 0-2 to start the season. They don’t miss touchdown opportunities with weapons at their disposal that his coach, Jay Gruden, said last week they sometimes get too “giddy” about.
Is it fair to put it all on Cousins?
Gruden did when he came off the field at halftime and he told Fox Sports TV reporter Pam Oliver, “You know who needs to step up? Our quarterback.”
On Sunday, that was Cousins. We’ll see how long that continues.
Gruden was more sympathetic after the game, telling reporters, “Can’t put it all on Kirk, you know, there’s a lot of other issues that we had today, that’s for sure — coaching, players, offense, defense — we all had our hand in that one.”
But when Gruden credited the Cowboys for their win, he mentioned one player -— rookie quarterback Dak Prescott — taken, as Cousins was, in the fourth round. “Hats off the Dallas and Jason Garrett and Dak Prescott,” he said.
The quarterback gets the money, gets the credit, gets the blame and sometimes gets the win for their team.
Cousins got the money. He didn’t get the win when his team needed it.
Cousins sat in front of his locker and slowly peeled off and removed every piece of his uniform and pads, as if each one of them was a question he was about to face from reporters. He seemed smaller than his 6-foot-3, 210-pound frame when he got up to walk to the shower — as if water could wash away his play — and was stopped in the middle of the locker room by general manager Scot McCloughan.
McCloughan shook Cousins’ hand, grabbed his arm, and spoke to him privately for several minutes, in what appeared to be a “don’t worry about it, you’ll bounce back” sort of talk.
I suspect it was a little different from what McCloughan may have been telling himself as he watched Cowboys rookie Dak Prescott play with the poise and results of a franchise quarterback — you know, when McCloughan may have been thinking, “OK I’ll take one of those. You know, one of those $500,000 young quarterbacks.”
The official numbers were 22 completions for Prescott for 292 yards, no touchdown passes, but no interceptions for a 103.8 quarterback rating. For Cousins, 28 completions in 46 attempts for 364 yards, one touchdown, and one back-breaking end zone interception by Dallas safety Barry Church with the Redskins leading 23-20 in the fourth-quarter. That interception led to an 80-yard Cowboys drive, ending with four-yard touchdown run by, of course, former Redskins running back Alfred Morris, to put Dallas ahead 27-23 with less than five minutes remaining in the game.
You could almost hear the fans in the stadium who were rooting for the Redskins (an important distinction, at these so-called “home” games) collectively say, “And we let him go.”
Shortly after his brief talk with McCloughan, Cousins, dressed in street clothes to meet the press, was called by Gruden into his office at FedEx field for about a 10-minute closed door meeting.
No one knows what was said in that meeting, but when Cousins came into the press conference to meet with reporters, he looked like a beaten man.
“Yeah, I wasn’t good enough,” as he opened the press conference, sounding as if he had heard those words just a few minutes earlier. “I need to play better. I can play better and I believe going forward I will play better.”
I asked him about his head coach calling him out on national television at halftime. Cousins responded, “You mention that quote as if it’s surprising or determines something, and I would say that’s common sense.”
If Cousins doesn’t see his head coach laying the entire first half of dismal football at his feet on national television as noteworthy, then it’s no wonder he didn’t see the four Cowboys players near Pierre Garcon when he threw his fourth quarter interception. He’s not seeing the field, both on it and off it.
• Thom Loverro can be reached at tloverro@washingtontimes.com.
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