Training camp may as well have been held in Shangri-La this season. There was no quarterback controversy. Few starting positions were open. No other team was in town to join in a massive fight. The Redskins practiced, played and talked about football, bolstering their chances to do something that the franchise has not pulled off since the 1982-83 seasons: Win back-to-back division championships.
Yes, it has been that long. The last batch of Redskins to win the division in consecutive seasons was led by Joe Theismann, John Riggins and Art Monk. The organization has won a Super Bowl more recently than it has taken the division from the Dallas Cowboys, New York Giants and Philadelphia Eagles twice in a row.
Maybe being boring — at least off the field — is the way to arrive there. Quarterback Kirk Cousins was happy to point out the positive legacy of the dull when he mentioned the San Antonio Spurs. That’s who Cousins wants the franchise to act like. Just win, all the time, without frills, excess or hysteria.
“I’ve told my teammates that I’d like to be the San Antonio Spurs of the NFL, be super boring and maybe people at the end of the season just go, ’Wow, they really had a good year and no one really talked about it,’” Cousins said during training camp. “I don’t need to promote myself. I don’t need to promote what we’re doing. We have plenty of people here who are very good at doing that if we play well enough. I just want to play football. I don’t want to worry about anything else, and I found from playing at Michigan State and playing even before that, if you win football games, everything else takes care of itself. It’s pretty simple. It’s a pretty simple recipe.”
When Cousins first brought up the idea of the Spurs, he was speaking from the podium midway through August. He hid his mild irritation with the question then. Back in Ashburn, he elaborated to The Times.
“I don’t like the fact that the question is being asked in the sense that it’s uncommon,” Cousins said. “I want it to be the norm. I want it to be expected. I don’t like that it’s not expected, so I’d like to get to a point where that question doesn’t need to be asked. It’s something we’re building toward, and the key is I’ll be the first to say we’re not there yet in terms of what they’ve accomplished. But it’s great to have something to shoot for and to have a vision for what it could look like someday and they’re a great example to look to. It’s going to flush itself out over a long period of time, not one season or one game. It will be years before we can see where that direction has gone.”
Invoking San Antonio’s success led to two things: First, it earned Cousins a custom Spurs jersey that the Texas team was happy to send. Second, it showed just how challenging that pursuit would be. Since the Redskins last won the Super Bowl in 1991, San Antonio has won 15 division titles, five NBA titles and made the playoffs 25 out of 26 seasons. The Redskins have six playoff appearances, three division championships and zero titles in that span. Crossing leagues for measurement is not an apples-to-apples comparison, but, hey, Cousins brought it up.
Much of the Redskins’ chance to repeat rests with Cousins. Though he mentioned “we” and “years,” this could be his last season in Washington. He’s playing under the franchise tag following the best passing season in organization history. That same lore shows how difficult it can be to repeat such success. Eight other Redskins quarterbacks have thrown for 3,500 yards or more in a season. Only Theismann has come close to replicating the feat. He passed for 3,714 yards in 1983. He followed that with 3,391 yards in 1984.
Washington entered the 2013 season as the defending division champions. Though Robert Griffin III was hurt in the preceding season’s playoff game, the Redskins, and many others, expected his second season in the league to be the continuation of his historic rookie work. Instead, they won three games and finished last in the division. Only 13 players from that roster remain, including left tackle Trent Williams.
“I think about that a lot,” Williams said. “We had that same optimism coming into the 2013 camp and that season wasn’t what we wanted it to be. You know, it’s definitely tricky man. I guarantee you at least half of the teams right now feel like they can go out and win a Super Bowl. That happens when you deal with professionals, guys who take a lot of pride in their craft you’re going to feel that way. But to continuously come out here and compete and practice and make each other better, that’s when you get over this hump.”
The NFC East may be the most open division in football. Tony Romo’s injury has pushed a rookie into quarterback duty for Dallas. Eli Manning played fantastic football last season, but the Giants are starting without coach Tom Coughlin for the first time since 2004. In Philadelphia, the Eagles are trying to undo the damage wrought by allowing former coach Chip Kelly to make roster decisions. Even Las Vegas is unsure how to project the division. New York is the slight betting favorite. The Cowboys and Redskins have equal odds behind the Giants. Only the Eagles lag. Washington’s chance to take the division again is not just optimism-laced internal talk.
Which, in part, explains the jovial mood in the locker room. The area has been redone, resplendent with a Redskins logo in the center guarded by velvet ropes and a white sign that instructs the symbol is not to be tread upon. Lockers have been rearranged to merge position groups. To the left of the logo is a ping pong table that Williams frequents, though his success there is fleeting. To the right is an elevated shuffleboard table. As soon as practice ends, each is rapidly put to use. You don’t want to face punter Tress Way in ping pong. Stay away from wide receiver DeSean Jackson in shuffleboard.
Before the midway point of the season, the Redskins will have a good sense of their season’s direction. They play the Cowboys and Giants in Weeks 2 and 3, respectively. Then the hoopla touches down when the Browns and Griffin arrive in Week 4. By Week 6, half of their division games will be done.
“All the off-the-field stuff and the entertainment value that people are looking for, hopefully they don’t find it here,” Gruden said. “We’re very businesslike in our approach and we’re trying to rebound from last year’s loss to the [Green Bay] Packers and repeat as NFC East champions and go a little bit further.”
The history of the division, and of the Redskins, suggests that will be difficult. Philadelphia was the last team to win the NFC East in back-to-back seasons. That was more than a decade ago, in 2004. The Redskins at least have a reasonable chance, which wouldn’t be an option if the team had not righted itself in the first place.
⦁ Anthony Gulizia contributed to this story.
• Todd Dybas can be reached at tdybas@washingtontimes.com.
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