OPINION:
You know that debate over downsizing the NFL preseason? One idea is to cut the number of meaningless games down from four to two.
The Washington Redskins might have a different view. Four may not be enough for coach Jay Gruden to get his team ready.
How about eight? Start the season in October?
“I don’t think really we know what kind of team we have until maybe October,” quarterback Kirk Cousins told reporters after the Redskins’ 23-17 win over Cincinnati Sunday — another game where the first-team offense and defense struggled.
You know, he might be right.
It just may take Gruden a little bit longer to get his team ready for the NFL season. They haven’t fared well in September under the coach.
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In his nightmare rookie season of 2014, the Redskins unfortunately had four games in September, and finished 1-3. But the next two seasons, 2015 and 2016, they struggled as well, starting 1-2 both years.
Imagine if the NFL did cut down the preseason to two games. What a disaster that would be for Gruden.
Nothing we saw Saturday night against the Bengals indicated that Washington will be ready to start the season against Philadelphia in the Sept. 10 opener at FedEx Field. But that game, and the ones that follow in September against the Rams in Los Angeles and the Raiders at home, will count.
“I think it’s always evolving, you’re learning, but we’re going to have to be ready,” Cousins said. “We don’t have a choice. So if the question is if we’re going to be ready, the answer is yes, we’re going to be ready to go. We’ll get started right away. We’re not going to focus on Tampa this week. After we watch the game film tomorrow, we’ll start watching the Philly film and get ready. So we got two weeks and we need to come away with a ’W,’ especially at home. It’s a big opportunity for us.”
That is going to be hard to do if, as Cousins said, they will be searching for their identity until October.
The man leading that search — Jay Gruden — really has no answers.
“I don’t know if anybody truly has their identity set in the third preseason game,”Gruden told reporters.
I might quibble with the coach there: I think the Packers had their identity pretty much figured out against the Redskins in the second preseason game.
“I think that’s something that’s going to be ever-changing,” Gruden said. “And we’re going to try to establish that as the regular season goes on with some consistent play.”
Well, that would explain the slow starts under Gruden. It’s a process.
“I’m a little concerned,” he said. “I addressed it in the locker room over there, we’ve just got to figure out something to do — eat a different pregame meal or something, change the first 15 up. We’ll get it right.
“I think the guys will come out with a little bit more energy, more urgency hopefully come Philadelphia,” he said. “They have to. We can’t start like that in the NFL consistently and expect to win a lot of games.”
Energy. Urgency. When we last saw the Washington Redskins in a game that counted, they displayed neither, when both were expected in 19-10 loss to the New York Giants — a team that didn’t need to do either — last year to eliminate the Redskins from the playoffs.
How can anyone look at the Redskins preseason performance in these three games and not remember the way this team ended last season — not just the pathetic Giants loss, but the embarrassing defeat at the hands of the losing Carolina Panthers at home two weeks earlier?
“Our identity? We’ll see,” Gruden said.
Or we have already seen it — and chose not to believe it.
There is a two-week window of identity opportunity for Washington in early October that, providing they haven’t completely tanked the season by then. After they travel to Kansas City to play the Chiefs on Monday night, Oct. 2, Washington has a bye week, followed by a visit to FedEx Field by an old friend — former offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan.
After a bye week and a home game against the 49ers, coming off a 2-14 season, everyone should know what the Redskins identity is, for better or worse.
• Thom Loverro hosts his weekly podcast “Cigars & Curveballs” Wednesdays available on iTunes, Google Play and the reVolver podcast network.
• Thom Loverro can be reached at tloverro@washingtontimes.com.
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