The Takeaways – Week 14, Redskins at Chargers
December 11, 2017
by Steve Thomas
I’m not entirely sure I can come up with enough properly descriptive adjectives to adequately describe just how terrible this game was for the Redskins franchise and its fans, but I’ll give it a shot: Unwatchable. Pathetic. Disaster. Rotten. Nauseating. Upsetting. Gut-wrenching. Just plain bad. Need I go on? You get the point. The Redskins’ 30 – 6 loss to the Chargers might have been the low point of the season, perhaps, in terms of effort and preparedness, with apologies to last week’s Dallas game. The end result of the loss was that Washington was officially eliminated both from the playoffs and from earning a winning record on the season. Yeah. Not the best week. Struggle as I might to come up with some positives about this week’s contest, I’m frankly striking out. Fortunately, though, the game doesn’t lack for our weekly “watercooler-style” takeaways. Be forewarned, though, they’re pretty negative. I feel like I’ve been writing that quite a bit lately.
This game was a dumpster fire in almost every possible way
The game could have been a nice redemption song[1] for the Redskins after last week’s debacle. After all, as we said on the game preview, the Chargers had some weaknesses: they had an average running game, and their defense had been bad on the season stopping the run. The Redskins, though, couldn’t take advantage, and were essentially terrible in every conceivable way. Kirk Cousins had probably his worst game of the season, Samaje Perine and the offensive line had absolutely no success whatsoever, the remaining uninjured portion of the receiving corps did little for most of the game. But all of that paled, though, in comparison to the Hindenburg-like disaster that was the Redskins defense. The point you need to take away from this game was that the Redskins defense literally never stopped the Charger offense at all until the point in time in which Los Angeles went into cruise control in the second half. It was one of the worst displays of professional-level defense that I’ve ever seen. The Redskins defensive unit displayed no pride, no heart, no ability, and clear evidence that they were grossly underprepared for the game, despite coming on the mini-bye due to last week’s Thursday game.
The Chargers were so dominate that they were one second away from scoring on every possession in the first half
I mentioned this in passing above, and it sounded like hyperbole, but it wasn’t. The Washington Redskins defense quite literally did not stop the Los Angeles Chargers offense from scoring AT ALL, ON ANY POSSESSION in the first half. The only time the Chargers didn’t at least get a field goal came on the last possession of the second quarter when rookie running back Austin Ekeler failed to fall down near the Redskins goal line and mistakenly ran the clock out. Not exactly confidence inspiring. I have no doubt that this level of dominance could have continued if the Chargers had wanted to really run the score up. Mercifully, they didn’t.
The Redskins secondary was a complete mess
This game was by far the worst game of the season for the Redskins secondary. This unit has some established talent – Josh Norman, D.J. Swearinger, Bashaud Breeland, and others, as well as young, developing players, but Sunday just wasn’t their day. Even Norman and Swearinger each had multiple coverage busts that resulted in long gains and touchdowns. It’s tough for observers who weren’t in the meeting room with these players to really know exactly what happened this week, but, without a doubt, the entire secondary drastically underperformed this week. Swearinger and Norman were both distraught in postgame comments, raising questions about the coaching, and Breeland expressed negative thoughts on Twitter shortly thereafter.
Kirk Cousins had perhaps his worst game of the year
Make no mistake: Kirk Cousins had a bad game. His first half interception might have been his worst pass of the season. He repeatedly threw poor, uncatchable balls, missed open players deep and otherwise, and generally threw gasoline on the fire started by those who want to see him run out of town. Cousins has been good this year, despite an utter lack of anything resembling a legitimate offensive weapon being active since Chris Thompson went to injured reserve. This week, though, was a regression to the early days of his tenure in D.C. To be fair, the Chargers have been brutal on quarterbacks this year, holding opposing passers to a quarterback rating well south of 80 on the year, but still: there’s no getting around the fact that Cousins played poorly this week.
The run game was utterly helpless
Finally, I can’t come up with enough bad adjectives to describe the state of the Redskins running attack, either. Against the Chargers, it was just flat-out ineffective. Samaje Perine didn’t play well, and hasn’t shown much to indicate that he’s capable of developing into a franchise-quality back, but it wasn’t all his fault. Perine was repeatedly and often hit in deep in the backfield and had little if any chance on several of his carries to turn it into a positive gain. Most certainly, with just 65 yards gained in the game, the rushing attack did not look like something expected from a professional football team. Unless you’re the New England Patriots – and this team most certainly isn’t – you can’t win in the NFL without at least a semblance of a run game, and right now, the Redskins don’t have it. Like, at all.
I hate to be so overly negative, kids, but the Takeaways are what they are, and this week, nothing went right. Jay Gruden has quite a bit of work to do, even understanding the injury situation, to salvage what’s left of this season and end up with a season that isn’t looked at as a failure. Let’s hope that things get better in the last three games; in fact, it’s hard to imagine a worse performance. With the Cardinals, Broncos, and Giants rounding out the 2017 campaign, this franchise has ample opportunity redeem itself, coaches and players alike. We’ll see if they have the heart and desire to rise up from the ashes and turn things around. We’ll be back with another edition of The Takeaways next week to find out.
[1] My apologies to the late Bob Marley.