Written by Dan Steinberg at WashingtonPost.com
Washington’s season-ending loss to the Giants was comprehensive and convincing, a team-wide failure. Sometimes after a loss, there’s one obvious culprit. This time there were many. Here are a few that stick out.
Kirk Cousins
Every game this season felt like a referendum on Cousins after he was given the franchise tag, setting up another one-year prove-it situation. That was probably reductive and unfair; every game can’t be about the quarterback. But this one sure was.
After Washington tied the game in the fourth quarter, the defense forced an immediate three-and-out and Cousins had the ball right back, with 6:35 to play and the game in his hands. The result? Incomplete, incomplete, incomplete, punt.
The Giants then went ahead on a field goal, but Cousins got the ball back again, with more than two minutes on the clock and all three timeouts, needing a field goal to tie and a touchdown to win. Even after all his brilliance this year, it felt like a season-defining drive for Cousins. The result? He did two of the things that drive us craziest: refusing to scramble despite yards of open space in front of him, and then throwing late over the middle. The result was an interception, the end of the game, that old feeling of emptiness, and an offseason of more quarterback questions.
It was the worst possible ending for Cousins: a chance to do the one thing people most want to see (lead a late game-winning drive against a good team with heavy stakes), spoiled by the one thing people fear most (a bad decision made under duress leading to a gut-wrenching loss). Cousins has many, many defenders in town, but no one will defend his final game.
Josh Norman
If this season was about anyone besides Cousins, it was Norman, who arrived here with a big-time contract, a flurry of publicity and a penchant for speaking his mind. Norman is incredibly engaging, but he just won’t stop engaging, even when blandness sometimes feels like the better course.
So now let’s think back to Norman’s season as a whole. He called Commissioner Roger Goodell “a dog in a suit,” and “straight horrible” at his job. He openly called for Goodell to be replaced. He said one official“was terrible” and “should be reprimanded.” He repeatedly suggested he was under a microscope.
And wouldn’t you know, he wound up called for 19 penalties this season, including unnecessary roughness against the Giants in September, illegal use of hands four times in the tie against Cincinnati, unsportsmanlike conduct against the Browns, delay of game for kicking the ball against the Packers, and then both unnecessary roughness and unsportsmanlike conduct in the final loss. The first penalty — an obvious out-of-bounds shot on Odell Beckham — turned 1st-and-goal from the 7 into 1st-and-goal from the 4, no small difference for a team that has trouble scoring.
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