I drink the Kirk Cousins Kool-Aid, but I don’t swallow everything.

New York Giants v Washington Redskins

I drink the Kirk Cousins Kool-Aid, but I don’t swallow everything.

No, Kirk Cousins did not have an incredibly horrible, terrible bad game against the Eagles. But, Hog Heaven’s entire impression of his day came down to one play—His intercepted pass at the goal line that deflated any chance the Redskins had to win. Inexcusable!

After 45 NFL starts, Capt. Kirk should know that taking a sack was better than a pick.

“They” say it takes seven new impressions to wipe out a bad first impression. If Kirk avoids another such blunder in the next seven games. All will be forgiven forgotten.

Poor Comparison to these guys.

Win or lose, there were two QB peers that Kirk would be measured against, Carson Wentz and Matthew Stafford.

Hog Heaven has been skeptical of Wentz based on his 2016 performance. We never got why scouts and pundits were high on the guy coming into 2017. But we get it now. Wentz is agile, mobile and somewhat hostile. To go by ESPN’s QBR rating, Wentz (QBR 48.1) was a bigger factor in the Eagles’ offense than Kirk (QBR 33.6) was for the Redskins.

The Lions made Stafford the league’s highest paid player. His opening play was a pick-6 against the Cardinals. Stafford, however, threw four TD passes while leading Detroit to a win. His QBR was 76.1. No one mentions the pick-6.

Stafford’s contract helps Cousins’ agent to make the case for a long-term deal with the ‘Skins. It sets the bar for the free agent market. Games against the Rams this Sunday and the 49ers in Week 6 are auditions for the two teams thought to have the most interest in Kirk in 2018. That incentive may work to our advantage.

It felt incredibly weird to write that.

Not forgetting about you, Jay Gruden.

Most fans would agree that Head Coach Gruden should do some deep soul searching about his preseason methods and processes. Most fans have never played or coached at this level, but it’s plain that something is off about on field performance in opening games.
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With turnover in the receiving corps, a gimpy Jordan Reed and mystifying shroud around Josh Doctson (cough: Malcolm Kelly), you would think the coach would make more use of preseason games to let Cousins and Terrelle Pryor work out their timing issues. Such things are refined at game speed.

But what do we know, other than what we see?

Rushing game, not very good.

We wrote that in our best Steve Spurrier voice.

QB Cousins was the leading rusher again the Eagles. The actual running backs averaged 2.6 yards per carry.

If your backs can’t average 4.5 YPC, you have issues with run blocking as well as run running. Coach?

Oh well, we’ll do better next game. HAIL!

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