“This guy Bashaud Breeland, his confidence is rocked right now,” Fox’s John Lynch said early during Sunday’s loss to Dallas. “Cornerback is a confidence position, and Bashaud Breeland, his confidence is shaken right now.”

“I’ve sold all my Kirk Cousins stock,” Bill Simmons said on his latest The Ringer podcast. “I think he’s had, like, a mental breakdown.”

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The only Xs and Os this team needs are apparently in their Xanax and Klonopin.

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Now venture over to Breeland’s locker and dare ask whether he’s doing okay, what with his rocked and shaken confidence.

“Hey, I felt like I’m the number one corner in the league, I still feel like I’m the number one corner in the league,” Breeland said Thursday. “Corners are gonna get beat. You see all these other corners, they get beat, but that don’t define me as a corner. You live or you die and you get back up and you do it again. If they beat you 100 times, they beat you 100 times. You’re still gonna get up there and do it again.”

And Cousins? Are his innards corroding from his lack of self-faith?

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“There’s going to be pressure; there’s going to be expectations; there’s going to be failures; I’m going to throw picks,” he said this week. “The key is going to be: ‘Can I continue to just keep grinding and keep pushing? And that’s really all I know to do.”

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The Redskins explicitly challenged both players this offseason. They asked Cousins to prove his long-term worth by playing a season under the franchise tag, and they seemed to slight Breeland by making Josh Norman the league’s highest-paid cornerback. Both players responded with pride unbowed: Cousins by talking about how often he has proven himself in the past, Breeland by publicly promising to become the next Darrell Green.

The verdict through two weeks? Breeland has perhaps been the most maligned player on defense, after Antonio Brown and Dez Bryant feasted on his side of the field. Cousins has perhaps been the most maligned player on offense, throwing devastating interceptions and failing in the red zone. And both players have heard suggestions that their problems are less physical than mental; that if they rediscovered their swagger, their performance would improve.

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There’s probably some kernel of truth to this. Cousins has showed hints of his 2014 self, looking jittery and unsure of himself at times, and not disguising his disappointment after poor plays. This was the player who seemed beaten down by life last fall, more anonymous crew member than Captain Kirk.

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But has that Cousins really returned? If anything, I’d say it’s the opposite: Cousins believes he’s a 29-touchdown $20-million man, and can’t stop trying to show it. A player who lacks confidence doesn’t turn down a run play at the goal line to throw a high-pressure fade. A player who lacks confidence doesn’t attempt to throw the game’s most important pass into a dime-sized space between four defenders. A player who lacks confidence doesn’t wind up throwing the ball 89 times in two weeks — tied for the most in the NFL.

“Kirk’s always the same,” Coach Jay Gruden said this week. “Good game or bad game, he’s always the same guy and I don’t expect that to change. You know, he’s in a firestorm right now I guess on the outside world, but in here he’s been consistent.”

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Think back to that sideline conversation he had with offensive coordinator Sean McVay last winter, the one caught by NFL Films microphones. “Look at what putting our foot on the gas pedal the whole time has done,” Cousins said excitedly. “The first seven or eight games it was like ‘Well, we don’t want to put it all on me because I’m new.’ But now that we’re doing that, it’s been our best shot.”

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He’s playing as if he still feels that way. The issue isn’t confidence; it’s execution.

You could say the same thing about Breeland, who spent all offseason telling reporters about his plan to be the top cornerback in the league. That campaign could hardly have started worse: He was beaten by Brown, missed tackles against the Steelers, seemed tentative against Bryant, and saw the entire sports universe demand that Norman replace him against elite receivers.

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Well, he would have seen that, had he turned on his television.

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Breeland said Thursday, as DeSean Jackson giggled in the background, egging him on. “I’ve been in this position all my life. People been talking about me all my life, bro. That don’t bother me. I don’t lose no sleep. I laugh at y’all at the end of the day, for real. It don’t bother me. I’m a grown man.”

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The notion that Breeland’s mental state has in some way been dented causes more laughs at Redskins Park. “I know it’s not shot, at all,” safety Will Blackmon said. Defensive coordinator Joe Barry was asked about Breeland’s confidence by Fox’s Troy Aikman during a production call Thursday, and then again at his news conference.

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“I mean, you guys know Bashaud Breeland,” Barry said. “He exudes confidence. And I think to play corner in the National Football League, you have to exude confidence. … To say that anybody on our entire team has lost confidence, I would challenge that 100 percent.”

Swagger comes from performance, so it’s hard to have much when you’re 0-2. The best way for Cousins and Breeland to reverse the current narrative isn’t to strut around the Meadowlands; it’s actually for them to do less. Craft a better and more consistent running attack, and Cousins won’t need to put his foot on the gas pedal the whole time, and maybe won’t try to jam footballs in places they don’t fit. Find a bit more safety help — or put some pressure on the quarterback — and Breeland won’t need to worry about being on the wrong end of highlights. Above all, get a win in New York, and the search for wobbly culprits will lose a bit of steam.