“Guy, just move in the pocket and extend the play,” Cooley begged. “There were some critical instances in this situation where he’s not able to do that, and that’s what really starts to scare me, and that’s what really starts to concern me.”

Cooley said this was “not normal Kirk Cousins stuff,” pointing out several times when Cousins had a chance to make a positive play and failed. He said that Cousins still needs to get into a rhythm and that “I think he lacked confidence as he got into that game.” The summary look at Monday night?

AD

AD

“He’s late, situationally he’s not great, he doesn’t move well in the pocket, he never creates off-schedule, he actually makes a couple offensive linemen look worse (who were really really good) because he’s taking a couple hits in the face that he doesn’t have to,” Cooley said. “He makes a lot of underneath throws. Out of 30 completions, I think there were 23 within that soft-coverage blanket. I think there were only six or seven forced down the field.”

Cooley is grading players on a 1-10 scale, with decimals. He gave Cousins a 5.9. “Take that for whatever you want to take it,” Cooley said, but it’s hard to take a 5.9 as a positive sign.

Two of Cooley’s descriptions struck me as particularly damaging, at least in the context of Monday’s game. Both involved Washington tight end Jordan Reed and Pittsburgh linebacker Ryan Shazier. First was the throw to Reed in the end zone early in the game, a ball that was tipped out of the back of the end zone and wound up incomplete. Washington had been facing second and six from the Pittsburgh 13-yard line. With no safety help and a linebacker covering Reed, this felt like a juicy opportunity, and Cooley said the tight end and linebacker were about even when they reached the 12-yard line.

“The rule is if he’s even, he’s leaving,” Cooley said. “Kirk does not let the football go until Jordan Reed is at the 2-yard line. … It’s one more full second, at least, until Kirk lets that ball go, and then you get a contested ball in the back of the end zone. If Kirk lets that ball go one second earlier — which is when his back foot hits at the end of his drop — that’s a touchdown, and that’s a walk-in touchdown. It’s late.”

Here is Reed, as the ball is released. The Redskins wound up kicking a field goal, the game’s first score.

The second moment was Cousins’s first interception, which came on a first down near midfield with the game still close. It’s a play that has been much discussed, and one that was criticized immediately by Jon Gruden on the ESPN broadcast.

AD

AD

“Don’t fight zoning linebackers,” he said. “Shazier drops deep underneath that deep cross; you’ve got to pull the ball down and check it to your back, and Cousins knows way better than that.”

Cooley went into far more detail. The play, he said, involved four vertical routes down the field: three beginning on the right side and one on the left. Reed was running a high cross to get to the numbers on the left (opposite) side, while tight end Vernon Davis was going up the inside edge of the right numbers. Those tight ends, Cooley said, were meant to split the deep safety, with Cousins charged with moving the safety with his eyes and then finding the open tight end.

(Reed is blue, Davis is pink and Shazier is red.)

“Kirk Cousins gets stuck on Jordan Reed,” Cooley said. “And that’s where it ends, and he ends up making a predetermined decision to throw this high crossing route to Jordan Reed, and it’s a bad choice. …

“He understands this play,” Cooley said. “It’s four verts. It’s a play every single team runs. It’s a play that as soon as he threw the pick, I knew exactly what happened. And by the way, when I watched ‘Monday Night Football’ on the monitor, Jon Gruden knew exactly what happened. … Had [Cousins] utilized his eyes, moving the safety like he did and then made the throw to Vernon, then it would have been a big play and a big opportunity, but he just predetermined the throw. … Kirk Cousins can’t throw this pass when Shazier drops. The pass cannot be thrown.”

So how do you keep the linebacker from dropping? With Pittsburgh offering only four-man pressure and no blitz, Cooley said, the offensive line should be fine, so running back Matt Jones (purple in these images) should immediately release out of the backfield. This would force Shazier to move up into coverage.

“Matt Jones spends two full seconds in the backfield, then gets stuck and stymied in the pocket trying to get out on his checkdown — which is just in front of the hole where Jordan Reed wants to be open,” Cooley said. “Which means Ryan Shazier should have to come up and play Matt Jones in some form of zone-match situation. You want to get an open throw to Jordan Reed? Get your back out. Matt Jones can’t get out. This is not an intelligent play from the backfield. …

“I’m not blaming the play on Matt Jones,” Cooley went on. “Kirk Cousins should not have thrown the ball to Ryan Shazier. The read would have been just throw the checkdown to Matt Jones as he gets out, so in fact Matt Jones would have been rewarded for being slow and getting out late and not helping us get a big play down the field. We would have rewarded him with a catch.”

AD

AD

Worst of call, Cooley compared this to a moment in the Tennessee Titans game in 2014 — a moment that led to Cousins getting benched and Colt McCoy taking over.

“It looks exactly like it did against Tennessee a couple years ago when he threw the exact same pick on the exact same route before he got benched,” Cooley said. “It was the exact same play/route look. … There’s just no real reason for Kirk to let this ball go. He has no chance, unless he did not see Shazier, which is not an excuse. Other than that, he has no chance.”

For fun, I went back and looked at that Tennessee interception. The immediate reaction from CBS color analyst Rich Gannon?

AD

“You learn early in your career: You don’t fight zoning linebackers,” Gannon said, nearly the same words Jon Gruden used Monday night. “You’re gonna get a crossing route that’s gonna come behind Wesley Woodyard, but watch, [the linebacker is] just reading the quarterback’s eyes the whole way. He’s just dropping. And if you lock in on the receiver and it’s not man-to-man coverage, you never feel the linebacker drop in zone coverage. There’s a difference between man routes and zone routes, and that is what Kirk Cousins has to figure out. You don’t fight zoning linebackers.”