Playing your starters for a quarter in mid-August preserves the glossy facade that this is an actual football game. Putting 41 percent of your starters on ice — Kirk Cousins, Jordan Reed, DeSean Jackson, Pierre Garcon, Trent Williams, Josh Norman, Bashaud Breeland, Ryan Kerrigan and Will Compton — rips that cover off, exposing the escort ads underneath. New York’s Brandon Marshall showed exactly how much this exhibition mattered on his team’s first possession, when he was offered the chance to catch a pass in traffic, and politely declined. Put his body at risk against some second-stringers? For who? For what?

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And if a division winner is admitting its starters don’t need more than one or two preseason games, it becomes even more obvious that this system is wrecked. Cut back to two of these “games” a year, or stop charging customers (nearly) full price.

In the meantime, bless the Redskins for doing everything they could to minimize their risks, “game” be damned. The most significant thing a preseason outing can do is injure a starter. A regular season injury, or even one in practice, feels unavoidable. An injury in one of these exhibitions is like getting a speeding ticket in your driveway: utterly pointless.

The Redskins haven’t been on the cutting edge of many NFL trends, but they might be on this one. Several teams around the league this month have held quarterbacks out of their second preseason games: Ben Roethlisberger and Aaron Rodgers, Teddy Bridgewater and Philip Rivers. (“Because I wanted to,” Minnesota Coach Mike Zimmer said, explaining his decision to sit Bridgewater.)

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The Redskins took it further, telling the guts of their lineup that their services weren’t needed — not in the first or fourth preseason game, but in the supposedly more important second one. Coach Jay Gruden said this wasn’t about safety but rather about getting a chance to evaluate backups who might be needed down the road. Fine. The effect is the same.

“I was shocked,” Ricky Jean Francois said of the inactives.

“That’s a lot of money [on the bench],” veteran Will Blackmon said. “Those are key players for us; God forbid something happen right now.”

Because fate is cruel, the Redskins still saw a starter go down with injury, at perhaps their shakiest position. That was second-year running back Matt Jones, whose erratic history had already raised questions about Washington’s backfield.

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But that Washington’s strategy to avoid a needless injury didn’t entirely work only emphasized the poor and yet still dangerous product that was on display for so much of the night. What was it a famous NFL critic once said about these preseason games? “It just does not meet the standard of quality that the NFL is all about.”

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Oh wait, that was Commissioner Roger Goodell. The commissioner hazarded that rare dalliance with honesty back in 2012, and his motive seemed clear. The league’s owners might accept fewer money-making preseason games if they could trade them in for even-more-lucrative regular season games. Owners have also considered the idea of expanding the playoffs, and you could imagine fewer preseason games being used as a trade-off in such a scenario. Until then, we’ve all reluctantly marched along every summer, accepting the idea that we must pay full freight for this odd breakfast, even if the eggs all vanish a quarter of the way through the meal.

The Redskins, on this night, refused to go along with it. They announced that the eggs would be a healthy scratch. Then they informed diners that the potatoes wouldn’t be making an appearance either. Don’t worry: You could wipe up the remains of your non-existent eggs with some imaginary crusts. Imaginary burnt crusts.

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“Pretty good crowd here tonight, for preseason action,” Larry Michael said on Washington’s radio broadcast, and he wasn’t wrong. Tens of thousands of people paid to watch Colt McCoy march the remains of Washington’s first-team offense right down the field, before a would-be touchdown was called back because of a penalty. McCoy then threw an interception into the end zone. That seemed like it would win the most-emblematic-moment-of-the-night prize, back before the fumbled punt, the end-zone penalty leading to a safety, the missed extra point, the intentional grounding, and just about everything else Geno Smith did.

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The final totals included 16 penalties, seven fumbles, two interceptions and at least one moment of Joe Theismann shilling for a pizza chain in the booth. You were just waiting for the NFL Network to announce that instead of re-broadcasting this clunker, it would pick a more glorious preseason moment. Say, the Hall of Fame Game.

The argument in favor of these games is that they allow bottom-of-the-roster players to prove themselves, and the Redskins had plenty of candidates. Linebacker Martrell Speight looks like another possible Scot McCloughan find. Wide receiver Rashad Ross caught a pair of touchdown passes, adding to Washington’s already-stuffed bushel of pass catchers. Blackmon, a former cornerback transitioning to safety, made a fine interception. Stephen Paea got a sack. Nate Sudfeld and Kendal Thompson combined on that last-minute touchdown, which actually was inspired. Deshazor Everett and Terence Garvin were both active. A lot more active than Kerrigan, anyhow.

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Now, if the Redskins start slow in September, some fans will blame it on those 15 plays starters might have played against the indifferent Jets on a warm night in August. Ignore them. Those starters will get 30 minutes of dress rehearsal next weekend, and that’s good enough. None of the Nonexistent Nine got injured on Friday night. None of them took a single dangerous hit. Washington won that battle before the opening kickoff.