“There could be some truth to that,” Gruden said. “I think sometimes he presses a little bit. He wants to be perfect all the time and it’s not a position where you’re going to be perfect all the time. That’s just point-blank. You’re not going to be perfect every play at the quarterback position in the NFL. We’ve seen that from some of the great ones in the history of the league, so you’ve got to just relax and play and have some fun doing it. He’s just stressing out a little bit too much, I think we’re putting a lot of pressure on him. I think you just got to go back to old school and play the game, and enjoy playing it and love playing it, and I think everybody will react to him and play better around him.”

[Kirk Cousins: ‘We all feel like we’re too good to be 0-2’]

Cousins has expressed confidence that he will turn things around.

“As the quarterback, you realize you’re never going to play perfect,” Cousins said Monday on 106.7 The Fan. “While the expectation is that you will, and you go out there trying to, you know that in 45 or 46 pass attempts, you’re going to leave a few out there that you know you could’ve made, or miss a few throws. But you want to minimize them as much as possible.”

Cousins’s turnaround last season began in Washington’s comeback win over Tampa Bay in Week 7. With the Redskins at 2-4, Gruden described that home game as a “code red” situation. He hasn’t sounded a similar alarm in the aftermath of Sunday’s loss to the Cowboys, but said his team knows the stakes of this week’s game.

“We are all on notice,” Gruden said. “We are 0-2, lost two games at home. I think that speaks volumes. We have to get this thing turned around in a hurry. We still have a lot of football left – there’s still 14 games left, but I think everybody understands the urgency here that we have to play with coming up against the New York Giants on the road.”