That left Washington needing other results to go its way in order to secure the final wild-card spot. On Monday, having seen the Cowboys beat the Buccaneers, Washington had another opportunity to take command of a playoff slot. But in a season full of missed opportunities, it’s almost no surprise that Washington failed to take advantage of the situation presented to them as the team lost to the Panthers.

The missed opportunities theme has manifested itself in the play of quarterback Kirk Cousins. He started the season poorly, missing plenty of chances against the Cowboys in Week 2, but had appeared to be over such troubles after a strong string of performances coming out of the bye week. However, against the Panthers, Cousins regressed, playing like the quarterback we saw in the early part of the season, missing chances to throw the ball down the field.

This play early in the first quarter was a sign of things to come. Washington runs a corner-flat route combination to the left, with Jamison Crowder running to the flat while Pierre Garcon runs the corner route. DeSean Jackson runs a dig route on the back side of the play.

The corner-flat route combination often asks the quarterback to key one defender with a high-low read. If that defender sits deep, then the quarterback dumps it off to the flat. If the defender works down to the flat, the quarterback should look to the deeper corner route. Here, Cousins reads the outside cornerback and decides quickly that he’s going to Crowder in the flat, despite having a clean pocket to work with.

This picture may reflect worse on Cousins than it actually was. The outside cornerback was reading Cousins and once the ball was released, he quickly broke toward Crowder in the flat, making Garcon appear more open than he should be. However, Cousins didn’t give Garcon’s route time to develop. The Panthers appeared to be in cover-three, which left the outside cornerback with a deep third of the field. That would normally negate a corner route, but the cornerback didn’t have a lot of depth and was cheating down slightly.

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With a clean pocket, Cousins could have stepped up into the pocket and given Garcon a little extra time to run his route to see how that outside cornerback reacted. Had the cornerback sunk to take away Garcon, then Cousins could have come back to the dig route on the back side, which was open, or checked it down to the running back underneath which would have resulted in a similar gain to what Crowder picked up.

Later on in the first quarter, Cousins missed perhaps his best chance for a touchdown.

Just outside of the red zone, Washington opts to take a shot with four verticals. Tight end Jordan Reed stacks together with wide receiver Jamison Crowder in the slot.

As the routes develops, Cousins starts to feel the pocket closing around him. He looks to his left and opts to throw to Pierre Garcon on the outside. Garcon still hasn’t managed to get level with his defender at this point, while Reed is running past his into an open seam.

The ball travels over the head of Garcon, who never got past his defender, while Reed is in plenty of space between the boundary and safety in the middle of the field.

That should have been a touchdown to Reed, but instead it goes down as another missed opportunity. I also think it may have played at least some part in Cousins’s interception.

On Washington’s next series, four verticals is called again. It’s from a different look, with Vernon Davis replacing Jordan Reed at tight end, but the concept is the same.

But this time, instead of the safety rotating to the middle of the field in a three-deep shell, the Panthers run what appears to be quarters coverage, with four deep zone defenders. Safety Kurt Coleman works inside slightly as Crowder works across the middle, which gives Cousins the appearance of a single deep safety. Cousins pulls the trigger on Davis’s route up the seam.

But Coleman does a great job to get back outside and jump the route, undercutting the throw and intercepting it before it can get to Davis.

It wasn’t just deeper routes that Cousins missed either.

Here, Washington isolates Jordan Reed to the left on a go route, with three receivers to the right.

Off the snap, Cousins appears to look to his left before working back to the middle of the field. It looks as if Cousins glances right down the middle of the field, where Crowder runs across the face of a linebacker and into open field.

But instead of hitting Crowder on the crossing route, Cousins throws the check-down to Garcon underneath, which allows the linebacker to work down and make the tackle to prevent the first down.

This next play is perhaps slightly nitpicky, but I thought it was worth showing.

Here, Washington goes back to the corner-flat route combination, but mirrors it on both sides of the field.

Cousins reads to his right off the snap, which is expected given that is Jackson’s side of the field. As soon as the pressure breaks through the protection, Cousins quickly dumps it off to the flat. However, from this spot, I would have liked to have seen him take a shot. Jackson is further down the field than the outside cornerback, while the deep safety is still in his backpedal.

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It would require a good throw to beat the coverage and find Jackson, but if Cousins wants to become one of the top quarterbacks in the league, and more importantly be paid like one, these are the types of throws that an elite quarterback makes. Had Cousins worked to his left off the snap, then he would have had Garcon for a clear touchdown, but I don’t blame him for working to Jackson’s side of the field.

The final play I want to look at came in the third quarter. On the team’s opening drive, Washington sent Jackson in motion to the left before running a quick out in combination with a slant route from Reed. Cousins missed Jackson and Washington had to punt. But the play set up Washington for a shot later in the game, which went down as another missed opportunity.

Just like in the play mentioned earlier, Jackson motions to the left before running outside and underneath Reed’s slant route. But this time, Jackson sells his route to the outside before breaking down the sideline on an out-and-up.

Jackson gets a step on the corner and all Cousins has to do is put the ball out in front of Jackson to run under for a touchdown.

But instead, the ball placement from Cousins is poor. Granted, he was under some pressure as he released his throw. But the ball was well behind Jackson and wasn’t even catchable, despite Jackson’s best attempts to stop his momentum and work back to the ball while trying to keep his feet inbounds.

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In a conference call on Tuesday, Coach Jay Gruden was asked if he felt Cousins was focusing in on receivers early in his reads.

“Yeah, I think so. I think they gave us a couple blitzes, but we picked them up pretty well and I think he’s just got to trust his protection a little bit more and trust what he sees down the field.” Gruden explained. “I think there were a couple times where he got off some of his progressions and reads and looked to check the ball down sooner than we would like. But you can’t put yourself in the quarterback’s shoes, and it’s easy for us to say, ‘Hey, hold the ball and wait for this guy to come open,’ when you have people breathing down your neck. That’s a feel process for him and we’ll just have to go through the film and continue to coach and teach him and hopefully we just continue to get better and learn from what happened in this game.”

The problem for Gruden is that this isn’t the first time Cousins has had these types of issues. He missed plenty of opportunities against the Steelers and particularly the Cowboys in the first two weeks of the season, both games that Washington lost. The reason Washington’s offense looked so explosive after the bye week is because Cousins wasn’t missing these chances to throw the ball down the field. He was more confident, and the team reaped the benefits. But if Cousins regresses back into forcing check-downs when he feels a blitz, then he will continue to miss bigger opportunities down the field.

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Thanks to all these missed opportunities, Washington is now on the outside looking in when it comes to the playoffs. That’s not to say it’s all on Cousins, because the team as a whole has to perform better. But the theme of the team this season has reflected in Cousins’s game at times. Washington can’t afford to miss any more opportunities in its remaining two games, and even then, that might not be enough. They may have already passed up on all of the chances available to make the playoffs.

Mark Bullock is The Insider’s Outsider, sharing his Redskins impressions without the benefit of access to the team. For more, click here.

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