John Matthews
WMAL.com
LANDOVER, MD — (WMAL) It’s safe to wake up, Washington, and no – it wasn’t a dream. It’s October, and your football team is in first place.
OK, so maybe it IS the NFC East, and maybe it IS a three-way tie for first with Dallas and New York, but still, the Redskins have to be happy with the progress they showed in mounting a 4th quarter comeback Sunday to get the decisive touchdown in a 23 – 20 win over Philadelphia at Fed Ex Field.
The national media narrative of the win over the reeling Eagles is no doubt going to focus on the collapse of wunderkind Chip Kelly’s hand-selected team of underachievers, and not on the gritty performance of a Washington squad that was nearly-universally selected as the league’s worst at the beginning of the season.
After a dominating first half, the Redskins certainly appeared to be living down to its reputation.
Coming out of the locker room with 30 minutes to play and a 13-0 lead, the 2015 Redskins suddenly looked like last year’s model – giving up three passing touchdowns to the Eagles and making Philly quarterback Sam Bradford suddenly look positively Romo-like. The Redskins’ defense that had harassed Bradford into submission in the first half simply disappeared, and the Eagles took advantage of some favorable referee calls to outscore the Skins, 20-3.
But then came the final drive.
Trailing the Eagles 20 – 16, Kirk Cousins, who had spent the past week as the NFL’s poster goat after throwing two interceptions in a loss to the Giants, led the Skins down field on a 15-play, 90 yard drive that ended with a 4-yard TD bullet just inside the end zone to Pierre Garcon with 26 seconds left.
“That final drive — I wasn’t capable of doing that when I came in the league as a rookie. It takes time. It takes failure. It takes learning from experiences,” said Cousins. “A culmination of, I guess it would be, three-plus seasons’ worth of work got me to a point where I was able to make the necessary plays on that drive.”
All the Redskins defense had to do at the end was defend a 23-20 lead, and it did so with aplomb. Ryan Kerrigan and Trent Murphy each sacked Bradford deep in Philly territory, before Murphy snagged a desperation lateral throw on the game’s final play to seal the win.
“No question – we gave up a lead, had a lot of adversity in that game,” Redskins head coach Jay Gruden said. “We can’t control the penalties. We can’t control what happens in the football game. We can control our effort and how long we sustain our effort.”
Paired with the Giants’ 24 – 10 win in Buffalo and the Cowboys’ 26-20 overttime loss in New Orleans, the Redskins are now tied for first in the East, ahead of the reeling Eagles. They head next to Atlanta, for a date with the red-hot undefeated Falcons, coming off a 49-21 blowout of the Houston Texans. The Redskins are nine-point underdogs, which only goes to show that it takes time to gain any respect in the NFL.
But Sunday was a start.
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