Jeff Blake's parabolic arc bombs to Week 8 of the NFL

The fair shake part. Seems like you make one mistake in Washington and Snyder says that's it. I do think Cousins can be a good quarterback, just away from that team.

 

Peyton Manning may have gone 1-9 as a rookie, but he was a rookie. Cousins has been around for more seasons.

No, that doesn't mean you write off Cousins; it means using Peyton is a bad comparison, even if you are talking about number of starts.

It's better to simply ask the question: "What are the things you see from Cousins that convince you that he can be a starter in the NFL?" And then ask the next question: "What needs to be done to allow him to succeed?"

And it's not surprising Washington wants to get RG3 back out there, because they gave up so many draft picks for the right to select him, so they want to find out if he's the guy they want for the long term. They didn't trade a ton of picks for the right to draft Cousins, so they aren't going to roll with him unless it's clear he's the guy, and at this point, it's not.

 

It's not a bad comparison. Not only is there the low number of starts. But this is his first year in a new offense. It's not a PERFECT comparison. But it's a darn good one to illustrate that writing someone off after 9 starts isn't a great idea.

And I definitely wouldn't argue that it's worth giving up on RGIII. Just that we haven't seen enough of Cousins to throw in the towel on him, either.

 

It was a pass!

 

So? They got the ball to their top guy. They made the Redskins stop Murray -- and they stopped him.

The play went for minus-1 yards. Do you think they tried to throw it down the field to him?

 

No, but I think that if they haven't stopped your running game all night, and you have 2nd & 2 because of an 8 yard run, you try that again on at least one of the 2 plays. Especially with a compromised QB.

 

Exactly. The guy is leading the league in rushing. That night he extended his NFL record for 100 yard games to start a season to eight. He had 141 yards on only 19 carries. That situation is just one example of when he should have gotten it more.

 

Murray also got 80 yards on four catches last night, and I don't think any of those throws were down the field. And he's the team's third-leading receiver, with just two fewer receptions than No. 2 Jason Witten.

There's nothing wrong with getting the ball to your top back on a "long handoff."

Again, as noted in my earlier post, I would have run the ball on third down because it was obviously a four-down situation.

I think the last part of your post is more intriguing -- should Murray have gotten the ball more?

It's a great question. Dallas ran 64 offensive plays. Murray had it on 23 of them. His two backups averaged more than 7 yards per carry on their four runs and gained 11 yards on one catch.

The Cowboys are starting to worry about Murray's workload and are trying to work Randle and Dunbar in more to cut down on Murray's wear and tear.

 

It could be argued the Cowboys would have been better served with Weeden under center at 100 percent than bringing Romo back at 60 percent or whatever he was feeling.