One clutch drive affords Jay Gruden some room to breathe

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/redskins/win-at-last-second-buys-jay-gruden-some-time/2015/10/04/37bcf506-6ad2-11e5-aa5b-f78a98956699_story.html

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Jay Gruden just got time to breathe.

Thanks to a quick, decisive four-yard game-winning touchdown pass from Kirk Cousins to Pierre Garcon with 26 seconds to play on Sunday at FedEx Field, Washington’s second-year head coach may now have a few weeks of sanity to watch his theories about football take hold.

Instead of a nice, fat, blown halftime lead and a division defeat to digest and explain, Gruden may now find enough space to start proving, after a lifetime in the football minor leagues, that he can be a good head coach in the NFL. That may be too bold a hope. But consider, in this town at least, the difference that one successful play — and a 23-20 win over Philadelphia — can make in your quixotic Ashburn world.

If you coach here for Daniel Snyder, the difference between being 2-2 and 1-3, especially when your first season was 4-12, is like the difference between having your own personal oxygen mask and suddenly discovering that a villain has dropped a plastic bag over your head. Things can change fast. But, for a week or two, at least, it’s nice to know you can fill your lungs.

Washington is a tough town for entertaining, amusing but NFL-unproven coaches, especially if their second season goes wrong. Before you could enjoy the boastful, funny Steve Spurrier or the amiable Jim Zorn, they were gone, their one chance at an NFL top job choked off.

In the NFL, most coaches brag most of the time, though they know a hundred ways to disguise it at first glance. But listen harder and what you’ll hear is, “Man, can I coach ’em up.” Mike Shanahan defined the type. Others are subtler. Think, for example, of delightful looney Jon Gruden, who could explain scrambled eggs and make it sound like he invented chickens.

Jon’s younger brother Jay, however, is the complete opposite. Jay almost never says anything good about himself. He’s reflexively self-deprecating. Oh, a few weeks ago he did defend himself from a radio cad who called him a fat butt. “I really dislike that guy,” he said. “I’m only 225.”

But on Sunday, grinning after his second home victory in three games, Gruden said, “Oh, yeah. I was awesome” when asked about his contributions to a final 90-yard scoring drive that ate up 5 minutes 39 seconds and left the Eagles minimal chance to respond.

“I’m just kidding,” he said, making sure no one would give him too much credit. Or any.

[Jay Gruden postgame quotes: ‘I’m proud of ... those guys’]

If his team had lost — and any of a dozen plays could have produced that outcome — it would’ve gone on the road next week with a shredded secondary to face deep-threat menace Julio Jones and an Atlanta Falcons offense that just stomped Houston, 48-21.

If the Eagles had escaped, then, those eight Washington penalties in the second half, five of them personal fouls, would have pointed to “lack of discipline.” In Washington, reputations can get ravaged in a hurry. Patience is administered with an eyedropper.

Now, however, it’s the Eagles’ Chip Kelly whose genius crown is shrinking rapidly. And it’s Gruden who just beat him, despite the absence of seven of his projected 22 starters before the season, as well as three other players expected to make contributions. Go ahead, try to coach ’em up when you start 10 men down. Just a week ago, he still had guard Shawn Lauvao (out for the season) as well as back-pretty-soon Perry Riley Jr. and DeAngelo Hall.

“Everybody feeds off wins, including the coaches. We all need them for confidence,” offensive captain Trent Williams said. “They call great plays, but we have to make them work.”

First, the most encouraging parts of this win. Washington outgained Philadelphia by 417 to 320 and dominated time of possession against their hurry-up foe by 41:08-18:52, a margin that would usually indicate that the visitors might have been locked in their team bus for the first half.

Gruden’s single most important decision in this town — and a stick-your-neck-out one, too — was his call to hand the team to Cousins while, so far, keeping Robert Griffin III inactive for games. On the final play, Cousins not only read a cover-zero, all-out Eagle blitz correctly but threw the winning touchdown pass not through the proverbial NFL “window” in the defense but through a crack in that window. Safety Walter Thurmond III will dream about a pass that must have seemed to singe his finger nails, while cornerback Eric Rowe will see the pass arriving in Garcon’s greedy hands just a blink before Rowe could blow up everybody in sight.

Cousins’s completing 31 of 46 passes with no interceptions also reinforces the Gruden view. “He’s managing the football games, keeping it close,” Gruden said. “We’re going to have to continue to be resilient, because sometimes we’ll need key drives at the end to comeback win it.”

At the risk of introducing facts or history into a cheery win, let’s note that this franchise has reached similar optimistic junctures over and over in September and early October for the past 13 years. Overconfidence and instantly-born excess expectations then arrive like a plague.

From 2002 through 2014, here’s the pattern. After two games: 15-11. Winning percentage .577. In games three through five: 16-23. Percentage .410. The rest of the season after the fifth game: 51-92. That’s .357. In other words, they go straight down the tubes.

If someone says “playoffs” because the NFC East doesn’t look strong, or healthy, try to restrain yourself, at least temporarily. This team was 3-2 in 2003 and ended up 5-11. In 2010, 3-2 became 6-10. And in 2011, 3-2 became 5-11.

But improvement is also undeniable. Point differential tells the truth over full seasons. The past two years, Washington was beaten by a total of 137 and 144 points, respectively. No Washington team has been that bad — even once, much less in back-to-back years — since ’63. Gruden is trying to resurrect an absolutely awful, talent-bereft, utterly-mismanaged franchise. When someone like Shanahan, with obvious motives, repeatedly says of his ex-team that they’re loaded with talent, that’s a back-stabbing attempt to undermine any honestly measured progress.

For example, after four games, all against apparently poor-to-decent teams, total score: 88-89. Don’t knock “competitive.” It would constitute a novelty.

“We’re a different team. New starters everywhere you look — right guard, right tackle, left guard, a new tailback [Matt Jones]. The new pieces are finally coming together,” Williams said. “We have basically a new defense and it’s stepped up all year. Sometimes [on offense] we haven’t held up our end.”

This team has months and miles to go. Several games may be almost unwinnable, considering the foe or the site or both. But one key throw, one excellent diving catch in scary traffic, one final 90-yard comeback drive that didn’t fizzle, has given this team, and its coach, a little more time and room to grow without the constant Washington drumbeat of “who gets fired and when.”

For a week, or even for quite a while, maybe Washington can look, simultaneously, at a coach and a rope and not think instantly of a noose.

Leave that job to Philadelphia.