For Redskins, players-only meeting was ‘long overdue’

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/redskins/for-redskins-players-only-meeting-was-long-overdue/2015/11/30/e9f1f226-979b-11e5-8917-653b65c809eb_story.html

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What did the Washington Redskins earn by outlasting the New York Giants on Sunday? The path to a division championship unfurled in front of them, thanks to three games left against Matt Cassel and whichever journeyman quarterback Chip Kelly settles on. The national media began to relent after months of scorn; “The Washington Redskins are going to win the NFC East? It almost sounds insane,” NBC’s Cris Collinsworth marveled. And the team’s own leaders started dreaming big enough dreams that Post editors might want to sock away a little extra travel money for January, just to be safe.

“We have the team to win it all,” Ricky Jean Francois said in a radio interview Monday afternoon. “The only people that got to believe is the people inside this locker room.”

What didn’t the Redskins earn Sunday? Well, a winning streak, for one thing. Despite all the giddiness created by that 20-14 score and the division lead and the flashing neon scenarios portending Super Bowl glory, Washington still hasn’t won consecutive games since wins over the Tennessee Titans and Colt McCoy’s prime-time triumph against the Dallas Cowboys. That was, let’s see, last October.

[For Redskins, the trick is to stay in first place]

So a cynic could argue in favor of waiting for the season’s first winning streak before booking hotel rooms in Santa Clara.

The truth is, the Redskins mostly kept down the rhetoric in the 24 hours after their win, talking about one-week seasons and finding consistency and focusing on the Cowboys — the next opponent, in another prime-time game.

“It’ll be fun when we win the division,” said left tackle Trent Williams, refusing to order any “Make Ashburn Great Again” ballcaps in November. “Having first place with five games to go, it’s nice, but it is what it is. We stumble two games, and we’re back in the same type of predicament.”

By Monday afternoon, Coach Jay Gruden even seemed to be overdosing on his own stay-focused jargon; “just continue to take one game at a time, like I say cliche-wise,” he said, cliche-wise.

But for a few days, at least, let’s indulge in the idea that saying the right thing away from the field can have at least some consequences on it. So now consider that players-only meeting that Dashon Goldson called Saturday night. After Gruden was done addressing the team around 8:30 or 8:45, the veteran safety told coaches to leave but players to stay. “I was damn near almost the first person out, and Dashon told me to sit down,” Jean Francois said.

Then Goldson talked to his teammates about what he thinks they’re capable of, and the effort they need to give on Sundays, and the things they can still accomplish. He said they shouldn’t need a blimp or a banner to convince them they’re good enough to succeed, and that they shouldn’t need coaches to inspire them. Several more players then spoke, hitting on similar themes.

“A lot of dudes just had to get some things off their chest,” said Jean Francois, one of the speakers.

“I appreciated the leadership, and I appreciated the accountability and the honesty,” quarterback Kirk Cousins said.

“I want them to have [meetings like that], because they’re the ones playing,” Gruden said. “Unless they’re talking bad about me,” he added with a grin.

The message was probably less important than the meeting itself, which was part of this team’s season-long obsession with differentiating itself from its predecessors. But the message was important, too.

“Be more accountable and do your job,” cornerback Will Blackmon summarized. “Let’s not get complacent. Let’s not wait for somebody else to make a play. Be excited. Be like who you were when you were in high school, when you were ‘the guy,’ or in college, when you were ‘the man,’ when you went out there every day and did your thing. Don’t just be happy being an NFL player. Want to be a successful one.”

Should a team of adults already be accountable to each other without the benefit of such speeches? Should a team that has alternated historical ineptitude with historical dominance have scheduled such a session for, say, September? Perhaps, and perhaps.

“We should have had that meeting a while ago,” Blackmon said. “It was long overdue.”

But the meeting also followed what some players described as the best and most intense practice week of the season. Players said they monitored each other’s mistakes and effort during practice, that there were more dust-ups and fiery words than during a typical week, and that the vibe felt more like training camp than Thanksgiving week. One player said the atmosphere was “intense.” Another described the entire roster as “on edge.”

“If you ain’t running the ball hard enough, then somebody’s going to say something to you,” Baker said. “If you have a missed assignment, somebody will say something to you.”

These might be symbolic gestures. Symbolism doesn’t cause Giants receivers to bobble up would-be interceptions, or Eli Manning to fling the ball to guys in the wrong-colored jerseys, or New York punt returners to field the ball inside their own 5-yard line with time running out. Players-only meetings don’t put DeSean Jackson several yards behind the nearest defender on a first-half bomb. The men with the most on the line this season — Cousins and Gruden — both said that fiery speeches will take you only so far, and that results matter more.

“I just feel like I don’t like to overblow that stuff, so I’m going to downplay it,” Cousins said.

“I don’t really pay attention to the ‘hoo-rah’ stuff down in the locker room, the pregame speeches and all that stuff,” Gruden said. “I care about the production.”

That production has been good enough that Washington is almost guaranteed to have two meaningful games after Christmas this season, and maybe more. If players asked in that Saturday meeting how good they can be, the answer — in this year, with this division — might be “good enough.”

So will there now be another players-only meeting before Monday night? It doesn’t figure to be on the agenda. The speech-makers already hit that particular ball out of the park, cliche-wise.

“You don’t need no hoo-rah speech,” Jean Francois said. “You already know the potential. You know the abilities we have inside our building. Now let’s show the nation.”