Cousins Gets His Chance

Courtesy: NY Daily News.com

*A FAN SUBMISSION by The Sports Column’s writer, Marcus From College Park*On June 2, 1925, starting New York Yankee first baseman, Wally Pipp was slumping badly. Yankee manager Miller Huggins penciled a young New York native by the name of Henry Louis Gehrig onto the line up card.  Pipp would never start again, as “The Iron Horse”, Lou Gehrig would make the best of his opportunity on the way to playing in 2,130 straight games over 14 years and into the Baseball Hall of Fame.  Ironically and tragically, Gehrig would succumb to Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s Disease), a neuromuscular disorder, on June 2, 1941, exactly 16 years to the day of the beginning of his remarkable consecutive games streak; he was 37.  The “Great Gehrig” has come to epitomize the notion of making the best of one’s opportunity to start.

We fast forward to Cleveland, Ohio where rookie quarterback Kirk Cousins will be making his first start. Washington’s mercurial sensation RG3, will ride the pine nursing a sprained right knee, giving Cousins his “Gehrig Moment” to show NFL Nation what he’s made of.

When you run an option read offense, your quarterback will be subjected to the kind of hits that reduce an average NFL running back’s career to a meager three years.  RG3 has now suffered his second concussion in less than a year, been x-rayed for possible broken ribs and is now trying to recover from a sprained right knee that looked far worse than has been diagnosed.  This is the medical history of a rookie only 13 games into his professional career! Earlier in the week RG3 had been “Medically Cleared” to practice and play.  Is that the same sort of medically cleared nonsense that Shanahan employed when he sent RG3 back on the field after Raven’s Halito Ngata had twisted his quarterbacks’ right leg into all kinds of unnatural angles?  The vision of RG3 collapsing onto all fours after painfully limping back into the game had Washingtonians forgetting all about the “Fiscal Cliff” and thinking more about jumping off a cliff if their star in the making had re injured the knee that cost RG3 an entire season in 2009 at Baylor.

Now it falls to the Michigan State Spartan Kirk Cousins, to continue the Burgundy and Gold’s playoff push.  Cousins was drafted with Washington’s third pick in the draft in the fourth round.  Drafting Cousins was a hotly debated topic at the time based on the fact that D.C.’s offensive line needed all the help it could get protecting the franchise quarterback that involved trading three first round and a second round draft pick.   Washington has no first round draft pick until 2015. If you’re enjoying this column over yourSunday morning cereal, you’re likely to find the pictures of Josh LeRibeus and Adam Gettis the first two offensive lineman Washington drafted in 2012, on your milk carton. Both have disappeared.  LeRibeus has barely suited up on game day and Gettis has been inactive for all of DC’s games.  Maybe drafting an impact offensive linemen like Trent Williams instead of Cousins would have provided more of a “competitive edge” than the embarrassingly disingenuous comments from coaches and players alike on who would start at quarterback in Cleveland.

Courtesy: John McDonnell/Washington Post

Cousins brings a 107 career quarterback rating, 2 touchdowns, 2 interceptions, 7 completions in 11 attempts to the Cleveland Dog Pound.  He’ll have the benefit of fellow rookie, running back Alfred Morris to keep the pass rush honest and playmaker Pierre Garson going deep.  He’ll need it.  The Browns have a defensive front that includes defensive tackles Ahtyba Rubin and Phil Taylor who combined tip the scales at over 700 pounds, making rushing the football more than difficult.  We mustn’t forget to mention one particularly nasty Brownie defensive end Frostee Rucker, the USC product who has a way of ruining NFL quarterback’s game day experience.  Washington counters with their own opportunistic defense, which boasts a respectable +12 turnover ratio, despite their susceptibility to the big play.  Browns rookie QB Brandon Weeden has a strong arm but plenty of interceptions (15) to go along with it.

Both teams are improving and mirror one another in many ways.  Special teams, particularly the return game could swing the balance. Washington may have solved their kick off and punt return woes with SMU, rookie seventh round draft pick Richard Crawford, while the Browns counter with the dangerous D.C. product Josh Cribbs.

It shapes up as another nail biter for both club’s fan’s.  The weather forecast is for cloudy and temperatures in the 50’s, a non factor. The running game fails for both teams and with the favorable weather the QB’s throw the ball, a lot.  Turnovers, key penalties and big plays in all phases of the game make this dust up memorable and controversial from the start.  But unlike Gehrig, Cousins play doesn’t put up the numbers that has anybody mentioning RG3 with Wally Pipp and Cleveland wins a close one.