Redskins didn’t change offense for Kirk Cousins
By Josh Sanchez
The Washington Redskins saw more offensive success in Week 15 than they were used to and a large portion of that was because of quarterback Kirk Cousins playing at a higher level than Robert Griffin III has at any point this season.
With Cousins finding success, it led to some speculation that head coach Mike Shanahan may have changed up the offense in order to benefit the quarterback he was favoring, but Shanahan shut down that talk and said the team made no changes in the offensive gameplan.
“First off, I’m not really sure what people mean. I think the obvious things are you don’t run the zone read as much,” Shanahan said, via NFL.com. “You’ve got Robert (Griffin III) who has that speed and the ability to make some plays running the football and can do some things off the play-action pass, but other than that we have the same offense.
“You have the same dropback, you have the same ability to run quarterback keeps or half-rolls or bootlegs, waggles, different types of screens depending what the defense is giving you, so that’s part of our offensive scheme.”
If Cousins continues to show flashes of brilliance over the next two weeks, he will be a very valuable bargaining chip for the Redskins heading in to the offense.
They are already short on draft picks after mortgaging their future for Griffin, so the team and their fans need to root for Cousins to succeed because he can only help them out in the long-term.