Kirk's Home Cooking - Not So Fast

With the Washington Redskins in first place in the NFC East, Kirk Cousins needs to drastically improve his performance on the road in order to lead Washington to its first division title in three years, or so the pundits would have you believe. It's true, there is quite a discrepancy between Cousin's performance in road games, in which Washington is 0-5, and at home where the team is 5-1. At FedEx Field, Cousins has completed 74.7% of his passes for 1,632 yards and 11 touchdowns against 2 interceptions, compiling a passer rating of 113.0. On the road? Cousin's is completing only 61.9% of his passes with an abysmal 5 touchdowns to 8 interceptions for a passer rating of 69.8. Yet, Cousin's struggles on the road don't tell the whole story.

Kirk Cousins (8) looks to lead Washington to NFC East Title

NFL football games don't happen in a vacuum, despite what 24/7 sports analysis may lead us to believe. When taking a closer look at Washington's schedule, Cousin's drop-off in performance on the road is a little more understandable, even predictable. On the road, Washington has faced a New York Giants team that until last week had dominated Cousins and Washington since 2008, the New York Jets and Atlanta Falcons, teams that were playing extremely well at the time, and the New England Patriots and Carolina Panthers, both undefeated at kickoff. Meanwhile, at FedEx Field, Washington faced the Miami Dolphins, St Louis Rams, Philadelphia Eagles, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, New Orleans Saints, and New York Giants, not one of which has a winning record. And that's just the eye test. Washington's road opponents have ranked 2nd, 3rd, 11th, 16th, and 32nd in total defense. In other words, all of their road opponents have ranked in the top half of the league defensively, with the exception of the Giants, but you can just throw stats out the window for divisional games anyway. As for their home opponents, Washington faced the 12th, 13th, 25th, 28th, 31st, and 32nd ranked defenses. All things considered, Cousins has performed as you might have expected given the discrepancy in quality of opponents from road to home games. We'll see how he handles the 14th and 19th ranked defenses, in Chicago and Buffalo, and whether or not he can flip the script on his apparent "struggles on the road".