Early on, the game looked like a blowout victory. Then, it looked like a close loss. And the end result was a lucky win.
The Washington Redskins continue to show they’re no longer victims as they were in 2010 or jinxed like they were before that. This wasn’t their best game but one that taught them how to win despite turnovers and costly gaffes.
“You’re going to have adversity,” quarterback Rex Grossman said. “How do you handle that? I think we handled it well. … We believe we’re going to make the big play at the end of the game to win.”
And the Redskins did. Washington outlasted the Arizona Cardinals 22-21 on Sunday at FedEx Field.
This would have been a close loss so many times in the past 20 years. It always seemed as if the Redskins’ karma was sucked dry after three Super Bowl championship teams under Joe Gibbs. The past two decades of bad breaks were the balance.
But Washington is now 2-0 for the first time since 2007. Chants of “We want Dallas” filled FedEx; the Redskins face the Cowboys on the road on “Monday Night Football” on Sept. 26.
Maybe this is a team that overachieves. It already has matched Sports Illustrated’s two-win prediction, and ESPN is now on the clock at three victories. This was the type of game that leads to the postseason.
“These are the games that kind of define your team,” running back Tim Hightower said. “You lose some of those games, and it takes something out of you.”
Indeed, coach Mike Shanahan said game film will demonstrate that this young team needs to skip Victory Monday. There were too many mistakes. Grossman was picked off twice. The defense allowed a long touchdown to Larry Fitzgerald. The red zone seemed like a dead zone.
“We will learn as we grow as a football team to close the door, and we didn’t close the door [early],” Shanahan said.
But the Redskins closed it late. Graham Gano rebounded from a blocked field goal to convert his fourth career game-winner, a 34-yarder with 1:45 remaining. The Redskins scored on a fourth-down pass trailing 21-13, a pretty gutsy move that Shanahan shrugged off as conventional football.
The Redskins lost five games by one score last year in Shanahan’s first season. But after rallying past the New York Giants with ease and escaping Arizona, Washington has shown a resiliency that has been missing for so long. Notice the defensive players dancing to stadium music? Should have been to Lady Gaga’s “Edge of Glory.”
“These are the games you put in your back pocket,” Hightower said, “and when you face situations like this down the road, you’ve learned how to deal with adversity and have a lot of confidence.”
Examiner columnist Rick Snider has covered local sports since 1978. Read more on Twitter @Snide_Remarks or email [email protected].
