10 Reasons the Washington Redskins can win 10 games

7. Derrius Guice

Guice makes this list for one simple reason. His running style is reminiscent of the great Larry Brown. Running backs that throw caution to the wind and use their bodies as weapons are hard to find.

These kinds of running backs wear out defenses. Late in the game you’ll see defenders, especially defensive backs, trying to tackle the running back while at the same time trying to get out of his way.

How Guice fell to the 59th pick is one of the great mysteries of the 2018 draft.

8. Team

This year the Redskins are actually a team.

They respect each other and that’s important, especially in the fourth quarter when exhaustion won’t let you do it for yourself. That’s when a real team steps up and does it for the guy next to him. It’s that whole band of brothers thing.

Not to belabor the point but that was never going to happen with Kirk Cousins in the locker room.

Cousins’ skill in front of a camera is legendary, his prowess in front of a microphone even more impressive. But, the guys in the locker room know who you really are. They can see through all the smoke. It’s hard, maybe impossible, to follow someone into battle that you don’t believe in or don’t respect. I never understood the infatuation with Cousins.

While Alex Smith was putting together the highest QB rating in the league last year Kirk was busy throwing 13 picks, fumbling 13 times, (that is gruesome), and taking 38 sacks. But, it’s not those numbers that stunk up the locker room. The two best examples of why Cousins was never going to win this team over were related to his desire to be elsewhere and his personality.

Cousins first commented that he would be interested in playing for a different team on February 2nd, 2014. So, for more than four years there have been players and coaches (and fans), wondering whether or not this guy was really all in on being a Redskin. He was not.

Cousins came off as a guy who was just chasing the dollar long before there was ever any talk about 20 or 30 million dollar contracts. Case in point: Prior to the 2014 season the Redskins released Rex Grossman. Grossman wore number eight. At the time Cousins wore number 12.

However, Kirk had worn number eight throughout both his high school and collegiate careers. It would make sense that now that number eight was available he would want to wear it again. Enter Andre Roberts, recently signed by the Skins, who made no secret that he would like to wear his former jersey number 12.

Rather than Kirk giving up the number 12 and taking the number he really wanted, he held onto it and made Roberts pay him for it. I suspect some players found it hard to play with a guy like that. Alex Smith is not that kind of guy.

So, the Redskins finally have their quarterback and their leader.