What is left to say when whatever faint playoff hopes you held onto go up in smoke in back-to-back blowout losses?
For Redskins coach Jay Gruden, not too much. The Chargers sent Gruden’s club to 5-8 with a 30-13 win in Los Angeles that saw the Redskins muster just 201 yards of offense a week after they limped to 280 in a 38-14 loss to the Cowboys.
“I’m at a loss for words, quite honestly,” Gruden said, via the Associated Press. “I never thought we’d get beat like this two weeks in a row.”
Safety D.J. Swearinger, who criticized the team for not playing the full 60 minutes in a loss to the Saints, was a bit more talkative. He said the defense has taken “major steps back” and that the team is getting the results he expects based on the way they are preparing for games.
“It was like just this, ‘Blah, blah. OK, we’re out here at practice. Blah,’” Swearinger said. “We’ve got to practice better. I’ve been saying it all year. ... It’s not surprising at all to me. You don’t prepare well, you’re going to fail. I don’t think we prepared well with some of the questions that’s been asked [by players] before the game. ‘Are you doing this right here? Are you doing this right there?’ We’re just not prepared.”
Should team brass find Gruden at fault for that lack of preparation or the lack of words to address what’s gone wrong, it could lead to a change of messenger once January arrives.