The respite from objective institutional failure for fans of Washington’s professional football team was meager, and is now over. The stink that has permeated through its organization – originating first with its very name and mascot and the inexplicably staunch defense of both, stretching to leadership mantras from ownership that over the years have vacillated between “Loyalty Is My Firewood” and “Welcome To The Team, We’ve Already Scheduled Your Office Locks To Be Changed Six Months From Now” – has, after one moderately deodorized season, made its way back onto the football field.

You like that, Mr. Snyder?

Two games into the season, Washington is showcasing a Tony Robbins-tier expert clinic in How To Miss The Playoffs In a Wretched Division Seven Months After Winning It. It’s true that we’re witnessing the humanizing of the once perplexingly immortal Kirk Cousins, but the team’s trajectory toward certain failure this season is for reasons beyond just their noodle-armed and displeasingly loud-talking quarterback.

The Broncos have showed us how to win with a quarterback who can only move his offense five yards at a time — the solution isn’t difficult to discern, but implementing it with success is nearly impossible. If you’re quarterback is bad, then all you have to do is be the best in the NFL at everything else.

Unfortunately for Washington, through two games their defense ranks tied for 26^th in the league, shredded most recently by the rookie brigade from Dallas. They were eviscerated in Week One by backup septuagenarian DeAngelo Williams, which caused a strikingly noticeable over-commitment to try to stop Ezekiel Elliot in Week Two. Dallas noticed this game plan almost instantly, running three play action bootlegs in the first quarter that all led to wide open completions – on all three plays, Dak faked the handoff right, baiting the entire Washington front seven to abandon the left side of the field as a receiver ran free into the void. The defensive coaching staff didn’t adjust – after the first quarter, the same play was run at least three times more with the same result.

This has been a theme for Jay Gruden and his staff – the game plan is apparently etched in stone in the style of Babylonian law. On either side of the ball, it’s not changing, no matter how quickly it’s neutralized.

This is stubbornness at its most obvious and idiotic. Three times the Washington offense tried a fade in the red zone – a play that became ubiquitous and then solved and made futile by defenses something like twenty five years ago. The first two times Washington tried it, as it has been countless consecutive times through history, the fade was easily defended with a mildly bothered swat by the defense. Then, of course, Washington had to try it that third time. You’ll never guess what happened.

Asked after the game if Jay Gruden thought it was a bad idea to run an inoperative play three times in the red zone during a close game despite its repeated failure, Gruden replied with inexplicable annoyance that he’d run the fade three more times next week, if he had to.

Please don’t, Jay – trust us, you don’t have to.

We know that the obvious counterbalance to a weak quarterback is to invest in a deep defensive infrastructure. Josh Norman was Washington’s major acquisition to that end, and the rigidity of his placement in their defensive formation is dubious at best and evidence of strategic incompetence at worst.

After heavy criticism for constantly lining up away from Antonio Brown in Week One, Jay Gruden again didn’t flinch – the Cowboys were able to shake Norman off of Dez Bryant simply by motioning him to the opposite side of the field while Norman stayed still. Washington valued his skills at $50 million guaranteed, and in a game against a divisional rival, often used those skills to cover the likes of Geoff Swaim and Lance Dunbar. Dez Bryant, meanwhile, was able to choose his matchup, easily switching himself onto Bashaud Breeland, who led Washington in tackles primarily because he was torched, targeted, and torched again (repeat eight times).

This obstinacy from the coaching staff is already being grumbled upon in Washington’s locker room — of course, dissension is always neutralized by winning, the possibility of which is always only a week away – but for players to publicly bemoan their coaches this early in the season is unusual and ominous. The luster from last season’s surprise run has already almost completely worn off, and underneath it will be the reminder that Jay Gruden is a career 13-21 coach. No slack will be cut, especially by his players.

The Norman signing was Washington’s lone offseason splash meant to improve its defense, a big move, but one without compliment, probably because Washington presumed its offense to be in capable hands with Cousins. Through two games, Cousins has made what should have been a predictable regression – his inaccuracy is this season is perceptible as ever, but he threw a high number of interceptible passes last year as well, but low expectations and relative collapse by their divisional opponents helped to mask flaws that may have otherwise been more widely tracked. It’s not new that Cousins has a weak arm and is incapable of leading an offense downfield by chunks of more than ten yards – the same was the case last year, but Washington stumbled to a playoff birth, and they errantly relied on a hope of progression that is destined to be unfulfilled.

A wagon hitched to an inaccurate, mistake-prone quarterback; a weak defense; a coaching staff unwilling make obvious in-game adjustments; a resentful locker room – if you’re developing a collection of indicators of a losing season, this is almost a complete list. Washington’s professional football team features all of the above, and their fan base is facing one of the worst realities in sports – the almost immediate realization of dramatically unrealized potential.

The bright side: If things continue to go bad, maybe the team will consider a major scrub of its identity. Maybe, if things get ugly enough, they’ll finally rebrand.