In his regular season debut for the Redskins, Terrelle Pryor Sr. caught six passes for 66 yards but was displeased with his ability to catch a few more targets including an early deep bomb.
Terrelle Pryor Sr. had a fine regular season debut with the Redskins if you are going by the stat sheet. He caught six passes for 66 yards on Sunday, leading the team in both categories.
Nonetheless, he will be the first to tell you that it could have gone a lot better.
With less than seven minutes to go in the first quarter, the Redskins were looking for a spark from the offense after Carson Wentz had ducked, scrambled and launched a 58-yard bomb to Nelson Agholar to open the scoring just a few minutes earlier.
With the ball snapped just shy of the 50-yard line, Redskins Kirk Cousins dropped back, looked long for his tall and speedy wideout and fired away towards the end zone. Pryor created separation from his defender well and put himself in a position to make the catch, but the ball bounced in and out of his arms as he crashed towards the FedExField turf.
The play was eventually called back for holding, but it was representative of the day that Pryor had. It was obvious that Cousins wanted to get him the ball – Pryor led the team with 11 targets – but when it came to making the big play, the duo was unable to make much happen.
"I put this game on myself," Pryor said. "I definitely let my teammates down, but I'm going to hold my chin up high and work harder, that's all I can do."
Aside from the dropped pass in the end zone, Pryor had two other drops in the game that he was visibly disgruntled about, the first of which came on the first play of the game. It was another deep pass that had the potential of going for a touchdown, but Pryor was unable to haul it in.
"I didn't even know it was thrown," Pryor said. "I was running up the hash, so I was looking up this way and all I heard was the crowd cheering so I knew it was going deep, but I was like 'Where the hell is the ball?' I couldn't see. It got lost in the sun."
Pryor's last miscue came in the fourth quarter, when the Redskins were backed up to their own one-yard line, down 19-17. Cousins, who was working out of his own end zone fired a quick pass to Pryor across the middle, but was once again unable to make the catch.
"In terms of the last play when we had the ball around the one or two yard line, I mean, we all know...I've got to make that play at the end of the day," Pryor said after the game. "And we had too many situations like that and I just got to be better."
Pryor does not attribute his first-game struggles to any chemistry issues with Cousins, chalking the miscues up as individual issues rather than team issues.
"I just think there's certain plays that were out there today that we've got to make," Cousins said. "You know whether it's myself, any other of my teammates, the offensive line, the [quarterback], things happen and we just got to make sure that we're on point and we do better and that's it."
