Jay Gruden’s Redskins are finally coming to grips with reality: They are a bad team I’ll miss Jay Gruden. If his team eventually plays him out of town — and dead-head, lame-effort defeats like Washington’s 27-7 loss to the previously 1-8 Tampa Bay Bucs are the foundation stones of all eventual dismissals — a lot of people in D.C. will miss a refreshing rookie coach who tells the close-to-unvarnished truth. “It didn’t look like we coached much today. .?.?. We lined up wrong. We put [Leonard] Hankerson in at the goal line, and he lined up on the wrong side of the formation. We had a couple false starts, had some holding calls, three turnovers, took some sacks we shouldn’t have,” said Gruden, not listing all the blown assignments, long bombs and dumb penalties by his defense against one of the NFL’s worst offenses. Journeyman Josh McCown completed 209 yards of passes to just one receiver, Mike Evans. “It looked like, really, it looked like the first preseason game is what it looked like,” said Gruden whose team apparently spent its bye week studying shuffleboard, certainly not football. “We [coaches] have to first initially take the blame and then hold some accountability to the players to find out where the confusion is and why we’re having this much trouble saying, ‘Set, hike’ and snapping the ball. We’ll find out.” Good thing Gruden has a five-year contract. Maybe his honesty will outlast and ultimately survive the Washington tenure of some of his players who can’t line up correctly, recall the snap count, remember their assignments or do any of the pre-snap functions of elementary football on a consistent basis. If ever a home defeat, before a sparse and booing crowd, required context, this was it. As of Sunday morning, Pro-Football-Reference.com rated the Bucs as the worst NFL team since the 2009 Rams (1-15). Against a bad team, Robert Griffin III was intercepted on the first play from scrimmage, and Gruden conceded that on the final two plays from the Tampa Bay 35-yard line, with only five healthy members of the offensive line standing, he didn’t even try to score. “Smart to run out the clock, get outta here and lick our wounds.” Most of those wounds were self-inflicted. Studying this tape will be mortifying indeed because coaches may realize that once Washington fell behind, it seemed many players really were just “playing for the tape” — putting in enough effort not to be singled out for fury but not nearly enough to win. Nobody’s going to escape this stinker. You would be tempted to rank it high in this franchise’s all-time worst performances except that there have been so many in the past 15 years. Gruden even lowered the boom on Griffin, whose poor 73.3 quarterback rating was padded by dink-and-dunk throws. Asked whether Griffin had earned the starting job, Gruden said, “After today’s performance? Nobody has proved that they deserve to start anywhere after today’s performance.” Not even in Arena league? Just days ago, Gruden made the blunder of saying this team was only “a few plays from being 7-2.” Well, they sure showed him. Maybe he was just defending his team, perhaps trying some boosterism or maybe falling into the franchise-wide habit of saying what he knows the owner wants to hear. But this is a bad team strictly on its proven demerits. Washington may have “A” players at several skill positions. But DeSean Jackson, Pierre Garcon, Alfred Morris and Jordan Reed constitute only a slice of one unit — the offense. Even if they, as a group, are a “B+” or even an “A,” what about the offensive line, which allowed six sacks and now may lose left tackle Trent Williams? Is their grade a “D”? What about Griffin, who has little sense of the pocket — how to move up in it, how to move laterally so he can deliver dart throws on time? Quick to flush, he still gets sacked constantly and became the first player in NFL history to be sacked at least three times in eight straight starts. Post-knee surgery, is he even a “C” yet? “It was a travesty out there today,” Griffin said. Flashy skill players are nice, but their impact is overwhelmed by “C-D-F” play everywhere else. Special teams contributed two missed field goals. And the defense? Somebody send coordinator Jim Haslett a photograph of Evans, the 6-foot-5 rookie wide receiver. He’s hard to miss. But Haslett’s defenses never checked his passport. This is Haslett’s 13th consecutive season, as a defensive coordinator or head coach, of producing mediocre to awful defenses. This year, they’re 23rd so far in points allowed after being 30th last year. Before that: 22, 21, 21, 31, 31, 28, 28, 27, 14, 26 and 27. So Haz’s average rank in points allowed over all those years is 26th out of 32. Even if his players are bad, how good can he be? Right now, this team continues to believe, as it has for many years, that its true form is whatever it produces on its very best night — this year, that means a win in Dallas. It’s the responsibility — from owner through GM to coach — to give players a true sense of where they stand, not false stature. But, in Washington, that’s seldom possible because it would mean admitting the true state of the total talent pool to the customers. At least safety Ryan Clark, a 13-year vet, took responsibility for a blown assignment on a 36-yard McCown-to-Evans scoring pass for a 20-7 lead. “If I don’t give up that ball over the top, maybe it’s a different game,” Clark said. “I want that one back. You can’t do that when you’re not a good football team.” Finally, the magic words, the ones that carry some honesty — “not a good football team.” “We were 3-13 [last year] for a reason,” Clark said. “This transition [with Gruden] is not about winning the Super Bowl. It’s about changing the culture. It’s about changing the way men work.” The way these men work, now 6-20 the past two years, was on display again Sunday. They aren’t a few plays from 7-2. They aren’t as good as their best game but excused for all their abysmal days. They have trouble with “Set, hike.” That’s how you lose 27-7 at home to the Bucs.