A Kirk Cousins sack that not all that many fans saw. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)

Chris Cooley said this week that if he hadn’t been calling Sunday’s blowout loss to the Chargers on the Redskins Radio Network, he would have switched the station to the Rams-Eagles game, a high-scoring barn burner between two of the NFL’s best and most enjoyable teams. A lot of local fans evidently agreed.

As a result, the local TV ratings for Washington’s loss in L.A. were shockingly low, certainly among the lowest in the Daniel Snyder era. Washington’s 30-13 defeat earned an 11.8 household rating in the D.C. market. That put it barely ahead of the 11.5 rating earned by the simultaneous Rams-Eagles game.

But that isn’t the worst of it. Here’s the worst of it. During Sunday’s 1 p.m. window, the Giants-Cowboys game on Fox earned a 14.4 rating in the D.C. market. And later that night, the Steelers-Ravens game on NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” earned a 16.2 rating in the D.C. market. And Monday night, the Patriots-Dolphins game earned an 11.1 rating in the D.C. market.

The takeaway? The Redskins were the third-most watched NFL game in their home market last weekend, behind games featuring their biggest national rival and their biggest local rival. And they came rather close to being the fifth-most watched NFL game in their home market last weekend. That’s the kind of thing that’s supposed to happen in L.A. That is not the kind of thing that’s supposed to happen here. It’s hard to imagine that will go unnoticed in Ashburn’s biggest offices.

Now for all the caveats, which you’ve already been ticking off. Last weekend offered a nearly one-of-a-kind convergence of circumstances. The Redskins almost immediately were getting swamped by a West Coast team with virtually no local following. Any intrigue vanished well before halftime. And that game was going head-to-head against the Eagles — one of the league’s best teams, and one with a huge local following — who happened to be facing the appealing Rams, in a back-and-forth shootout. You couldn’t imagine a more perfect scenario to chase away Redskins fans.

The other three games that ran on local TV featured five teams with huge local fan bases: the Cowboys, Giants, Ravens, Steelers and Patriots. Add the Eagles, and those are probably the six most popular teams in Washington other than the Redskins. Further, the Patriots game was undecided until the very end. So was the Steelers-Ravens game. So was the Eagles-Rams game. And the Cowboys-Giants game remained close well into the third quarter. So these are appealing games with appealing teams, going against a ridiculously one-sided Redskins contest against a vagabond Chargers franchise.

And then add in all the other factors driving down TV ratings, from modern viewing habits to whichever-flavored fan disgust you prefer to explain dipping interest in football.

Okay. Fine. Still. As recently as 2013 — a bad, bad season — the Redskins averaged a 26.6 rating locally, according to Sports Business Journal. In 2014, Jay Gruden’s disappointing first season, they averaged a 22.7 rating locally. The home disaster against the Chiefs in 2013 — a 45-10 drubbing — still earned a 20.7 rating. The depressing December trip to the Giants in 2014 — a bad team losing by double digits against another bad team — still earned a 20.3 rating. The 24-0 December shutout against the Rams that season still earned a 16.2 rating, which is the lowest local TV number I can recall from the recent past.

And this was an 11.8. That’s far lower than Game 5 of the Nats-Cubs series on TBS earned this fall. That’s lower than some preseason Redskins games earned in 2010 and 2011. And it fits in with other Redskins data points we’ve all observed. The hundreds of $6 tickets available for Sunday’s home game against the Cardinals. The longtime sports-radio host who told me this summer that it was the least buzz he could remember for a Redskins season in 21 years. The friends who have given up the family seats, or turned down free tickets to home games, or skipped an entire Skins game on TV, or just stopped following the team entirely. The fact that the traffic for this very Redskins-centric blog you’re reading right now is actually down year-to-year, despite the Capitals and Nationals and Wizards all making the playoffs in 2017.

I have no idea how much of this is permanent, and how much just represents disinterest with the particular product offered last week, or this month, or this season. The fan base can still be jolted back to life: see the 2015 playoff run, or the 2012 playoff run. Even in poor seasons, there are terrific home crowds, and the outpouring of support at the two L.A. games this season was remarkable. The Redskins remain the most popular team in town, and it isn’t close.

But each time the thing gets jolted back to life, it seems a tiny bit less alive than it was before. And each misstep — the Shanahan departure, the RGIII departure, the McCloughan departure, the Cousins uncertainty — seems to drain a tiny bit more life from the body. And so when the perfect circumstances come around, the Redskins can find themselves where they were last weekend: fighting to draw more local viewers than the Ravens and Cowboys and Patriots and Eagles, and not finishing first in that fight.

And that — more than any stats about scoring defense or injured players or yards-per-attempt or even winning percentage — might be the scariest thing for anyone involved with this Redskins regime.