The-Hogs.net - Washington Football Discussion, Redskins to Commanders Era

OldSchool wrote:Overpaying an average QB is a minor risk for the Redskins.

Countertrey wrote:Honestly, I do think that Cousins wants to gamble on himself, which means that, unless he is blown away by a "lock him down" offer from the Redskins BEFORE the start of free agency, he will test the market... and there WILL be significant offers from other desperate teams... He would be perfectly happy being tagged, as well, as it will give him the opportunity to polish his resume, while paying him top dollar to invest for his fiscal future. Either way, unless he suffers a catastrophic injury, he gets a really good deal for himself.

I don't believe the Redskins are willing to gamble, though. They will make a reasonable, good faith effort to achieve a deal, but is still think the odds are that Cousins gets tagged, assuming he suffers no disasters of his own creation. The team DOES NOT want Kirk to hit the market...

StorminMormon86 wrote: As long as Kirk is here for 2016, I would be happy with anything at this point.

SkinsJock wrote:

StorminMormon86 wrote: As long as Kirk is here for 2016, I would be happy with anything at this point.

OMG - thankfully, for many of us, guys with a lot more rational sense are going to make that decision for you

Burgundy&GoldForever wrote:More reading material: http://washington.cbslocal.com/2015/12/ ... b0.twitter

$19.75 million?

DEHog wrote:

Burgundy&GoldForever wrote:More reading material: http://washington.cbslocal.com/2015/12/ ... b0.twitter

$19.75 million?

Well it looks like the floor has ben set. As I said (as log as he continues to play well) it's going to take 35-40 mil or somewhere in the area of 12-15 mil a year to get him signed.

Burgundy&GoldForever wrote:Do you think Scot McCloughan is just going to let Kirk Cousins walk away in free agency? Yes or No. Let's get this on record now.

Burgundy&GoldForever wrote:

DEHog wrote:

Burgundy&GoldForever wrote:More reading material: http://washington.cbslocal.com/2015/12/ ... b0.twitter

$19.75 million?

Well it looks like the floor has ben set. As I said (as log as he continues to play well) it's going to take 35-40 mil or somewhere in the area of 12-15 mil a year to get him signed.

I'm starting to hope that's all it's going to take. That $16 million RGIII option is starting to look cheap by comparison. No one saw this coming, right Mike Shanahan?

I hate to say that guy was right but it's starting to look like that guy was right.

riggofan wrote:
Be careful with your answer here, SkinsJock!

Burgundy&GoldForever wrote:Do you think Scot McCloughan is going to let Kirk Cousins walk away in free agency? Yes or No. Let's get this on record now.

Sam Monson, Special to ESPN.com

The NFL is a barren quarterback wasteland in 2015. The old guard is aging. Peyton Manning looks less like one of the greatest to ever play the game and more like a guy suited to driving the Buicks he hawks in commercials.

Some of the league's best are over the hill and there are fewer impressive young quarterbacks taking their place. The last genuinely great year of quarterback talent to come out of college was more than a decade ago (2004), and several teams now find themselves in quarterback purgatory, destined to roll the dice on whatever they can find in the bare free-agency cupboard or the glimmer of talent they spot in the draft.

Quarterbacks who have shown anything can hang around and make a fortune as experienced backups despite reams of footage suggesting they have no business seeing the field. Matt Cassel is still earning playing time based on tape from five years ago and maybe dating all the way to his 2008 breakout season as the underdog in New England.

The latest quarterback who might be playing his way into some serious leverage and financial gain is Washington's Kirk Cousins.


Let's start with the headlines: Washington is 5-6, in first place in the NFC East (albeit via tiebreakers) and with a real shot of making the playoffs in the division nobody seems to want to win. Cousins is 5-1 at home this season, has completed 68.4 percent of his passes and has a passer rating of 91.7.


Kirk Cousins has done his best work at home this season. Brad Mills/USA TODAY Sports
That's not to say he has actually played well overall, but when you consider where the bar was in Washington in order to get him his chance in the first place, he has exceeded expectations.

In PFF's new ratings system, he is 20th for the season. That's not great, and won't change anybody's Pro Bowl ballot, but 50 quarterbacks have taken more than 60 snaps this season (a rough game's worth), and that puts him in the top two-thirds of the league, or into the realms of viable.

We also have to bear in mind when evaluating Cousins that his career is 20 starts old. This season is essentially his debut year. We have to assume that the Cousins we see now has room to grow as he develops and gains experience. Coming into this season he was one of the most turnover-prone quarterbacks in league history. He hadn't had a season in which his interception percentage was under 4.4, but already this year that has fallen to 2.6 percent.

That's still not a fantastic figure (the top three passers in the league this season are at 1.0 percent or under), but it's now "middle of the pack" rather than "historically bad" territory and better than players such as Cam Newton and Matt Ryan this season.

His passing profile fits that of most young quarterbacks, who struggle the most when pressured. This season, his passer rating from a clean pocket is 111.1, throwing 13 touchdowns and only three picks and completing 77.2 percent of his passes. Those are All-Pro numbers and are well above the league average even from a flawless pocket.

His issues come when the heat is applied. His completion percentage when pressured drops to 51.1. His yards-per-attempt figure drops more than 2 full yards and he has thrown just three touchdowns to seven picks, giving him a passer rating of 53.7 on those throws. His PFF grade on passes where he faced no pressure is plus-7.9; when he felt heat it is an ugly minus-11.2.

Washington's offensive line has been OK this year, but could certainly be improved with the expectation that Cousins would improve with it. Trent Williams has yet to surrender a sack playing left tackle, but the combination of Josh LeRibeus and Kory Lichtensteiger has given the Redskins the league's worst-performing center this season, applying a consistent barrage of pressure right up the gut, which is never ideal for a quarterback.

With Brandon Scherff likely to improve on a steady rookie campaign and both Morgan Moses and Spencer Long holding their own, Washington's line could quickly become a decent unit if it can upgrade the weak link at center. That could even happen if Lichtensteiger, who has played well in the past, is carrying an injury that would explain his poor play, or simply rediscovers his better form.

The bottom line for Washington is that right now it has no quarterback signed long term, and in today's NFL that's a bad place to be. The headline acts of the 2016 free-agency crop are Sam Bradford, Ryan Fitzpatrick and Brock Osweiler, and Osweiler is likely to get locked down if he shows enough for the Broncos down the stretch.

There's a very real chance that Cousins is the best option Washington has for the near future, and he has flashed more than enough this season to suggest that might not be a terrible situation to be in. Cousins has shown the upside of a talented, young quarterback, and the Redskins are in a good situation to be able to build around him and try to help him develop into something better. With an improved offensive line next year and an upgrade in the receiving corps or backfield, Cousins could well be the quarterback of the future in Washington after all, and worth the contract it will take to lock him down.

At the very least, he might be the best option the team has available to it.

riggofan wrote:

DEHog wrote:Agreed, why play for 15/16 guaranteed over three years when you could play one for 18 mil? If he doesn't do well he's got 18 mil, if he does well he'll be in line for a huge payday!!

lol. I don't think 15 over three years is remotely in the ball park for a starting QB. That's like the money they pay the left guard.

When you hear $15m three years, they're talking per year which is reasonable for a quarterback.

Former NFL quarterback Danny Kannell has a theory about Kirk Cousins, and if the headline didn’t already give it away, you might want to sit down for what follows.

“I think Kirk Cousins could be the next Drew Brees,” Kannell said Wednesday on ESPN Radio’s “Russillo and Kannell” show. “Tell me why he can’t.”

“Ummm,” co-host Ryen Russillo replied after a long pause. “I don’t know off the top of my head, was Brees as much of a turnover machine as Cousins has been?”

Kannell proceeded to note that Brees was, in fact, as much of a turnover machine as Cousins early in his career. In his first 28 games after the San Diego Chargers selected him in the second round of the 2001 NFL draft, Brees threw 29 touchdowns and 31 interceptions, while completing 58 percent of his passes. Cousins, by comparison, has thrown 34 touchdowns and 29 interceptions, while completing 64 percent of his passes, in 25 games.

Brees blossomed in his fourth pro season, throwing 27 touchdowns against seven interceptions, and leading San Diego to the AFC West title in 2004. Since signing with New Orleans as a free agent in 2006, he’s won a Super Bowl and set several NFL records, including highest completion percentage in a season and the most number of seasons with 5,000 yards passing.

Kannell, who, like Cousins, once made a weekly radio appearance on a local station as a backup quarterback, attempted to explain why he thinks Cousins’s career could follow a similar trajectory.

“I’d go in every morning on Kool 105 in Denver with J.J. and the Coach and we would talk about games,” Kannell said of his days as the Broncos’ backup quarterback with a radio gig in 2003. “We had just played the San Diego Chargers and Drew Brees was the starter and he looked awful. And we’re in there laughing about how bad he was, like, ‘Man, can you believe that guy’s a starter? How does this guy get it done? He’s got no future.’ And I was crushing him. I feel really stupid about it now, but, there’s a growth process and I think you’ve seen enough from Kirk Cousins, the ability to win games and those sort of intangibles that coaches talk about. I think he’s got ’em. Every coach that I’ve talked to, and [Michigan State Coach] Mark Dantonio was one of them, who has spent time with him, has talked about his ability to lead others and raise up the play of the guys around him. And when I look at his skill set, I see a very similar skill set to Drew Brees. Drew Brees was not the most athletic guy, he wasn’t the biggest, prototypical quarterback that you would look at, it just took a guy like [Saints Coach] Sean Payton to believe in him and say, ‘All right, you’re going to be our guy. You’re going to be our franchise.’ ”

Russillo wasn’t convinced.

“If this is who [Cousins] is now, I’m more open to the idea that he can be a guy, but will he be one of the five most efficient, productive QBs for a decade like Brees was?” he asked. “That’s a leap.”

“It’s a leap for sure,” Kannell replied. “But I’m trying to look for potential. I’m willing to go out there and find something, instead of just sitting back and criticizing. I think we criticize way too many young quarterbacks across the board. … He’s winning games, he’s starting to play better. Yeah, if you put him on a team that doesn’t have talent around him, I don’t think he’s the type of quarterback that can lift everybody up at this point in his career, but could he be? Absolutely.”

Well then. If the Redskins think Cousins can become anything close to “the next Drew Brees,” one would think they’ll do whatever it takes to keep him after this season. Otherwise, they run the risk of watching the former Big Ten QB develop into a star with another team, like, you know, Drew Brees.

“I wouldn’t go crazy with him and give him a $100 million deal, but I think he’s absolutely worth investing in,” Kannell said.

riggofan wrote:Wow this Kirk bandwagon is really picking up some steam...

SkinsJock wrote:Cousins would be better off if he were allowed more flexibility - the offense we've seen recently works better when he's given more freedom

SkinsJock wrote:be interesting to see what happens with RG3 next season - I would not be surprised to see him flourish under a coach that wants to help him

SkinsJock wrote:it could happen that we don't have either Cousins or Griffin on the roster next season