Kirk Cousins Development Tracker

I'd just like to step back for a second, and once again thank Shanny for the pick.
 
Henry said:
I guess I'm not sure what you are saying then. Should we not sign him to a big-time long-term deal? Should only five QBs in the league get deals like that?

I think we need to lock him up. Of course there's a risk that he'll just be a Romo or something, but outside of, literally, Russell Wilson, you don't get to wait until a guy's all-world or not before you have to make a decision. I think the decision should be to pay him and keep him.
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I didn't sound like it, but yes, long term deal is coming. We know that the market dictates such things. If we don't do it, another team will. He'll get it here or somewhere else, so yeah, he gets his long term big pay day deal.

edit: and I think he gets it even if we take an early exit from playoffs, assuming we don't collapse. The heat would accrue to Gruden if we fail again in the playoffs.
 
Miles Monroe said:
I'd just like to step back for a second, and once again thank Shanny for the pick.
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Right on Miles. That insurance policy was a stroke of genius. And if Kirk had started day one.....Shanny would likely still be here. go figure.
 
Fear The Spear said:
Speaking of which, wouldn't it be nice, just for once, if we could totally put a team away, to the point we could insert the Suds in a regular season game, just to see what he's really made of. At least, to see if he's got #2 QB potential. Or who knows, maybe even future trade bait.

Heck, we can even dream that we lucked out with him, like we did with the Cousins pick, and maybe Suds is a clone of Cousins. Then we'd have more leverage in negotiating with Cousins, and have a backup plan if Cousins walks, or keep Cousins, and get Two #1 picks for Suds. Yes, I realize the last 2 sentences are highly unlikely, hence the term "dream".
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Well, we'd have to blow out every team by half time the rest of the way to see if Suds has anything. Even then, it would be the ultimate irony to put any hope in his play based on 5 half games. :)
 
Bulldog's Twin said:
Kirk hasn't won a playoff game.

Interesting point. But how many has he been in?

One.

And how many years has he been the day one starter?

Two.

And how many playoff games have the Redskins won before Kirk was the starter going back to Gibbs' final year in 1992?

One.

Cousins is not the reason this team hasn't won, in fact Kirk would probably be headed for the all-pro team (and conceivably a Super Bowl berth) if he played in Denver, Seattle, Oakland, or New England.

We might be headed closer to that destination ourselves if McCloughan and the front office had made the defensive front seven a priority in the offseason.
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Actually, Cousins played in the 4th Q of the Seattle playoff game when we still had a chance to win the game and he **** the bed. He looked awful. Now, I will chalk that up to rookie nerves and a 2nd stringer coming off the bench against a top rated Seattle defense, but dude played in 2 playoff games, not 1.
 
OK, he played in TWO but started ONE.

So, again my point - you can't draw a conclusion about a player's worth based upon such a ridiculously small sample size.

Especially when discussing a team like the Redskins that have such visible flaws on defense and on special teams.

Do you think Russell Wilson comes within sniffing distance of a Super Bowl victory without the #1 defense in the NFL?

How about Joe Flacco?

I would say at this point that Cousins is a better quarterback than Flacco. He is more mobile, is more accurate and durable.

But Flacco played on a team with Hall of Famers on defense didn't he?

Ozzie Newsome as GM fielded a complete team - good offense, good defense, good special teams.

Can you imagine Flacco on the 2016 Redskins?

He would be nowhere near as successful as Cousins. His slow set up and less accurate ball would prevent us from moving the ball as consistently as we have been doing.

Remember how much success our defense had against Flacco in Baltimore in that 16-10 win?

If the Redskins were serious about moving on from Cousins, the team should have drafted a qb higher in the draft than Sudfeld in Round 6.

They would have had a year plus to groom him to take over.

Right now there is no real Option #2 on this team.

I suppose the Redskins can go into free agency and sign Brian Hoyer and hope he blossoms on his SIXTH NFL roster in 8 years.

We can trade for 33 year old Jay Cutler and make the Bears happy.

How about a #1 and #2 pick to the Chargers for soon to be 35 year old Philip Rivers?

Or we can come back with what we have on offense, expect the younger OL to get even better with more experience, and FINALLY spend the picks and FA dollars to put together a defensive line that scares somebody.
 
The 'Franchise Player' meaning is an interesting one.

I guess technically Cousins is a Franchise QB because the Skins used the Franchise tag on him.

I'm kinda in the camp of people who don't think you need a playoff win to be a Franchise QB. I tend to think of a Franchise player as being the player that makes your franchise. The one who is the most important to your team

The player where if you remove him and replace him with an average player the team suffers.

Cousins is that player for us.

He's going to be the highest paid. He's the one who's in the soundbites of the media all the time for no reason other than he's Kirk Cousins. (Some players stay in the media eye because they say attract them by saying crazy things - josh Norman I'm looking at you and your 'unload the clip' snafu! - but Cousins? Nope. I've seen multiple reports over the past 24 hrs including on ESPN about how Kirk likes musical theater? Really? How slow news week?) He's selling jersey's. He's the respectable face of the Washington Redskins. We're a winning team due in part to him and did you see that we're the 5th most watched team on TV this year? Did you see those Thanksgiving ratings?

Now lets yank him off the team and put someone like Brian Hoyer or Trevor Siemian under centre...

I'm not excited by that. I wouldn't buy the shirt. Even with our receivers I doubt we win anything like 6 games with this Defense. I'm getting apathetic towards tuning in to watch.
We know that this team operates just fine without Reed, or Jackson, or Trent. Or even all three at the same time!
But if we yank Cousins I'm not sure McCoy could keep us afloat long term. He had his moments (see that Dallas game a couple of years back!) but on the whole we'd be in trouble I think.

By the same token if you put Brees, Ryan, Rodgers or Brady on this team instead of Cousins do you really see us winning a whole lot more? Considering our defensive holes?
I'm not sure we would, I don't see where the significant upgrade is.

During 2012 I thought for a moment we'd found our Franchise QB. I really thought the RGIII would be the man to keep us relevant, sell our merch around the world and lead us to the promised land over and over. the following season that mirage was very swiftly exposed.

Cousins doesn't feel like that to me. It feels like he's made a gradual ascent to the peak, to claim his place as a Franchise QB. And because of that I really feel confident that we won't see a crash back to reality like we did with Griffin.

To me he's our Franchise QB.

And I'm pretty confident that once we get our Defense sorted out we'll start winning playoff games too.
Though to be honest if we make it to the playoffs this year I'd fancy our chances to beat pretty much anyone, regardless of our D.

Dallas have the best record in the League, they're a team built specifically to our weaknesses. They take long drives, keep our O off the field and they have a running back that can exploit our run defense to keep us off balance and then a QB consistent enough to hit us in the soft underbelly. Between Dak, Zeke and Dez they're not a great match up for us. But we almost beat them... twice. I'm not scared of them, and I don't think the team is either. I suspect that the Skins rue the fact they let both those games slip.

But in the NFC we'd be likely to see Dallas, Seattle, Detroit, NY, Green Bay or Minnesota. I don't think there's any team there that the Skins couldn't beat on the right day.
I'm not saying we're superbowl bound... but I'd be tempted to put a flutter on on the off chance.

(Currently 50 to 1 odds by the way... That's worth a $10 bet I reckon.)
 
Lets look at Kirk big picture for a moment. Forget the metrics and the apples to oranges comparisons to other QB's.

Last year, Kirk was not signed to a long term deal, I think it was due to the size of the contract compared to his performance. Fast forward to 2016, is he better than last year or not?

If not better, then why would the front office feel any differently about signing a deal this year when last year was not doable to them? I think there's alot riding on the playoff performance, in a nutshell.
 
Many if not most feel that Kirk's not getting signed to long term was based on the small sample size as a starter.

His value went up considerably the last half of the 2015 season with his 'elite' performance. He essentially went from a nice backup to a top 10 QB in half a season.

Apparently the team offered a long term deal somewhere between that range and needed more of a sample to see where he was at.

Kirk has now established that he is in that upper tier with his continued performance. He's done it under heavy scrutiny as well, basically overcoming everything this year that he was 'tagged' with last year....... he didn't do this or that type stuff.

Sure he hasn't been 'perfect' but he's lead the team enough to win or be in position to win in most all games this year. Yep, wins count, but as some have tried to explain..... that is a team statistic.

For the most part the offense has 'carried' the team and Kirk is a major part of that so if one wants to say that he makes those around him better.... it's hard to argue the point.

Viable QB's in the NFL get paid, QB's that are better than that get paid a lot more..... looks like Kirk is now better than viable by any measure.
 
What Tom said.

The front office wanted to make sure his performance last year wasn't a fluke. It clearly wasn't.
 
Actually, if you look at 2015 and now 2016 a pattern that may very well be emerging is that in Kirk Cousins we have a quarterback who plays better in the second half of the season, coming down the home stretch so to speak.

He may not be a guy that starts off hot in Week 1 throwing 4 or 5 touchdowns, but he may be a guy that hits stride in mid-season and excels in November-December.

4 weeks ago Cousins was sitting at 12 touchdowns and 7 interceptions.

People were saying 'well, that's OK but not worthy of real money', etc.

Now Cousins is sitting at 20 touchdowns and 7 interceptions :)

From the numbers, it looks as if he is rounding into pro bowl form.

Yardage, completions, yards per pass, TD/INT ratio are all now top 5-8 in the league.
 
As the league writes the book on Kirk, he sees what they're doing and keeps making them write more chapters as the season progresses.
Hope he keeps up with or stays ahead of them for a long while.
 
The man's best assets are his 'intangibles' ... those things everyone talks about when assessing QB's, but inevitably end up putting second to physical traits like arm strength, height, speed, etc. Cousins to me has about average NFL physical attributes, but when combined with his intangibles--work ethic, leadership, football smarts, pocket presence, toughness, most if not all of which appear to be off the charts, are a potent combination.

Really enjoying watching the process, and hoping the man stays healthy enough to QB this team for the next several years while the franchise continues to build around him. I'm imagining a healthy Cousins with not just a strong receiving corps, but a reliable run game, and more importantly, a strong defense. One capable of taking some of the pressure off Cousins & Co. having to score on just about every possession to beat competent opponents, plus providing occasional game-changing turnovers and even scores themselves, to even just providing decent starting field position from time to time. It's hard to recall many instances this year when we've given the ball to our offense on the plus side of the field.

Just saying ... Cousins is finding success now without a whole lot of support beyond a good receiving corps and pretty good pass protection. Add a run game and a defense to the equation, and I don't think we'll need to spend a lot more time discussing the finer connotations of the term Franchise QB.
 
Om said:
The man's best assets are his 'intangibles' ... those things everyone talks about when assessing QB's, but inevitably end up putting second to physical traits like arm strength, height, speed, etc. Cousins to me has about average NFL physical attributes, but, when combined with his intangibles--work ethic, leadership, football smarts, pocket presence, toughness--most if not all of which appear to be off the charts, are a potent combination.
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You forgot to mention dorkiness. :)
 
My bad. :)

Maybe he's just dorky before dorky becomes cool.
 
Henry said:
What Tom said.

The front office wanted to make sure his performance last year wasn't a fluke. It clearly wasn't.
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And I believe that they were absolutely correct in doing so. Kudos to them.
 
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