Who is to Blame for the Kirk Cousins Mess

It’s the middle of July, and most people aren’t paying any attention to the NFL, but Monday was quietly a very big day in the league. Monday was the deadline for players who were given the franchise tag to agree to a long term deal, and with that deadline passed the clock is now ticking down to free agency for Kirk Cousins, Le’Veon Bell, and Trumain Johnson.

Bell is an interesting case on his own, especially with word that he is seeking to be paid as both a starting running back and a number two wide receiver. He certainly has a case to make here, and that’s an interesting conversation down the road. But most of the discussion these past couple days has circled around Cousins, one of the most fascinating contract situations we have seen in a long time.

It’s beyond cliché by now to say that quarterback is the most important position in sports, and NFL teams treat the position accordingly. Quality quarterbacks simply do not hit free agency. The two most notable moves of the past twenty years were Drew Brees and Peyton Manning, both future Hall of Famers who were allowed to walk after suffering potential career ending injuries while playing for teams with a clear successor already in place. These circumstances come around about once per decade, and other than that the only way for a team to get a quality starting quarterback is through the draft. If you have a solution at quarterback, you keep him around, stomaching whatever cost comes with it.

This is the philosophy of every team in the league, and with each new year we get another quarterback resetting the marketplace. Last year Andrew Luck signed a five year deal with $123 million. This offseason Derek Carr reached an extension with the Raiders worth $125 million over the next five years. And with three years left on an undervalued contract, it’s very likely that Aaron Rodgers knocks both those numbers out of the park sometime soon.

Elite quarterbacks get paid. They have all the leverage, and the teams cannot afford to let them walk. Even young quarterbacks that haven’t quite proven themselves usually wind up with a big money second contract, notably Ryan Tannehill’s $77 million and Andy Dalton’s $96 million (you could argue that Carr belongs in this same category as a player, even though he got paid at a much higher level). And yet, for two straight years Cousins has been forced to play on the franchise tag, unable to reach a long term deal with the team he has started every game for over the past two seasons.

As the saga has reached its crescendo this week, there has been a great deal of blame thrown by both sides. It’s the team’s fault for not offering a deal worthy of a top flight quarterback. It’s Cousins’s fault for being greedy and unwilling to negotiate. The Redskins fanned the flames this week by issuing a press release describing the terms of their offer as “the highest fully guaranteed amount on signing in NFL history ($53 million)”, a statement that threw their quarterback under the bus and provided ammunition for both sides of the debate.

The main question seems to have become who is at fault for the impasse. And yet, after spending a couple days thinking about it, I haven’t been able to figure out which side I’m on. It’s very possible that both sides are to blame, and that neither side is, in a unique situation that forces us to confront the way we think about the quarterback position and roster construction in the NFL.

To start with we need to talk about Cousins. A fourth round pick the same year the Redskins traded up to grab Robert Griffin III, Cousins was never supposed to be the answer in Washington. He was a fallback plan, one that became all too real when injuries and other issues ended Griffin’s potential. Cousins took over the starting job at the beginning of 2015, and he put together a surprisingly effective season, throwing for over 4000 yards with 29 touchdowns to only 11 interceptions.

His contract expired at the end of that season, but one year of strong performance wasn’t enough to sell the Redskins, and Cousins wasn’t about to cash in on an under market deal. Both parties put their chips on the table for the 2016 season, each hoping that their suspicion of what Cousins was would come forward in a larger sample.

And on the surface, it looks like Cousins won the bet. He threw for nearly 5000 yards, and again proved efficient with the ball with 25 touchdowns against 12 interceptions. The Redskins stumbled down the stretch, but they were in playoff contention for most of the season thanks to an explosive and dynamic offense. And after two seasons of strong performance, it seemed like Cousins was due to cash in.

The tricky part is, Cousins really isn’t that good a quarterback. He’s a capable starter, but the numbers greatly inflate his performance. The talent around him last year was among the best in the league, and he played in a system designed to make life easy for him. But on a play by play basis he demonstrated consistent inaccuracy, poor decision making, and failures to take the offense to the next level it needed to reach the postseason.

This isn’t a case where there is some great argument about how good Cousins is (we won’t be asking if Cousins is a Flacco-level elite quarterback anytime soon). Everyone seems pretty much in agreement about what Cousins is. He is roughly the 20^th best quarterback in the league, above the dregs of the Bortles and the Osweilers but far short of the Ryans, Rodgers, and even the Staffords of the world.

The Redskins know what Cousins is, and they aren’t going to offer him a Luck or Carr level contract. That would be a mistake that would cripple the franchise for years to come. But Cousins has the numbers on his side, and as a starting quarterback he feels he has all the leverage in these conversations.

The difficult part of this for the Redskins is that they are truly in uncharted waters. They know they can’t sign Cousins to the deal he’s demanding, but the alternative isn’t any clearer. They could keep franchising him, kicking the can down the road in a move that would cost them $35 million next year. Or they could let him hit free agency, opening the market up to see if other teams are willing to offer the sort of contract they are not.

This seems like the most reasonable option, and it’s what a team would do with any other player at any other position. But the Redskins know as well as anyone how difficult it can be to find quarterback competency in the NFL, and how devastating it can be to lack it. It is true that Cousins is not a good quarterback, but it is just as true that he’s the best quarterback the Redskins have had in the past twenty years. It’s difficult to part with that, with the uncertainty of what may or may not be available to them in the draft in years to come.

So on the one hand it would appear that Cousins does have all the leverage. And from the press release the Redskins issued on Monday, it certainly seems like they want people to believe that’s the case. Referring to the $53 million guarantee as the “highest…in NFL history” is technically true, but it is also a laughable misdirection about the true nature of their offer.

Cousins is going to get $24 million this year on the franchise tag. There is no way for the Redskins to get out of that, so in truth their offer was only an additional $29 million over the next two years. As I mentioned above, the cost of franchising him again would be $35 million. There is absolutely a risk that they would pass up that opportunity, but Cousins is not going to sign away three years of flexibility on a five year contract to shrink his salary by $6 million in 2018.

It is understandable why Cousins turned down this offer, but it would have been just as understandable if he’d taken it. Because though right now Cousins has a great deal of leverage, it is very likely that won’t be the case a year from now. He is coming off a career year and heading into a season in which his situation has gotten far worse. His top two wide receivers both left this offseason, and while I’m intrigued by the Terrelle Pryor/Josh Doctson duo, neither reaches the heights of DeSean Jackson or offers the security of Pierre Garcon.

Predictions always carry a touch of uncertainty, but I would be shocked if Cousins’s 2017 performance matches what he did in 2016. And if the Redskins aren’t sold on giving him superstar money after last year, they aren’t going to be won over by a statistical step backwards.

The tension between the two parties has become very clear, and neither side appears willing to offer an olive branch. The press release by the Redskins was a cheap shot aimed at turning the fan base against their starting quarterback, while Cousins’s reported refusal to even submit a counter offer suggests an underlying dissatisfaction with the organization. Both of these seem to point to the same ultimate destination, free agency for the team’s starting quarterback.

This is where things get uncertain. Because we simply have no idea what the market value is for a player like Cousins. The most popular free agent quarterback of this offseason was Mike Glennon (the best is Colin Kaepernick, but that’s a whole other conversation), and he received $15 million a year from the Bears. Glennon hasn’t seen the field in three years, and he was nowhere near Cousins’s level the last time he played. Cousins will absolutely get $20 million a year in free agency, and he could even push towards Carr’s $25 million number. Nobody thinks he is worth this, but the competitive market may push his contract in this direction.

This certainly seems like it would work out for Cousins, and he may relish the prospect of getting away from the organizational dysfunction in Washington (though considering his suitors will likely be led by the 49ers, Browns, and Jets we may be dealing with a frying pan – fire situation). But again, we don’t know for sure how teams will value a player like Cousins. By the time the 2018 season starts he’ll be 30 years old, and I’m not sure how ready teams will be to commit five years and more than $100 million to a middle aged quarterback who has never shown any sign of performing at an elite level.

We know that a top notch quarterback is worth any price you pay him. And we know there is a great deal of value in a young quarterback playing on a suppressed rookie salary. But right now we don’t have enough evidence to properly value a quarterback who simply rides the line of competence.

The Redskins did the right thing by not offering a massive contract, and Cousins did the right thing by not taking a lowball offer. The Redskins did the wrong thing by bringing uncertainty to the most important position on the field, and Cousins did the wrong thing by not cashing in on an unrepeatable career year. This is a situation without a winner or a loser, just two sides fighting to work out a problem that doesn’t have a solution.