Kirk Cousins expected to be worth no higher than a second round draft pick

The Denver Broncos and San Diego Chargers may be battling it out on NFL Network tonight, but the pregame show couldn’t stop talking about the story of the week in the league and how Robert Griffin III had been benched in Washington. The conversation drifted towards RGIII’s replacement Kirk Cousins and what the Redskins plan on doing with him.

Conventional thinking has a lot of people assuming that these last three games will be the Redskins auditioning Cousins to the rest of the NFL in the hopes of trading him in the offseason to recoup lost draft picks. Should that be the case, NFL Network insider Ian Rapoport reports that as many as six NFL executives from around the league believe that the best the Redskins can fetch for Cousins if he does well is a second round pick.

Even if he lights up the three really bad teams he has to face this season, it’s hard to see a team in need of a quarterback pass on the likes of Johnny Manziel, Derek Carr, A.J. McCarron or even Aaron Murray. Cousins isn’t a bad quarterback and he’s a young guy that can be developed but he’s not worth a first rounder and I’d be pretty upset if my team forked over a second rounder for him too.

Still, this is audition time for Cousins and Rapoport pointed out on Thursday Night Football that we shouldn’t count out the possibility of the Redskins keeping the quarterback as RGIII’s backup.