Kirk Cousins’ future remains up in the air, but there’s a good chance he’ll be leaving the Redskins. Here are five teams he could play for next season.
It was widely speculated that Kirk Cousins would follow coach Kyle Shanahan to the bay in the 2018 season. Cousins’ situation in Washington, where he’s playing under the franchise tag for the second consecutive season, has become. San Francisco decided to go another route when they traded for Patriots backup QB Jimmy Garoppolo.
Seeing how the 49ers gave up a second-round pick which will almost surely be at the top of the round, Cousins is obviously not headed to San Francisco. The 49ers are now too invested in Garoppolo to bring in a QB that has the resume Cousins does. This brings up the fascinating question of where Cousins will be playing next year.
It’s a rare situation that a QB of his caliber could even be close to hitting the open market. Typically, teams lock up a QB that shows even a little bit of promise. Cousins has obviously shown much more than promise and will likely be the most coveted player headed into 2018. Here are five teams that should be highly interested in Cousins.
5. Miami Dolphins
The winds of change are already blowing through Miami. The Dolphins decided on Tuesday that they’d seen enough of RB Jay Ajayi and shipped him to Philadelphia for a late draft pick. Coach Adam Gase has made it quite clear he’s in charge and he’s tired of seeing bad offensive efforts from the whole squad.
The Dolphins are a prime candidate for a new QB in 2018. They had to pull Jay Cutler out of the broadcasting booth this season once Ryan Tannehill suffered a season-ending injury. That was an obvious sign they didn’t trust incumbent number two Matt Moore enough to just roll with him for 2017. Even if Tannehill had been healthy this season, he’s never been much better than slightly above average. Tannehill was there before Gase, and most coaches want their guy at QB.
Let’s go ahead and assume Cutler walks away after this season. There’s no reason to think he would be back. Cutler certainly hasn’t shown anything on-field to suggest he can play at a very high level. It will come down to how the Dolphins feel about Tannehill moving forward. Even though they signed him to an extension that could carry through the 2020 season, they could also very easily jump out of the contract. There’s an option after this season that would leave Miami a reasonable sum of dead cap space ($6.9 million over two seasons). Adam Gase had a reputation of a sharp offensive mind coming into Miami. Things haven’t worked out quite that way yet, but Cousins could be a QB that changes that.