Jay Gruden tired of one-year deals, wants to sign Kirk Cousins long term

Jay Gruden is getting tired of dealing with one-year deals every offseason regarding Kirk Cousins. He wants to get a long term deal done.

Not only are Washington Redskins fans everywhere growing tired of the Kirk Cousins saga and the one-year deals that come with it every offseason. Apparently the head coach is sick of them too.

In a recent interview, Jay Gruden spoke of his desire to keep Cousins as the long term quarterback and to essentially stop the one-year signings that come around every offseason. Still, he was non-committal about the team actually deciding to keep him. And that seems to demonstrate the fundamental disconnect between the front office, Gruden, and Cousins.

Here are Gruden’s exact comments regarding the Cousins saga, via Dan Steinberg of the Washington Post.

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"I think something has to be done. I personally don’t want to go through another one-year deal, and just [keep going] one year, one year. I think you want to have a quarterback in here that’s going to be here. And hopefully that is Kirk, and if not, we have to move on and do what we have to do as an organization.For the most part, the great quarterbacks are in the same system year in and year out, and are developing in that system. [Teams are] not holding our breath every March and April, waiting for the guy. But if that’s the case, that’s the case. But we like Kirk and his development. He’s played well at times, without a doubt, proven that he’s a good starting NFL quarterback."

Gruden brings up an excellent point in these comments. The fact that the decision on Cousins has come typically just before free agency begins means that there is still an air of uncertainty in the building. He’s not yet definite to return. That means that they can’t spend as much time working with him in the offseason, as a lot of Cousins’ time is taken up by the negotiation process. This can serve as a distraction to the quarterback, and it could be possible that is why he has started each of the past two seasons slowly. Because he wasn’t quite mentally prepared for the season as he tried to negotiate a long-term deal.

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Regardless of what your opinion on Cousins is, Gruden is right. It’s time for the organization to make a decision and move on. Either pony up and pay Kirk Cousins the $25-$30 million yearly that he will fetch on the open market, or let him walk. We ran simulations of both scenarios, one where he is kept and a different one where he walks, so feel free to check those out and decide for yourself what the better option is.

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