Kirk Cousins & RGIII: Jay Gruden Has his Hands Full

Is Robert Griffin III the clear-cut starter going into the 2014 NFL season or is there a full-blown quarterback controversy brewing in the Washington Redskins organization?

Kirk Cousins says he wants to be the starter for the team, but the question is has he shown enough to incoming coach Jay Gruden to actually make a realistic argument to start over RG3?

This situation is going to get real ugly sooner rather than later. Until Washington trades one of their two young quarterbacks, which probably wont happen, this situation may only get worse. Kirk Cousins has informed the Redskins of his desire to start and that he welcomes a trade to a team looking for a starting quarterback.

When Mike Shanahan decided to sit Robert Griffin and play Kirk Cousins for the rest of the season it was clear something was amiss in Washington.

Since then the writing has been on the wall and it’s no secret that there is an issue boiling over regarding the starting quarterback position.

Kirk Cousins was saying all the right things when he got his time to shine, and on every occasion when he was asked about his situation as the Redskins starter once Shanahan shut down RG3 for the season, Cousins reiterated that he knows the team belongs to Robert Griffin.

Now he’s saying he wants to be the starter, or rather, a starter someplace in the NFL. Can this come as any surprise? It shouldn’t. One common quality of any great quarterback is confidence in their own ability.

There isn’t a quarterback in the NFL that doesn’t feel like they shouldn’t be a starter in the league, because if they felt they weren’t good enough to start than they were in the wrong profession.

Kirk Cousins was a superstar at Michigan State University and is accustomed to being the number one guy. In another perspective, this quarterback controversy started the day they drafted Kirk Cousins, coincidentally, the same draft they acquired RG3.

The Redskins had already picked Robert Griffin with their first round, second overall draft pick. Not to mention they traded a fortune of draft picks to get to the second slot in the draft giving a king’s ransom to the St. Louis Rams.

Then Washington shocked everyone when they picked up Kirk Cousins in the fourth round. It was then I foresaw this situation. One of these young quarterbacks was destined to be wasted unless they departed the team.

We assume the Redskins picked two quarterbacks to maximize the possibility of success, but didn’t they achieve the exact opposite? The Redskins had a horrible 2013 season and regardless of who the quarterback the team played very poorly.

This was a messy situation to begin with between Shanahan and RG3, and now it’s getting messier. The Washington Redskins invested their entire future to form a partnership with Robert Griffin, they can’t turn their back on him now, and Dan Snyder knows that.

They are in way too deep with RG3 to just cut ties with him now or even have him as a backup.

Who knows what it was that made Kirk Cousins to change his approach from a willing back up to requesting a trade, but again, surely Cousins never wanted to be a backup to begin with and sees this as an opportunity to capitalize on his abilities.

Most likely it’s one of those situations where his agent got in his head. The more handsomely a player gets paid in the league, the more that player’s agent is going to be compensated.

Plus, can we really blame Kirk Cousins for feeling this way? Who in their field of work doesn’t strive to be the best? How many of us don’t want to be promoted and hold the number one position in our work?

The NFL is hard enough for starting quarterbacks; it must be an even tougher experience for a young backup that feels he can help a team succeed.

Robert Griffin has to look over his shoulder every bad pass he throws and Kirk Cousins has to either waste his talent sitting on a bench or leave town in order to get his opportunity to start in the NFL regularly and not just when RG3 goes down with injury.

Jay Gruden, brother of former NFL champion coach Jon Gruden, has a great challenge on his hands. Like with any other team, the Redskins need to develop and produce great quarterback play.

For a rookie head coach like Gruden, under the heavy scrutiny in a place like Washington D.C., he’s going to have to start out of the gates on fire. Because if not, between the quarterback controversy that’s brewing, as well as the rest of the mess in Washington, this has the potential to make his stint as a head coach a very short-one, and that’s never a good thing.