[Schneed10]

Flacco's contract is not helping. Matty I wholeheartedly agree with you that it is not preventing them from being good. If you're going to carry a very heavy QB contract, it means you've got to draft well to make up for it. If you don't draft well, you're left with little cap space to make up for it.

Drafting well is job 1, but if you fail at it you'd like to have cap space to try to make up for it. It's simple risk management.

Overpaying a QB like Flacco removes your margin for error. You either draft well during the heavy QB contract, or you are stuck with sucking. You have no recourse.

That Ravens situation still shouldn't be applied to the Redskins and Cousins blindly though, simply because I think Cousins is better than Flacco. But signing Cousins to a highest-paid-player type contract is akin to pushing all your chips to the center of the table. You're saying I'm going to draft well for the next 5 years to keep my roster stocked and support my QB who needs the support, and if I don't, then we suck.

Teams with QBs like Brady, Rodgers and Wentz don't have to think that way. If they miss on some picks in the draft, their QB can still pull a rabbit out of a hat.

I still can't make up my mind on Cousins. No matter what you're pushing a boulder up a hill. Let him go and you start the process to find a new QB, which can take 20 years. Keep him, and you start the process of being perfect in the draft for the next 5 years. Hard choice.