I was cruising through some sports articles in my RSS app on the Nook when the following headline grabbed my attention: John Gruden says he would trade a first-round pick to get Kirk Cousins. It led me to a Yahoo Sports opinion piece by Anwar Richardson.
In the article, Mr. Richardson isn’t impressed with Gruden’s judgement. He notes that Gruden only ever developed veteran quarterbacks in the league like Rich Gannon and Brad Johnson, but claims he (Gruden) never had the patience to develop young quarterbacks like Chris Simms and Bruce Gradkowski. Finally, he finishes with the following:
Cousins, a fourth-round pick in 2012, played well when Robert Griffin III missed a game last season due to a knee injury. The backup completed 26-of-37 passes for 329 yards and two touchdowns during a 38-21 victory against Cleveland. If an NFL team offered a first-round pick for Cousins, it would mean they believed he was better than every quarterback in the 2014 NFL draft class, which could include Louisville’s Teddy Bridgewater, Clemson’s Tajh Boyd, Texas A&M’s Johnny Manziel and UCLA’s Brett Hundley. That just does not seem likely, considering NFL teams had a chance to just take Cousins last year and passed until Washington took him with pick No. 102.
Anyone with any kind of memory for great-college-quarterbacks-that-flopped-in-the-NFL should immediately recognize that his guy doesn’t have any capacity for reasoning. His a short list of celebrated college quarterbacks that never made it: Tim Tebow, Ryan Leaf, Gino Torretta, Tim Couch, Akili Smith, Vinny Testaverde, Kerry Collins and Danny Wuerffel. So the notion that a current backup with one really good pro-game under his belt doesn’t have a better resume than a bunch of college stars is pretty thin gruel.
Also, he claims that Gruden didn’t have the patience to develop young talent. That’s possible. It’s also possible that Gruden quickly realized those guys would never make it. Considering that the 2 guys Mr. Richardson names aren’t even recognizable names makes me think the latter, as opposed to Mr. Richardson’s thesis.
None of this is to say that Kirk Cousins is worth a 1st round draft pick to get. (I’d never considered the notion until now- I actually think it’s justifiable.) It’s mainly to point out that Mr. Richardson’s reasoning is completely lacking.