Report: Kirk Cousins Won’t Negotiate Long-Term Deal With Redskins As Long As Bruce Allen Is President

Chick Hernandez, citing a source close to the QB Kirk Cousins‘ camp, reports that he will not negotiate a long-term deal with the Redskins as long as Bruce Allen is the team’s president.

Hernandez adds that this speaks to how most of the team’s players dislike the way they handled the Scot McCloughan situation, which resulted in him being fired last night, despite the fact that free agency just opened.

Yesterday, ESPN’s Chris Mortensen reported that Cousins appealed personally to Redskins owner Dan Snyder for a trade, but was basically told not to get his hopes up. Adam Schefter added that the Redskins, up to this point, have shown zero inclination to trade Cousins and continue to insist they will not.

Trade rumors from the past few weeks have centered around Cousins landing with the 49ers, but indications are that the Redskins plan to have him as their starting quarterback for the 2017 season.

For what it’s worth, Mike Silver of the NFL Network mentioned on Tuesday that ‘”it’s more likely than not that Kirk Cousins ends up being the 49ers quarterback.”

“I believe that Kirk Cousins wants to be in San Francisco. I believe that Kyle Shanahan, who has been very, very high on Kirk Cousins since he was the offensive coordinator in Washington when they drafted Cousins. I believe that marriage wants to happen on both ends,” Silver said. “It’s an expensive marriage and we’ll see in terms of trade compensation what it would take to get him, maybe something that happens in a year. But if I had to make a guess one way or another at this early stage I would say it’s more likely than not that Kirk Cousins ends up being the 49ers quarterback.

The Redskins officially placed the exclusive franchise tag on Cousins Tuesday. The exclusive tag prevents other teams from negotiating with him during free agency, but the Redskins are still fully able to trade him to another team and give him permission to speak to a team about a long-term extension.

By tagging Cousins again, this all but rules out a third franchise tag for Cousins, which means he’s one season away from testing the open market and possibly becoming the highest paid player in the NFL.

Cousins, 28, is a former fourth-round pick of the Redskins back in 2012. He played out the final year of his four-year, $2,572,688 rookie contract that included a $472,688 signing bonus when Washington elected to use the franchise tag on Cousins that paid him $19.953 million fully guaranteed for the 2016 season.

In 2016, Cousins has appeared in all 16 games and thrown for 4,917 yards while completing 67 percent of his passes to go along with 25 touchdowns and 12 interceptions. Pro Football Focus has him rated as the No. 8 quarterback out of 36 qualifying players.

We’ll have more regarding Cousins as the news is available.