WASHINGTON — The Redskins may be experiencing somewhat of an identity crisis.

While everything is fine — just, fine — at 4-3-1 on the football field, there is a question looming large off it, and how the front office chooses to answer that question could alter how the franchise directs its resources for years to come.

Mike Jones of The Washington Post believes the front office has yet to decide about future dealings with quarterback Kirk Cousins, although he did make a somewhat startling observation to The Sports Junkies Tuesday morning in remarking that, while still evaluating Cousins, a common thought running through the front office is “we kind of would be the same if we had Colt [McCoy] right now.”

Jones did note this was his educated opinion, but that is still the educated opinion of a tenured reporter on the Redskins beat.

In a follow-up appearance on 106.7 The Fan, Jones clarified a few points to Chad Dukes and Chris Russell, one being that his overarching point wasn’t to say McCoy and Cousins are identical players, but rather that McCoy might take chances that Cousins hasn’t, and those extra chances might result in a similar record.

“It looks great that [Cousins is] second in the league in passing,” Jones said. “If you’re going to pay him $25 million a year, you better have more… you know, he’s gonna throw for 4,900 yards this year, but he’s gonna have 25 passing touchdowns. That’s not good at all. Nobody throws for that many yards and that few touchdowns.”

“I’m saying that you can’t pay him that much money for that little bit of production and, look. The Redskins have three losses; one loss was by three points, one by four points. If they get one more touchdown, one more touchdown instead of a field goal, they’re really — what are they? — 6-2, maybe? Maybe they’re 7-1,” he said.

“I mean, the belief by brass is that they have too much firepower to be struggling like this in the red zone. I’m not saying that everybody says it’s Kirk’s fault, but they feel like they have the personnel to be very good, and, right now, Kirk Cousins is still under evaluation and I just said that I don’t believe that he’s earned that yet. And one of their questions that they will ask is, ‘Okay. Going forward, next year, or look at this year. Would we be drastically different right now if there was Colt McCoy under center than what Kirk Cousins has done?'”

Re-watching the Redskins’ red zone appearances this season only reaffirmed for Jones that Cousins hasn’t been aggressive enough near the goal line.

“He doesn’t throw guys open,” he said. “He takes whatever’s there and that’s it. You know, you look at great quarterbacks who have a way of getting their receivers open with their throws, Kirk Cousins isn’t doing that.

“He looks like he’s playing safe. He’s getting the stats. He’s protecting his quarterback rating. He’s protecting the ball. He’s not a risk-taker, he’s not taking chances and being as aggressive as he probably could be and you hope that it’s not because there’s a contract in the back of his mind.”

“But this second half of the season, as I said, he still has time to go out there, and if he finishes this half of the season like he did last year, with 19 touchdowns and only two interceptions and this team wheels off a lot of wins, then boom. Taken care of,” he said. “You don’t have to worry about it.

“If they struggle down the stretch, and now it stinks for them because they’re not going to have Trent Williams for four games, then they’re going to sit there and they’re gonna say, ‘Okay. Do we franchise tag this guy again? Do we look at all of our needs, and can we commit that much money to this guy when we have so many other needs, and, really, he was pretty average in the red zone, and we lost a lot of games by three points, two points, four points, when we just needed one more touchdown? Are we really willing to spend that much money?’

“That’s the question: ‘Do we get a bridge quarterback in Colt McCoy, and then get our long-term quarterback solution in the draft?’ These are the questions that they’re going to have. I’m not saying that Cousins is garbage and Colt McCoy is the answer, and is going to take this team to Super Bowls — like everybody on Twitter, the Cousins worshipers, are murdering me for — I’m just saying that that is a question that is going to be asked.”

Jones was then asked, if he had to place a bet right now, what would he feel comfortable betting on.

“If I had to place a bet,” he said, “I’d bet that Kirk Cousins is not here.”

“I mean, maybe he flips the switch and then just balls out down the second half of this season,” he added. “But if they’re not winning games, and they are not getting a lot of impact from their defensive line, and their inside linebackers aren’t flying to the ball, and their safeties are getting burned and not taking good angles, you know, that’s a lot of needs you have there and you can address that with a lot of cap money.

“I know Scot McCloughan builds through the draft, but you can’t just keep putting free agent band-aids, you’re going to have to start investing and, maybe you decide, ‘All right. Kirk, this is what we’re willing to offer you. Here’s $18, $19 million and that’s it, per year. You can go test the market,’ and then they’ll see what happens.”

Follow @ChrisLingebach and @1067TheFan on Twitter.