After starting the 2015 season 2-4, Cousins surprised many by leading the Redskins to their second NFC East title in four seasons as Washington went 7-3 in its final 10 games.

Rypien, the Super Bowl XXVI MVP quarterback, was pleasantly surprised with how Cousins turned his season around down the stretch.

“I watched the transformation of a quarterback not only from a confidence standpoint, just from a take charge and ‘I’m gonna make plays and this is my team’ [standpoint]. [He showed] all the things you need and you want from a guy that is looking to be a leader of this great franchise,” Rypien said Thursday at the 12th Annual Mickey Steele Poker Tournament, an event he hosts every year with many former Redskins in attendance.

Frerotte, the Redskins’ seventh-round pick in 1994 who supplanted Heath Shuler, the team’s first-round pick in that same draft, believes letting the starting quarterback situation play out helped Cousins achieve a successful 2015 campaign.

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“Sometimes you’ve just got to let the guy in front of you fail and that’s what happened,” Frerotte said. “They put all their eggs in [Robert Griffin III’s] basket and if it doesn’t pan out and he fails they give the next guy a shot. That’s how the NFL goes. There’s always somebody waiting in the wings.”

Joe Jacoby, a member of the famed offensive line known as the “Hogs” and a first-time Pro Football Hall of Fame finalist this year, is cautiously optimistic of Cousins’s prospects in 2016.

“I think he had a good year,” Jacoby said of Cousins. “Can he back it up? Let’s see what he does. Let’s see how he comes back mentally prepared. Is he going to be focused? Is he going to do the same thing he did last year? It’s a different year.

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“I think he’s good for the team and I think he’s going to continue to do what he did in the [2015] season,” Jacoby said. “Will he have some bad games in there? Probably because he’s still a very young, inexperienced quarterback.

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“I think we’ll see more steady growth from him this coming season, hopefully more games like we saw towards the end [of the 2015 season],” Jacoby said.

Gary Clark, a four-time Pro Bowl wide receiver during his eight seasons in Washington, expects big things from Cousins heading into the 2016 season.

“I think he’s in the right system,” Clark said. “He has a year of leadership under his belt now. I think going into next year, I think he’ll be even better than he was the year before because he’s learned more. The more you play, the more you learn.”

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Frerotte believes Cousins will continue what he started in his first full season as a starter.

“From what I know about him, he’s gonna stay the same,” Frerotte said. “I think what happens a lot of times is the coaches really try to put more on [quarterbacks as they gain experience]. ‘Oh yeah, he’s got a year under his belt, so let’s give him a lot more.”

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“He’s a good, solid player and he went out and made the plays the team needed him to make and led the team in the right direction,” Frerotte said. “When you’re a quarterback, I don’t care who you are, your job is to get the ball to the playmakers. He did an excellent job of that.”

Rypien, who worked his way up from backup quarterback to starter during his time with the Redskins from 1986 to 1993, sees a lot of upside in Cousins’s future.

“I think he’s got more weapons, more opportunity,” Rypien said. “He’ll get more chances because I think the defense will be better. There’s more positive than there is anything else.”