AP

If Jay Gruden has a future in Washington — and he might not — he wants to see if he can build a team around his chosen quarterback. And that quarterback is Colt McCoy, not Robert Griffin III.

Gruden told the Washington Post he’d like to have a franchise quarterback in place for next season, and he’d like to see McCoy emerge over the last four games of this season as that franchise quarterback.

“You don’t want to have competition at that position all the time,” Gruden said. “You’d like to have a guy you can say, ‘Hey, this is our quarterback, fellas. Let’s build our team around him!’ And then you have the competition between No. 2 and 3. We’ll see what happens these last four games. Then as a staff we’ll have to talk about the future of the position — whether we’re going to build around Colt, whether we’re going to have a competition between Colt and Robert and Kirk.”

What’s fascinating about that quote is that Gruden doesn’t even seem open to the possibility that the future of the franchise might be built around Griffin. Gruden seems to think the only option involving Griffin is a three-way quarterback competition with McCoy and Kirk Cousins.

When Gruden got the job last year, he didn’t make it a three-way competition. He installed Griffin as the starter, Cousins as No. 2 and McCoy as No. 3. Now that Gruden has had an opportunity to work with all three quarterbacks, he thinks McCoy is the best of the bunch. And the only one he’d consider building a team around next year. If Gruden is the coach in Washington next year at all.