AP

Washington General Manager Scot McCloughan had to play it coy when asked about Robert Griffin III yesterday, though no one in the world thinks RG3 is going to be anywhere near the nation’s capital next year.

But when it was time to talk about the quarterback who will, McCloughan had to tread just as carefully, because Kirk Cousins is going to be a much more expensive proposition.

Via Master Tesfatsion of the Washington Post, McCloughan admitted he’d rather not use a $20 million franchise tag to keep Cousins out of the free agent market while they work on a long-term deal.

“Of course you’d rather not, you’d rather get a long-term deal done, but we have a lot of options we’re dealing with right now and that’s one of them,” McCloughan said of the tag.

Because Cousins has been starting at an average to slightly above-average level for such a short time, it’s hard to gauge what his actual value is. But given the dearth of quality quarterbacks available, they may have no choice but to tag him if they can’t agree on what his value is.

McCloughan was clear, however, about how encouraged he was about Cousins.

“I saw improvement as the season went on,” McCloughan said. “From the standpoint of going forward, of course I’d like to have him around.”

Now he just has to figure out how to do it, without having to use a tag that would require a huge one-time investment.