Note: This is an opinion piece by MLive.com's Nate Atkins

They deliberated and deliberated, unsure if what they were watching was real. The Redskins had waited so long for anything that could resemble a long-term answer at quarterback that they were stunned when one finally fell into their lap.

Now, they're scrambling to pick up the pieces of their indecision. That's what Tuesday's trade and signing of Alex Smith was. And that's what this spring will be, when Kirk Cousins moves on to become the first established quarterback in more than a decade to cash out in free agency.

Matthew Stafford could have been that player this year, had the Lions not paid to save themselves from purgatory.

There's a reason why the capitalist tradition of cashing out on the open market doesn't extend to quarterbacks. Most franchises can't take the risk of hitting the reset button in a passing league where everything else feels ancillary to the man throwing the ball.

"There aren't enough great quarterbacks to go around," former Lions coach Steve Mariucci said. "They're like golden eggs."

When a team does find one, it usually does whatever it takes to keep building. Passing games are systemic, standing on the pillars of continuity and trust. Those foundations usually cost something brutal to initially lay, like Detroit's 0-16 season or the five picks the Eagles traded to the Browns to move up for Carson Wentz, who helped lead them to the Super Bowl this year.

Once in a great while, they come stunningly easy, like in the case of Cousins. The Redskins took him in the fourth round of a 2012 draft in which they traded up for Robert Griffin III. Cousins was supposed to be a backup then, the way Jimmy Garoppolo was in New England and Dak Prescott was in Dallas.

You never really know what you have until it's in your hands, running your plays, breaking down your film, creating your offense. But when Cousins developed behind the scenes for three years and then broke out with 29 touchdowns and 11 interceptions in 2015, the Redskins still weren't sure.

They slapped the franchise tag on him and deliberated another year. He threw 25 touchdowns to 12 interceptions. Another franchise tag. He threw 27 touchdowns and 13 picks. The price of the tag kept climbing, and so did his market value, all as his patience with their methods lessened and they hit the point of divorce.

That's where the Lions could have been had they approached Stafford anywhere near as apprehensively. Detroit hasn't done a whole lot right in the nine seasons since it went 0-16 and drafted him first overall. It has no playoff wins or division titles. But it did find the vehicle it can take off to new heights in if it builds around him smartly, and that's the game every team wishes it could settle down and play.

"Once you acquire one of these players and he shows almost any semblance, any glimpse of being a capable starter, a capable starter-plus, then you're almost married to that quarterback for many years to come," said former Browns general manager Phil Savage, who is now an analyst at ESPN, "because one, you understand what it took to even get in position to draft a quarterback high in the draft. Two, You know what it's taken over a two- or three-year period to try to develop that quarterback once he was in your program and then three, the idea of the known versus the unknown."

Stafford and Cousins are analogous because their numbers from the past three years are so similar: Stafford has 85 touchdowns to 33 interceptions and a rating of 96.5. Cousins has 81 touchdowns to 36 interceptions and a rating of 97.5.

The critical difference is how they were treated along the way. The Lions strung together contracts that were large enough in sample size that he could prove he was worthy of something more. When his latest came up last summer, they ponied up for the long-term with $135 million over five seasons, the most money any team has ever paid anyone.

Cousins has a chance to top that this spring, not because he's better but because these contracts build on one another. Perhaps teams are overpaying sometimes, but they're buying a sense of security with a known commodity. They're avoiding the haphazard Plan B's, like trading a third-round pick and a stud young cornerback for a $24 million-a-year Alex Smith.

The Lions bought a home with Stafford last summer, and time will tell if they can build well enough to go on that run like the Eagles are starting with Carson Wentz and the Patriots still haven't finished with Tom Brady. It's the chance they gave themselves by biting the bullet with a difficult decision, rather than letting the piece they found just slip away.