AP

After playing well in five starts while filling in for Jay Cutler last season, Josh McCown wants to be a starting quarterback in 2014. And he thinks there are teams willing to give him the opportunity to do that.

McCown said on Mike & Mike that some teams have already expressed interest in signing him when he officially becomes a free agent on Tuesday afternoon.

“We’ve talked to four teams,” McCown said. “There have been good discussions and we’ll take those as they come and evaluate those situations.”

McCown said he loved playing in Chicago and thinks of Cutler as a brother. But McCown has no chance to compete for the starting job in Chicago, and he doesn’t want to spend 2014 holding a clipboard.

“To leave Chicago it will be a situation where I’m looking to compete to start, or to start, and to grow more as a player,” McCown said. “The only way you can do that as a player is on the field. So that will definitely be something that we’re looking at.”

It’s kind of amazing that the 34-year-old McCown is viewed as a potential starter, considering that the NFL had more or less given up on him a couple years ago. But McCown threw 13 touchdown passes and just one interception and had better numbers than Cutler last year, and he’s hoping that he proved he has enough left that he can be some team’s starter.

“Two years ago I was coaching high school football,” McCown said. “You never know what’s going to happen.”