MINNEAPOLIS – On Tuesday afternoon, Kirk Cousins called his potential free agency “uncharted territory.” A few hours later, the Washington Redskins guaranteed Cousins would set sail for that unknown terrain.

With the pending acquisition of Alex Smith from the Kansas City Chiefs, the Redskins officially fired the starter’s pistol on Cousins’ race into free agency. And it is expected to be a fairly large market, even with as many as four quarterbacks expected to go in the first round of the NFL draft.

What will this derby look like? That’s the question that will take shape in the next six weeks. But Cousins gave at least part of the picture Tuesday when he was asked what a pending free agency might look like for him.

View photos Quarterback Kirk Cousins will be on the move officially in March when free agency begins. (AP) More

“Well that will be uncharted territory for me,” Cousins said, a few hours before learning that he would indeed be headed for free agency. “I haven’t been there before. So I don’t know what that process looks like at all to this point. That would be my first time going through it. But I want to win. I’ll make sure that any fact-gathering that I do, or business that I take, or coaches that I meet – it’ll all be centered on do I feel like this is a place where I can win, or we can win? That’s what it’ll all boil down to.”

That creates one fairly large box to check off. Cousins wants to go to a place where he can be part of a winner. In theory, that narrows the field when considering the quarterback needy teams on the market. Particularly when assessing which ones might draft a quarterback high in the coming selection process. Cousins has been there and done that with Robert Griffin III. If you’re drafting a quarterback in the first round, Cousins will not be an object of affection in free agency. But the timing of free agency – coming roughly six weeks before the draft – offers an interesting stage. It provides the opportunity that every quarterback-needy team should want: Two shots at securing a long-term solution at the position. With a game plan of pursuing Cousins as a primary target in free agency and then using the draft as a fallback option in the event of failure.

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A multitude of the NFL teams could field that plan. In no particular order: The Buffalo Bills, New York Jets, Cleveland Browns, Jacksonville Jaguars and Arizona Cardinals could all be in pursuit. But in terms of the fit and endorsement that makes deals happen, the Denver Broncos make more sense than most.

This kind of scenario has been brewing since last offseason, when the Broncos should have gone all-in after Tony Romo and given the 2017 season some chance at life. Instead, Romo went his own way and the Broncos settled on hoping Paxton Lynch would take a big step forward. What the franchise ended up getting was a player who was badly behind the curve when it came to eliminating repetitive mistakes and finding some level of consistency.

By the time it became clear that both Trevor Siemian and Brock Osweiler were in the mix to potentially be juggled as starters, the gamble had already failed massively. And that’s when it became clear that the Broncos would be buyers in the 2018 quarterback market. Whether it was free agency or the draft, some kind of plan was going to be set in place to dip back into the pool. And that decision was made long before it was known that Cousins would head to open waters in the offseason.

Here’s the thing about the Broncos right now: They’ve already spent time eyeing all the first-round quarterbacks in this draft – from USC’s Sam Darnold and UCLA’s Josh Rosen to Oklahoma’s Baker Mayfield and Wyoming’s Josh Allen. Furthermore, the North roster of the Senior Bowl was essentially crafted specifically so the Denver coaching staff could spend a week with Mayfield and Allen.

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