Kirk Cousins is finally free. On Tuesday, the franchise tag deadline came and went without Cousins getting tagged for the first time since 2015, which means he's free to leave in free agency later this month. In the aftermath of the Redskins' acquisition of Alex Smith, Cousins' departure is all but guaranteed.

So now, it's time to reflect on the Cousins era in Washington. On Tuesday, longtime Redskins defensive back DeAngelo Hall appeared on SportsCenter, where he did some reflecting of his own. 

When he was asked about how the locker room felt about Cousins' commitment to the team, Hall admitted that they didn't feel like he was committed to them, but at the same time he maintained that the locker room was "behind" him.

"We kind of felt like the commitment wasn't there from Kirk," Hall said. "We obviously wanted Kirk. We franchised him because we wanted him there. It was up to ownership and the front office to kind of work those numbers out. They couldn't get the numbers worked out so he signed franchise tags those two football seasons. Everybody in that locker room was behind Kirk, we wanted him there, but we wanted to feel like he wanted to be there as well. Having played 14 years, I understand, 'Let's go get the money.' But at some point it has to be mutual interest from both parties to want to get better collectively as a team. Paying Kirk probably the $30 million he's going to get, we couldn't do that and get better as a football team."

As Hall alluded to, nobody should blame Cousins for wanting to get paid. As a fourth-round pick, he didn't make much money from his rookie deal. His yearly salary from 2012-15 ranged from $390,000 to $660,000, per Spotrac. Most players try to avoid the franchise tag, but Cousins didn't cave when the Redskins tagged him in 2016 and 2017, betting on himself to play well under the short-term security of the franchise tag instead of taking a less risky long-term deal that didn't pay him like a superstar quarterback. It worked. By playing under the franchise tag in back-to-back seasons, he's earned nearly $44 million and now he's set to hit free agency at the age of 29.

Sure, Cousins wasn't fully committed to the Redskins. He was committed to himself. It works both ways. The Redskins weren't fully committed to him either. They too were acting in their own self interest, refusing to give him the lucrative long-term deal he's going to get in the coming weeks, seemingly thinking to themselves that there was no way Cousins would keep performing the way he did in 2015. Well, he did. And now, for the first time, he'll be free to commit to someone else for the long-term.

That's how we got to this point.

"I think Kirk Cousins realized he was better than [Robert Griffin III] before the organization did," Hall told ESPN, according to The Washington Post. "I think we took a little too much in realizing how good he was. Then when it was time to really pay him, we kind of said, 'Hey, we want to see a little bit more.' And we did that, and then his numbers kind of went up. Then we said, 'Well, we still want to keep [our long-term offer] in this ballpark.' And he wanted a little more, so we said, 'All right, we'll franchise you again.' Finally, we just started getting a feeling as though, oh, maybe he really doesn't want to be here. He wanted to kind of pick his own destination, I felt like."

So, where will he pick? Minnesota or New York (Jets, not Giants) are the most-likely landing spots, according to CBS Sports NFL Insider Jason La Canfora. Regardless of the destination, Cousins will finally get paid. Our Joel Corry, a former sports agent, wrote that "a deal averaging $30 million per year with $100 million in overall guarantees where at least $65 million is fully guaranteed at signing isn't out of the question."

"If you're just a quarterback away, you pay Kirk Cousins whatever he wants to get, because he will win for you," Hall said.

Cousins is understandably excited.