Chances are there's a lot you already know about Kirk Cousins, the Vikings' new quarterback. Here are five things you may not know.
Cousins adheres to a strict diet. At a minimum, every quarterback – heck, every player – in the NFL wants to win like Tom Brady. So when Brady began touting his strict dietary regimen, players around the league paid attention, including Cousins. He'd previously given no more than a slight nod to nutrition, like not eating doughnuts every day. But beyond that, Cousins showed little discipline.
That's no longer the case. A battery of scientific tests through bloodwork showed the way his body processes food. After a couple run-throughs, Cousins was convinced. His action plan included cutting <His flag football coach is a Hall of Famer. Cousins was 10-years-old, not quite yet old enough to play tackle football, but at the top of his game in the flag football league. His father, Don Cousins, was the head coach of the Barrington Bears in Illinois. His assistant? Bears great Mike Singletary. "We were well coached," Kirk Cousins says now. One game Don was out of town and Singletary was put in charge. A defensive-minded coach, Singletary turned to young Kirk Cousins to call the plays. "At 10 years old I was calling my own plays because Mike just wanted to focus on defense," Kirk told ESPN. "We joke about that to this day." See the video here.
He's a published author. Teddy Bridgewater and his girlfriend, Erika Cardona, published a children's book entitled "Little Bear Teddy: Big Dream Come True." Well, Kirk Cousins is a published author, too.
"The book was really about the principles in my life that helped guide me, both on the football field and off the football field. They were game-changing principles in my life, much like you have a game-changing player or a game-changing moment in sports, you have these life principles that guide you that make all the difference and so I figured 'Why not Game Changer' but make it also very clear in the beginning of the book that the title is not about me; it's more about the principles that have guided me."
YOU LIKE THAT?! The video went viral almost immediately. Cousins, coming off the field and headed to the locker room turned to Comcast Sportsnet reporter Tarik El-Bashir and shouted, YOU LIKE THAT?! It became a meme. It was a hit on Vine (47 million views!), which no longer exists. It popped up on YouTube. It was everywhere – Kirk Cousins emphatically shouting at the top of his lungs – YOU LIKE THAT?! A clever Vikings fan suggested a headline for us to use – YOU VIKE THAT?! We found that clever too.
But why did he do it? Down 24-0 against the Buccaneers midway through the second quarter, Cousins led Washington back, sealing it with a 6-yard touchdown pass to Jordan Reed with 24 seconds left to make it 31-30. Cousins was 33 of 40 for 317 yards in the win.
So, yeah, YOU LIKE THAT?!
He had awesome teammates. Cousins played at Michigan State. After redshirting in 2007, he spent the 2008 season as the backup to Brian Hoyer. The next year, he beat out Keith Nichol for the starting job. That also prompted the transfer of Nick Foles from Michigan State to Arizona. It's fair to say that all three – Hoyer, Cousins and Foles -- turned their college days into fairly successful NFL careers. Foles was the Super Bowl MVP and Cousins just became the NFL's highest-paid quarterback and the first in league history to have his contract fully guaranteed.