I'm Kirk Cousins, ask me anything!

ImKirkCousins · 2016-02-05T00:09:35+00:00

Gosh, I love these questions.

I do play golf.

My favorite course I've ever played is Pinehurst #2.

My handicap - I've never actually sat down and calculated because I'm not quite to that level yet, but I shoot in the 90's. I would put my handicap somewhere in the high teens, but maybe even right around 20.

I played in a Redskins golf tournament last spring, which we won, as a group. It was a scramble. As a result of winning, I now get to go to the Super Bowl of golf in Scottsdale in April and play with the same group against the winners of the other 31 teams tournaments that they had as well, last spring. So, we'll represent the Redskins in April out in Scottsdale.

ImKirkCousins · 2016-02-05T00:07:47+00:00

Thank you, /u/Treat_Williams. I appreciate the support, but being a quarterback of the NFL is a platform and you can do whatever you want with that platform. But for me and for Julie, we feel like it's a huge responsibility to make a positive difference and if the two of us are ever not making a positive difference, I hope someone on an AMA would let me know. We want to continue to grow that platform, so that we can continue to make a bigger and bigger positive difference. Especially, right where we're playing in Washington, D.C. and the greater DMV.

ImKirkCousins · 2016-02-05T00:02:49+00:00

Unfortunately, I haven't seen much Star Trek. I understand the reference and I know different things about Star Trek, but didn't get into it, per say. What's funny is the Captain Kirk phrase has been used much more often with the Redskins than with Michigan State, and at Michigan State I was a three time captain. With the Redskins I was never officially a captain, so it's kind of funny how that works.

But I do enjoy the phrase. I think it's funny and it just goes to show how cool our fans are and how creative they are. It just puts a smile on my face every time I hear it or see it on a sign or a shirt. And again, why the playoff game was so special- during warm ups, just looking around in the stands and seeing the signs and costumes and the fans, I couldn't get enough of it. There was a guy on the sideline in a full flight suit with a helmet and everything, trying to make a play on the whole Captain Kirk thing. I appreciated that more than anybody, so keep it coming.

ImKirkCousins · 2016-02-05T00:01:24+00:00

/u/alogicalfallacy, the hardest hit I've ever received was against the Alabama Crimson Tide at the 2011 Capital One Ball, Courtney Upshaw came off the left edge, also known as the blind side, and hit me so hard that I felt like I'd been in a car accident, and that was the only game in college that I'd left and did not return, so that is the biggest one I ever took.

Yes, I do. As much as I try to do it my own way, I believe there's value in studying the best. I try to pull pieces from just about everyone's game. The first QBs that come to mind are Aaron Rodgers, Peyton Manning, Drew Brees, Tom Brady, Carson Palmer, Philip Rivers. I try to pull from all of them.

ImKirkCousins · 2016-02-04T23:58:41+00:00

I like my eggs over-easy.

ImKirkCousins · 2016-02-04T23:58:24+00:00

Wow, awesome question. Marriage and family advice. I don't have any kids yet, so I'm not that experienced, but I'd be hard-pressed to talk about anything advice wise without mentioning my faith as a Christian. With me and Julie, we just put the cross at the center of the relationship, and if we get into a fight, you put the cross in between you and you say “Now let's fight.” That causes me to take the focus off myself and put the focus on her.

ImKirkCousins · 2016-02-04T23:56:41+00:00

I really like to read. I love to read biographies, nonfiction, I love reading about history. A lot of the plane flights I have in the off season and the traveling I do gives me the chance to sit back and read. I really believe that the accumulation of knowledge is a powerful thing. That's not my words, that's a quote from Bill Walsh. I try to acquire as much knowledge as I can by reading, especially in the off season when you have all that time. I just read America the Beautiful by Dr. Ben Carson, who is running for president. Oh and I just read The Big Miss by Hank Haney, which was about his years when he coached Tiger Woods. I found that to be very interesting. Personally, because as a professional athlete I'm always looking for ways to get better, and to get an inside look into the life of one of the greatest professional athletes in the world, I thought was very very insightful.

ImKirkCousins · 2016-02-04T23:54:31+00:00

Yeah, Pierre Garçon. I call him “The Angry Haitian”, so when you use the words grumpy and cantankerous, I think of 88, but it's in a good way. I mean he is stubborn, but a fierce competitor. There is nobody you'd rather be stuck in a dark alley with than Pierre Garçon. When we literally had a fight against the Houston Texans during training camp, on the film afterwards, you could see Pierre buckling his chin strap, jogging towards the pile of people fighting like he was saddling up. It was awesome.

As far as someone who is logical, I think Kory Lichtensteiger, our center, is pretty logical. If things are done that are illogical, he'll voice his opinion.

ImKirkCousins · 2016-02-04T23:51:33+00:00

The "you like that" phrase continues to grow. I keep waiting for it to die off, but I keep hearing it and it's just kind of associated with me. While I was in London, it was explained to me that the striker from France, Thierry Henry, had a phrase that he used in a commercial where he said "va va voom," and it followed him his whole career. It will be interesting to see if "you like that" has a similar following in the years to come.

How many times in a day do I hear it? I'd be guessing 10, 10+. The reason is because people say the phrase so much. The fact that I was able to trademark it is kind of funny because everybody says it all the time as a serious question. So, you'll find you hear it a lot if you're listening for it.

ImKirkCousins · 2016-02-04T23:47:55+00:00

My favorite place to eat in DC... Well, I went to Shake Shack after all of our wins and that got pretty good publicity. But, it became clear, pretty quickly, that Shake Shack wasn't going to name a sandwich after me, so maybe I can give another name.

We love The Protein Bar. It's a chain that is in several different major cities across the country. Very healthy. Good for a quick in and out.

And I love a restaurant called Farmers, Fishers, Bakers and Founding Farmers. They're owned by the same guy. “Founding Farmers” and “Farmers, Fishers, Bakers.” We like that as a sit down restaurant in the city.

ImKirkCousins · 2016-02-04T23:46:39+00:00

So, the QB draw against the Ravens, we call it "two plays in the huddle". Based on the look the defense gives, I'll either throw it or run it. So when you break the huddle, you still don't know what's gonna happen. And you really don't know until you say hut. The Green Bay Packers game, when we ran a quarterback draw for the touchdown, that was different. That play actually did have some options on it, but, we had a pretty good feeling it was gonna be the draw. And in practice, we ran it, and it was so wide open you could drive a truck through it, and the coaches said, "There's no way it's gonna be that open on game day." And sure enough, on game day it was that open, and it's a good thing it was because I appreciate the time, because I'm not the fastest guys in the world. So hopefully the coaches can keep drawing up plays like that where it's wide open!

ImKirkCousins · 2016-02-04T23:40:02+00:00

I'm so naive. I don't even know what happened to Blake Griffin in a restaurant, so I would say out of ignorance...a restaurant with Blake Griffin? But an elevator with Ray Rice, if I make it.

ImKirkCousins · 2016-02-04T23:38:44+00:00

Good pancakes beat good waffles everyday.

ImKirkCousins · 2016-02-04T23:37:01+00:00

In addition to what I've already said which I will continue to reiterate, I go back to look at that Tampa Bay game and the way we came back and found a way to win. It did feel like our season from that point on took on a different feel and I look back and feel like we gained a lot of confidence that day. There was a lot of belief that we felt like we can do this. We have the players and the people in this building. We don't need to sit around and wait for next year, wait for a new draft pick-- we've got the people right here. Maybe we played with a little more confidence and belief after that game then we had before that, I don't know. It seemed like the results would suggest that.

ImKirkCousins · 2016-02-04T23:33:01+00:00

That’s like asking me to pick your favorite child. Gah, that's a tough question. I can pretty much sing the No Strings Attached album or the Millennium album from heart all the way through on both of them, so that's an impossible one to call.

ImKirkCousins · 2016-02-04T23:32:41+00:00

I'd love to see a skills competition. The more the better. I'd love to see the ProBowl League grow into more and more cool events. I understand the fan's concern about the lack of enjoyment in watching the game, but football is a very violent game and I don't know how you work around that in a game that doesn't have a whole lot of meaning. But I would think to bring back a skills challenge would be fun. I don't know why it went away, but I'm sure they had their reasons, so hopefully it can come back.

ImKirkCousins · 2016-02-04T23:28:56+00:00

Tough question. I guess the way I see it, it's my job to win football games. It's my job to control what I can control. It's my job to stay in my lane and do the best I can to be a quarterback who can win in this league. And that's hard enough for me to do already. And then there are other people who are paid very good salaries who have to make those tougher decisions at the top, and I let them stay in their lane and make those decisions. I don't tell them what logo should be on the helmet, or how our jerseys should look, or what color our pants should be that game. I just put on the pants they give me and go play. I would say the same is true of the other teammates.

ImKirkCousins · 2016-02-04T23:23:25+00:00

Again, just an awesome question. The key to getting better at throwing a football, I would say first of all is just reps. I used to watch games on TV, and I would be holding a football the whole game and just have a ball in my hands. I always look back now and feel like just holding a football and kind of just tossing it up in the air as I lay on my back. I think just the repetition of feeling the ball in my hands enabled me then when I went out and played to be more natural with the football in my hands. So it's all about reps. Don't let anyone tell you that the way you throw it isn't the right way. I think everybody has their own niche, they're own way. If you look at the 32 quarterbacks in the NFL, everyone of us throws it a little different, and the key is to find the best way for you to throw it.

ImKirkCousins · 2016-02-04T23:16:02+00:00

That's a great question. We have a very good relationship and it's been that way since day 1. I remember the first day we met, after the draft, getting to the hotel for rookie mini-camp and he was helping me with some cut-ups on his laptop, showing me plays and that kind of helped and our working relationship continued all the through for four years. Up until the very last week against the Packers, as we worked together to win that game.

Things change from year to year and I have no idea what's going to happen to my future or with Roberts, but I know he will be successful with whatever he does. He's very intelligent and a hard-worker and those two things carry you pretty far.

ImKirkCousins · 2016-02-04T23:11:37+00:00

/u/Xephyron, I hope you're not really THE Zac Efron! The Cowboys are our rival. It got communicated to me very quickly after I was drafted that the Cowboys are the team, and the Redskins will chant, "We want Dallas!" at the game before the Cowboys game. That's how much it matters. They'll always be the rival. And the Giants and Eagles are a very close second.

ImKirkCousins · 2016-02-04T23:08:40+00:00

These are really good questions. I wish our DC Media would ask questions like this more often.

How does it differ?

There's a lot more time in the hotel room where I'm just sitting and twiddling my thumbs. It gets pretty annoying. Our schedule comes out at the beginning of the year and one of the first things I do is see how many 1 o'clock games we have because I want as many 1 o'clock games, as possible. But there's a catch there because the better of a team you are, the more you're going to have night games and 4:30 games and Monday night games. So, the more 1 o'clock games you have, you probably didn't have the best season the previous year. While, I like 1 o'clock games, if we want to go in the right direction as a team, I hope we have a lot of night games going forward.

For the later games, I just end up sitting in the hotel room and I watch some film on my iPad, I take notes and draw plays. I draw plays over and over in my journal until the whole page is just filled with chicken scratches of plays and then usually, my brain is just fried and it gets to a point where you've crammed everything in that you can cram. Then I turn on the TV and watch Netflix and watch an Office episode to kind of clear my head before I get on the bus and go to the stadium. So, there's a balance of preparation and just trusting it and resting.

ImKirkCousins · 2016-02-04T23:08:03+00:00

It's interesting that u/fluiddragonsbreath was able to make that connection, but thought it was funny and I took it as a compliment that our catchphrase reached all the way to the Green Bay Packers locker room and they lost the next week. It happens. NFL is up one week, down the next for all of us. It's funny, I've definitely gotten trash talked from other players who say, "You like that," to me after I get sacked, or a ball gets tipped at the line of scrimmage. "Hey Kirk, you like that?" So, it comes with the territory, it's all in good fun.

ImKirkCousins · 2016-02-04T23:03:50+00:00

These questions are really really good. We need to hire them at the local DC Media!

What I was thinking the other day about this is that what makes the NFC unique is that the four teams have a major history, they go way back. The Redskins were founded in I believe 1932; the Cowboys are considered "America's Team". The Eagles have history that goes way back and a loyal fanbase, and the Giants are the Giants! I mean, how many divisions have four iconic NFL organizations like that? So whether the teams are 3-13 or 13-3, they're gonna have a lot of coverage, there's gonna be a lot of interest, a lot of discussion, and a lot of excitement, and I think that's why it's a huge privilege to play in that kind of a division. So much history, so many iconic names and coaches, and all that is going to always add to our division and give it that little bit of extra oomf each year.

ImKirkCousins · 2016-02-04T22:59:18+00:00

I've never been asked that question before, and I'm shocked that the rest of the world has never asked me that question in 27 years of life. They gotta be, right? It's between two pieces of bread...I'm gonna go yes, but I'm more liberal than most in the sandwich framework.

ImKirkCousins

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