The teacher placed the graded quiz on the desk face down. It was March 2005, and Kirk Cousins, the shaggy blond sophomore, was not nervous. Math was not his best subject, but he was convinced that neither slope formulas nor quadratic equations had fooled him.
Then he flipped over the paper and spotted the C-minus in red ink. Cousins scanned the corrections — maybe the teacher made an error — but instead noticed a pattern. He had swapped two formulas, a mental mistake that led to incorrect answers on similar questions. Cousins gripped the quiz tightly and began to rip it, but something made him stop, so he quietly stuffed the half-shredded sheet in his backpack.
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He ruminated over the results. He had not reviewed the material one final time the night before the quiz, and that bothered him in a way that made him feel like his organs were jousting back and forth inside his stomach.
Nearly two decades later, the red ink has smeared, but the framed quiz still hangs in Cousins’ home. Some of his closest friends joke about it every chance they get.
Cousins believes his obsession with self-improvement is his superpower, and family members, former coaches, teammates and friends agree. Without it, many of them doubt he would have been able to transform from the two-star recruit nearly spurned by Michigan State into a four-time Pro Bowler.
“Even if I was going to become a plumber, I was going to be wired to leave no stone unturned,” Cousins said in August from a makeshift office at the TCO Performance Center that overlooks the Minnesota Vikings’ practice fields.
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Cousins has said that he hopes his sons, Cooper and Turner, love something the way he loves football — but he would prefer their love does not torment them the way football has tormented him. For years, he has wanted to succeed so badly that he has struggled to sleep; to be present at home; to feel, in his own words, “at peace.” His wife helped him identify this — and the need to do something about it.
He knows he would do best to avoid extremes, relaying what one of his chiropractors often says, “In the middle lies virtue.” So, how close is he after all these years? He lifts his hands, holds them shoulder-width apart, then moves them a foot closer.
“The longer I play, the better I get at finding it.”
A few years ago, Cousins told former Vikings backup quarterback Sean Mannion about his experience on the scout team at Michigan State, when defensive linemen would spear Cousins in the back and safeties would pummel him into the grass.
As Mannion listened to Cousins replay the hits years later, he interjected: “That’s barbaric.”
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Cousins didn’t see it that way. In those years, Pat Narduzzi’s defense thrived on bringing down the quarterback at all costs, he explained. The ferocity of the Spartans’ defense woke up something inside the quarterback, who described his frame of mind during those practices as “scorched earth.”
“The way I’m wired is, if you want to do that, I’m going destroy you,” Cousins said. “I’m going to make your defense look bad. I’m going to throw it … as deep as I can as many times as I can.”
Mannion came to realize Cousins’ notorious “YOU LIKE THAT?” postgame outburst wasn’t a one-off, but rather a public manifestation of the monologue running through Cousins’ brain. Overlook him, doubt him, hurt him, fine — but Cousins was going to keep swinging.
He was selected in the fourth round of the 2012 NFL Draft by a Washington team that had already taken Baylor’s Robert Griffin III with the second overall pick. Head coach Mike Shanahan had met Cousins at the Senior Bowl and noted the quarterback’s awareness of protection schemes and progression reads, as well as the way teammates gravitated toward him.
During his rookie season, Cousins would visit the office of then-director of player personnel Morocco Brown after practice, seeking insight that the scouting department got on the defense the team would be facing that week. “He was an information vacuum,” Brown said. “He always wanted all he could get.”
Cousins impressed Shanahan and his son, Kyle, then Washington’s offensive coordinator, with how quickly he picked up the offense. Plus, they noticed that the team’s linemen would find Cousins in the cafeteria and sit with him. His first impressions spurred a nickname inside the player-personnel office: “Killer Cuzzo.”
“He was killing in practice. He started to kill in the games,” Brown said. “When he gets his chance, he be killing. It’s ‘Killer Cuzzo.'”
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Griffin injured his knee late in their rookie seasons, thrusting Cousins into the lineup — and into the blender-inside-of-a-washing-machine chaos that is the NFL quarterback narrative cycle. Cousins carried Washington to victory that night, then led the team to a win over Cleveland the next week.
Shanahan wanted to start Cousins ahead of Griffin during the 2013 season, according to former defensive coordinator Jim Haslett, but ownership wanted the former top pick to get his starting job back, so that’s what happened.
The day Shanahan was fired after a 3-13 season that saw Griffin struggle in 13 starts, the outgoing coach shared his feelings about Cousins in an exit interview with owner Dan Snyder. “If you don’t want Kirk as your quarterback, you better cut him.”
Washington didn’t cut him, but Cousins didn’t immediately thrive under new head coach Jay Gruden, either. He was elevated to the starting job in relief of an injured Griffin early in the 2014 season but was benched for veteran Colt McCoy after throwing nine interceptions in six games. Searching, Cousins waffled between routines, experimented with different throwing trainers and spent even more time preparing at the facility. At home, his inner voice ran wild.
“I was not present,” he said. “My mind was still on the work. It was almost, like, unless I was sleeping, I was basically working.”
Before his fourth NFL season, Cousins and his wife, Julie, drove from Michigan to Washington, D.C., for training camp. Both realized something needed to change.
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After throwing an interception in the final minutes of a nail-biter at Notre Dame his first season as a full-time starter at Michigan State, Cousins, having been flung to the turf, felt the deafening roar of 80,000 fans. He stood up, plucked a chunk of grass from his facemask and staggered toward the sideline. His eyes centered on his 90 teammates, many of whom had voted for him as one of the few sophomore captains in the Spartans’ history.
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“They are looking at you like you just cost the game,” Cousins said, “and the fans are cheering your failure, and you think to yourself: ‘Oh, this is tough. This is what quarterbacking is.'”
Cousins returned to his apartment that night and opened up on himself. Why had he tried to throw that pass in that moment? What was he thinking? His brother, Kyle, attempted to alleviate the agony by redirecting his brother’s thoughts, but it was not easy.
Rob Johnson spent most of his nine-plus pro seasons quarterbacking the Jaguars and Bills. His father, Bob, had scouted Cousins in high school. In college, Rob ran Cousins through some workouts, then helped him train for the draft after the 2011 season. Cousins’s arm and football understanding stood out. So did his ability to beat himself up.
“He felt horrible when he threw an interception,” Johnson said, “like he was letting everyone down.”
After Cousins left Brown’s office during his rookie season, Brown would marvel at the young quarterback’s will to improve. Then he would ask himself: Is it OK that he cares this much?
The benching in 2014 sent him spiraling. “It had never really caught up to me until playing in the NFL,” Cousins said. “It was then that I started to realize, like, this actually may be too heavy to carry. You actually can get burnt out and push yourself too hard.”
The cross-country car ride with Julie spurred change. Needing something to listen to, she found a sermon that talked about the importance of the Sabbath, a day of rest. The couple locked eyes and knew the first of many changes Cousins could make. He decided he would take off every Tuesday during the season and has been doing so ever since.
“It’s been transformational, I think, for my football career,” said Cousins. “For staying healthy, for having balance, for my marriage and for my relationship with my boys.”
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He also found PIMP, a process longtime NFL coach Shane Day helped him refine in 2014.
During game weeks, after Cousins receives plays from the coaching staff each Wednesday, he pulls out a computation notebook filled with graph paper and draws each one.
He uses circles to signify the offensive linemen and thinks about the Protection. “Say the protection is 2-jet. OK, that means I’m in a lucky call. If I get an odd front, I’m going to sort. If I get an overload, I’ll Louie.”
He draws lines to indicate routes and thinks about the play’s Intent. “Why is (head coach Kevin O’Connell) calling the play? Well, Kevin is trying to get split safety. If we get single high, it’s not a great play, so I probably need to be looking at my outlet or my checkdown or move on to the next play. If we get split safety, now it’s, ‘Look for the home run.'”
He uses a “Q” to designate himself and thinks about Mechanics. “What’s my footwork? What’s my read? Is it a pure progression? Do I need to know if it’s man versus zone? Do I care if it’s single high or split safety? Do I care if they pressure?”
Reviewing his work, he considers potential Problems. “I try to think: What really kills this play?”
A game week can feature 100 plays. Does Cousins PIMP every one? “I mean, it’s probably unrealistic,” he says. “But I darn near try to.”
The system kept him streamlined and helped him find consistency in 2015, when he was named the NFL’s most-improved player by the Pro Football Writers of America. In 2016, playing under the franchise tag, he rolled with the same process — Tuesdays off, PIMP the plays — and earned his first Pro Bowl nod.
At that point, both he and Washington had decisions to make. Join up for the long term? Play on the franchise tag once more? The team offered a long-term deal, but Cousins “did not have peace” about it, according to his father, Don. “He would’ve stayed in Washington,” Don said. “He loved living there. He’s a history guy and loves the vibe of the whole city. But he wasn’t going to play and be undervalued.”
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That offseason, Kyle Shanahan, who had been named the head coach for the San Francisco 49ers after stops in Cleveland and Atlanta, tried to trade the No. 2 pick in the 2017 draft for Cousins, according to Mike Shanahan. “He knew Kirk knew his system, and he knew the type of guy Kirk was,” Mike Shanahan said. “But (Washington) wouldn’t even return the phone call.”
Instead, Cousins played out the 2017 season under a second franchise tag, which all but assured he would enter the 2018 offseason as an unrestricted free agent. That ultimately led to Minnesota and a record-breaking three-year, $84 million guaranteed contract.
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The Vikings opened the season at brand-spanking-new U.S. Bank Stadium, and Cousins’ entire family and close friends filled a box on the club level. The Gjallarhorn sounded. Public address announcer Alan Roach bellowed Cousins’ name. As Minnesotans roared, the eyes of those in the box filled with tears. The moment felt like resolution for a lifetime of striving.
“I think all of us, whether it’s in our job or family or parenting, are wrestling and trying to figure out who we are and what defines us,” Kyle Cousins said. “Football does not define who Kirk is, but it has been this incredible vehicle, or laboratory, that sort of, over the last 12 years, has chiseled away and revealed who he is.”
Backup quarterback Nick Mullens is standing next to the practice field re-enacting one of Cousins’ throws from the late-game comeback last season in Buffalo. Mullens crouches into a passing stance, replicates a dropback and acts like he’s unleashing a ball to the left with his head turned to the right.
“There was a guy right here in his face, and he spins and he throws it perfectly,” Mullens said. “He’s just an absolute baller.”
When Mullens first arrived in Minnesota, he knew of Cousins as a quarterback Shanahan liked to talk up. But when they met, Mullens was struck by how many questions Cousins asked him — not the other way around.
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At the beginning of each offseason, Cousins jots down a list of folks he would love to meet with. Some are retired quarterbacks, others are successful folks in the business world — “It’s pretty cool that people respond just because you’re an NFL quarterback,” Cousins said.
This summer, Cousins asked if Mullens wanted to visit Philip Rivers in Santa Rosa Beach, Fla. For two hours, the three sat and discussed Rivers’ weekly throwing routines, his approach against Cover 0, his favorite red zone concepts and more. Mullens later learned that Cousins had spurned pool days during a conference that he was attending in Dana Point, Calif., to rent a car and visit both Steve Young and Drew Brees.
“He’s always trying to get better,” Mullens said.
Cousins reads voraciously. This summer, he was captivated by Victor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning,” which details Frankl’s experiences during the Holocaust, as well as Christopher Clarey’s “The Master,” a meditation on Roger Federer’s greatness, and Ian Cron’s “The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery.”
Cron’s book categorized Cousins as an “Improver,” someone who seeks growth and holds high standards but tends to be overly critical and strongly dislikes disappointing others. Cousins related.
He still catches himself teetering toward imbalance. The day before last year’s opener against the Green Bay Packers, Cousins spoke openly about his torment with friends and family. “I want to sort of not care if we win, to completely remove myself of that weight,” Cousins said. “But I don’t know how to do that.”
He feels like he’s finally found some peace these days, but his contract is set to expire after the season. Whether he stays or goes after this year is anyone’s guess. In the meantime, he describes his mindset by referencing a passage in “The Master,” about Rafael Nadal, Federer’s longtime rival. “One of his elite traits was his ability to just grind on the next point,” Cousins said. “And not even care about where that led him.”
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“When I read it, I thought, ‘That’s what I’m chasing. I do enjoy fighting to win. Like, there’s a sick part of me … but I, like, like it.”
The same way he enjoyed the brutal competitions with Narduzzi’s defense?
“Yes!” he said. “But if you start to think about, ‘Are we going to win?’ You don’t like it as much. But that fight, you just love.”
One day this summer, he and Don were in the car after Kirk had visited one of his heroes in the business world.
Don asked his son how he was feeling about another training camp. Cousins pulled out his phone and read some notes he had compiled. Some dealt with his commitment to using his platform for good for as long as he can. Others were about how important it was to him that his sons see him do what he loves. Cousins even cited how Frankl found peace when he focused his attention on others, which spurred him to consider ways he could intentionally place teammates in positions to thrive — like, say, swapping plane seats with Mullens during the preseason so Mullens could sit with starting receivers Justin Jefferson and K.J. Osborn.
When Cousins finished reading his notes, Don told his son it was the best perspective he had ever had.
“I’m still a work in progress,” Cousins reiterated months later, pausing to look over at the field. “But I feel like I’m getting closer.”
His watch buzzes, and he realizes it’s time to go scoop up his sons from day camp. The final weekend before football is here, and the family has planned a trip to the Minnesota State Fair. A Fruity Pebble cereal milk biscuit is calling his name, and he is not going to miss it for the world.
(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; photo: Michael Reaves / Getty Images)